My Divorce Taught Me to Be Honest About My Relationships From Now On

A few weeks after I decided that I was going to divorce my husband, I went for drinks with a friend. I spilled all the gory details of the split, giving all the complex, painful backstory of what drove me to leave my husband when our shared baby was just four months old. Towards the end of the evening, as we were looking for our respective Ubers, that friend said something surprising: "It's really nice to hear you opening up. You've always been such a closed book."

I was beyond shocked to hear myself described as 'closed'. I've always considered myself completely open. Arguably too open. I'd chat to people in the office about my fights with my sister or my teenage eating disorder, tweet about my period pains or cystitis. I'd tell girls I met in club bathrooms about sex with my first boyfriend who was 36 years older than me. As a writer I've shared stories about miscarriage, fertility journey, abortion, friendship break-ups and polyamory. All of which allowed me to think of myself as a completely open, honest person.

But in retrospect, my marriage was one place of my life where that honesty didn't apply. When the cracks started to appear there, I kept my mouth shut. In fact, I even occasionally actively lied. When he didn't come to social events because things were awful, I would pretend that he was working late or had a migraine. When I seemed distracted or depressed, I claimed that I was worried about work or I'd had a fight with "a friend". I'd say anything to hide the truth of our situation. I told myself that it was normal to be private about your marriage, healthy even.

I should probably have known that wasn't true when I started lying to my therapist. I was so terrified that she would tell me that I had to break up with him (as if any therapist would give that kind of direct instruction) that I couldn't quite be honest. I told her half-truths and semi-lies so that she wouldn't think badly of him. I was literally paying her to listen to me lie.

Why was I doing all of this? Well, I was scared that people would think badly of him, and therefore think that I was stupid for staying. I was also unwilling to admit to myself quite how bad things had got, and if my friends knew then it would be harder to bury my head in the sand. And saddest of all, I didn't want it to be true. I didn't like this miserable mess of a relationship. I wanted the life I thought I was getting when I married him. Worse still, a sweet, delusional part of me thought it was best to protect his reputation so that when the version of him I fell in love with magically came back one day, I wouldn't have to convince my friends and family to like him again.

Shockingly, none of this totally unhinged magical thinking panned out, we split up, and a while later I found myself back on the dating market. Determined not to repeat my previous mistakes, I made some resolutions about how I would operate going forward. Some of them were small things — that I would date someone who was a within few years of my own age, having always dated much older men. That I would not date someone who called their ex "crazy". But the biggest resolution was that I would stop covering for anyone I was dating. No more lies about how they were treating me behind the scenes, no more pretending that I was the problem, that I started all the arguments, that their bad moods were because I'm "difficult" to be with.

Plans don't tend to work unless they've got specifics. So I made a promise to myself that any time someone I was dating did something which upset me, I had to confide in at least two people. One of them can be my therapist, one of them has to be a friend or a family member. It's a kind of protection about slipping back into those bad old habits where I cover for the other person because I'm scared of our shared friends thinking badly of him.

A side-effect of my 'closed book' behaviour, which I hadn't realised was happening, was that other people didn't want to be honest with me either. Because I wasn't telling the truth about my relationship, I was presenting a pretence of everything being perfect, which invited my friends to be the same. The moment I was willing to confide, I was delighted to find that other people were having much the same experiences. I felt much less alone, and it reminded me that having a bit of conflict within a relationship is perfectly healthy and completely normal. To my surprise, I've found that the more honest I am about any teething problems we're experiencing, the more honest my friends are about theirs. It turns out that I'm not the only person who struggles with trust issues, starts fights because they're hormonal or has rage black-outs when their partner snores.

It's been a tricky learning curve, I won't lie. Every time we hit a bump in the road, my instinct is to bury it, hide it from myself and everyone I know. But I'm fighting that urge for a good reason. In Alcoholics Anonymous they have an expression — we are as sick as our secrets. And while it's usually used to talk about addiction, it's true in other spheres too. The thing you're hiding about your relationship is almost certainly the thing you need to fix. But you're not going to fix it by pretending that it's not there. Without wanting to be heavy handed, if you're having to actively lie to protect your partner from public opinion, you're almost certainly in a bad relationship. Your problems might well be salvageable. But for as long as you continue to shield the person you're with from criticism, you're not going to solve those issues. And even worse, and you're going to have to bear the weight of them entirely alone.

Rebecca Reid is an author and journalist who writes about all aspects of modern life. She is the author of the novels Perfect Liars, The Truth Hurts, Two Wrongs, The Will and the forthcoming Seven Rules For a Perfect Marriage (out summer 2025).