Secrets have an amazing, unexplained power to unite people and at the same time to divide them. From government conspiracies to couples having affairs, secrets prevail at all levels of society. Today families face special dilemmas about secrecy, privacy, silence and openness. We live in a culture whose messages about secrecy are truly confounding. All families have some secrets from the outside world. You also have a zone of privacy that demarcates inside from outside, building your family's sense of identity. But if a dan-gerous secret is held within your house, the boundary between family and the rest of the world become rigid and impenetrable. Friends and relatives are not invited in, and family members' forays out are limited. Although we encounter secrets in every area of life, they are perhaps most destructive when kept in the home. Our identity and ability to form close relationships with others depend upon the trust and communication we feel with loved ones. If family members keep secrets from each other, the emotional fallout can last a lifetime. Secrets can divide family members. And they can discourage individuals from sharing information with anyone outside the family, inhibiting formation of intimate relationships.

Some secrets are essential to establishing bonds between two people. When siblings keep secrets from their parents, for example, they attain a sense of independence and a feeling of closeness. When family members suspect that important information is being withheld from them, they may pursue the content of the secret in ways that invade privacy. Relationships corrode with suspicion. Conversely, family members may respond to a secret with silence and distance, which affect areas of life that have nothing to do with the secret.

When a family's secret is an ongoing condition such as drug addiction, physical abuse, an illness then both family relationships and interactions with the outside world are affected. Conversation is superficial, since what is important cannot be discussed. Family members become helpless as they can’t discuss it with anyone. Taking the risk of opening a long-held secret to friends and loved ones may seem an act of betrayal. One of the best ways to ease into revealing long-hidden information is to tell an objective listener, like a therapist.

Every family experiences developmental stages. These are most evident when someone enters the family by marriage or other committed relationship; birth or adoption; and when someone exits the family by leaving home or through separation, divorce or death. Such entrances and exits require that a family reinvent itself in order to accommodate new roles. When that process goes well, complex adjustments occur in every corner of the family. When a secret is made in the midst of this process, adjustment screeches to a halt. For family members to have the strength to handle a life-altering secret, it should be told during a normal time in everyday life. Otherwise, development linked to a life passage will stop in its tracks.