How to Escape from Your Room of Secrets
Do you have a room of secrets in your life? What exactly is it? In today’s article, we’ll be talking about this important topic and showing you how to retain your own identity.
When two people decide to live together, several problems can arise. One of the most common ones is adapting and getting used to each other. This includes all our annoying habits, obsessions, and customs.
This process of living together forms the dynamics of their relationship. In it, they’ll both have to make concessions, while at the same time trying not to lose their individual identity. When a couple doesn’t do this, then something called the “room of secrets” can appear.
The Room of Secrets
The room of secrets is the area of our lives where we keep all our intimate things and habits. However, they’re also things that can annoy or displease our partner.
This room can start to fill up with unimportant details that you don’t mind changing for the sake of your partner. It may be a perfume that your partner doesn’t like, crafts that take up space in the living room, or those romantic TV shows that bore your partner to death.
The problem can start to be a worrying one when the room of secrets isn’t filled with suggestions but rather with obligations. It’s full of threats and the customs and habits that somehow make you “unbearable” in your partner’s eyes.
What often happens is that you decide to change those customs just so that you don’t lose your partner. However, the price you pay is losing your own identity.
Couples that really love each other aren’t the ones where each person seeks to be perfect and please their other half at the expense of their own well-being. If they really love each other, then they’ll be able to accept and love each other just as they are. They’ll put up with each other’s faults and the fact they don’t share all the same likes and dislikes.
The Room of Secrets and Psychological Violence
One of the reasons the room of secrets can fill up with these things is fear. You fear the psychological reactions of your partner. You might even fear them turning violent or even abusing you.
Many people give up their own desires and identity just to avoid being victims of physical or psychological abuse. They become increasingly vulnerable and more and more trapped by their partner. Their partner, on seeing how this abuse furthers his own interests, just carries on acting the same way.
What happens then is that the victim will retreat and cower in the corner of their room of secrets. They won’t take up the position in the relationship that they legitimately deserve. These people will lose their personal freedom and will stop claiming what’s theirs. The end result here is that they’ll lose their own identity in the process.
Losing Your Voice
These people start to let their partner speak for them. They lose their voice, and, with it, their strength and self-esteem.
In a relationship, you must never lose your identity, nor your voice. It’s your only weapon against abuse, isolation, and fear.
What’s left is just a disordered mess of what was once yours, but which is now dependent on someone else. We’re afraid of losing ourselves because our life is intrinsically linked to the other person.
There’s nothing left of us. The room fills up with our “secrets”. The things we really like end up becoming the bars of our cell.
How Can You Leave the Room of Secrets?
In this room or prison, there are no marks left by punches or blows. This makes it so much more difficult to recognize. You may even think that you’ve renounced or stopped doing things out of your own free will.
However, the difference is clear. If there’s a fear of losing them or them hurting you, then it’s coercion, not freedom of choice.
We all have obsessions. We all have things that we like and that we don’t have to share or renounce in order to please others. Keep in mind that if these things don’t affect the other person’s freedom, then there’s nothing wrong with them.
Because of this, and in order not to lose our own voice, space, and identity in a relationship, we don’t have to give everything up just to try to avoid losing our partner.
Bring Your Secrets into the Light
However, if you’re already locked inside this room full of secrets, I recommend that you bring them into the light without fear. Whoever really loves you will end up accepting you with all your foibles and oddities. Or, at the very least, they’ll try to find a solution where you’re not the only one who has to lose ground. If you lose ground for being who you really are, then it’s really not worth it.
If it’s fear that’s preventing you from leaving the prison cell that your room of secrets has become, then ask for help from the outside. This may be from friends who have become distant because you’ve hidden them in a corner. Or you may be able to call on your relatives for help, ones that you may not have seen for some time.
Speak to whoever you need to, just so that you won’t have to keep living in utter fear. You can also request professional help if you need it. Psychologists know that you aren’t alone and, above all, that it isn’t your fault.