True Lies

Truth Thursday

How did he do it? How did Arnold Schwarzenegger keep his infidelity and the child that resulted from it a secret from his wife, family and close associates, not to mention the chatterazzi, who smell blood from miles away, for so long?

We can moan about how he deceived poor Maria Shriver, for whom I wish a fresh start and a reclaiming of her own quite substantial career and prominence as something other than a Kennedy child or a Hollywood gossip item or a political spouse.

We can worry about the children, whose lives have already, in all likelihood, been determined by the prism of fame cast over this family from the start. Whatever emotional fallout they will suffer from their father's indiscretion, in all likelihood they will continue to lead privileged and productive lives.

We can wonder about the employee and her son, who have scurried away from the glare of the strobe light on the estate of shame.

But the thing that fascinates me the most about this sordid, but not unexpected story, is the web of lies and deceit in which Arnold has been entangling his life for the past 14 years.

How do you do that?

We all harbor secrets. We may not have told our spouses about ALL of our past loves, or about the one who got away. We may have secret crushes on co-workers, little flirtations that get us through the day. We may have done something wrong as a teen, perhaps even been found out, that we have conveniently neglected to continue talking about in our current daily conversations. We may buy one too many pairs of shoes (not that I can relate to that accusation) and conveniently slip them into our closet without fanfare.

Maybe we smoked pot. Or did harder drugs. Or drank heavily. These are things we don't necessarily want to share with our families, especially our impressionable kids (although kids have a radar for lies and half-truths that is as keen as any other sense, so one needs to be careful as one reconstructs one's past.)

Maybe we crashed our parents' car. Maybe we stole money from someone. Maybe we were a bully at one point. None of us has a completely clean record of life.

But as adults, we move into a new realm of implication and ramification around lies and secrets. Keeping things from our spouses and partners darkens the air around us and affects our relationships in a destructive way. Holding a big secret in is damaging … and dangerous.

It's one thing to want to protect our children from the realities of life. We have to be thoughtful about what we share, and we have to adjust our conversations with them as they reach new milestones of maturity and understanding. What was appropriate to share with my kids when they were five is no longer what I want or need to share with my teenage son or my tween daughter.

But it's another to harbor deep secrets from those who are closest to us.

Take Carol Joynt's revelations about her marriage in her new book, "Innocent Spouse." When her husband died unexpectly, the IRS came knocking on her door, demanding $3 million in taxes. She claims to have known nothing about her husband's shady financial undoing -- and I believe her. But how did he live with himself, with this enormous financial secret hanging over his head every day? 

As a writer, I have many small secrets. I have an active interior life in which I observe the day and collect ideas and stories for my work. These are secrets of a sort, but they are the kind that don't hurt anyone. The fact is, no one, including my husband, is much interested in the raw material of my writing life, and I try not to share it unless asked.

But the deeper, darker secrets – these must come out. Or else how can you live through a day? Or 14 years? 

We all have them. We all carry them around with us. Most of us are not living lies in our own homes. But we all carry the secrets of life. We can only hope that when they see the finally light of day, and they will, that they are the kinds of secrets we can live with as honestly and openly as when they were buried in our hearts.

 

 photo by schumachergirl1956 via Flicker

 

 

Comments

[Katherine]

I am SO with you on this. How on earth could someone keep a CHILD secret from his spouse? Much less have the mother of that child in the same household as your wife for a decade? It's stunning. I don't think my husband could last a week with that kind of deception.

[Gigi Jones]

Well, I guess, Arnold, being a human being just like any one of us, did what he did because he believed it was right to keep it a secret. And I guess, he held onto the secret for as long as he could, and when he couldn't he told Maria. I'm sure it's the reason for their announcement of a breakup the day before the "love child" story came out. "How" is not nearly as important to me as "why" when he had so much to lose? But then, there were allegations prior to his run for Governor-it wasn't considered important then, so the press obviously felt Arnold deserved a pass on his activities.