Unpopular Opinion...

Is that right? Or Hot Take? The thing where you say something that most people probably don't agree with but nonetheless it's totally true and you know it?

Anyway...

Brent and I were watching a TV show this morning and a therapist counsels his client to tell their spouse about an infidelity. That she was the one who fucked up so she needed to face up to that. That secrets always have a way of getting out and that they really need to confess and deal with the fallout. And Brent and I were both like...Nope.

And it's not the infidelity part that we disagree with. We both agree she was in the wrong for doing what she did. She was the one who fucked up. We both agree that she blew it, what she did was not okay, and needed to make sure she knocked that shit off. BUT...we don't agree that you always confess.

Years ago we heard someone say that you need to ask yourself why you are confessing to something before you do it. You need to ask if you are doing it for the other person or for you. Mostly will it hurt the other person more to know the truth. Are you confessing because you are living with the guilt and want to get out from under it or is there a need for them to know. If it will hurt the other person and not benefit them, then you shut the fuck up forever and just deal with your own guilt.

If you fuck up you don't then get to push your guilt off on to the person you wronged. Not if they are fine. Not if not knowing isn't hurting them. You live with your guilt because you did that. They didn't do anything wrong and shouldn't be wronged now.

The 9th step in AA is that you make direct amends UNLESS doing so would cause them more harm. You don't get to make yourself feel better by making someone else feel worse. It doesn't work that way.

I took that to heart and I've put it in action in my life at different times. The one that really sticks out was a work situation. I've written about it before, I ended up in charge of our new fangled email system spam filter. I'd have to go in every once in awhile and clear it out. Delete the things that were caught. The problem was that some of the things that were caught weren't spam, they were messages that the people they were intended for wanted, but would have been dead embarassed that anyone else saw.

The general shit talking about fellow employees, sexy talk between spouses, and sexy talk between married members of our staff and people they most decidedly were not married to.

And oh yeah, I read them. I probably should have just immediately forwarded them as soon as I could see that they weren't spam but...I mean...come on...they were right there and it was sort of my job to make sure everything was on the up and up and I did put those senders right on the white list as soon as I was done reading the message and forwarded to the correct inbox but... And yeah, not probably, I should have never read them.

I never told anyone that I had seen them. I gave REALLY broad hints in staff meetings like "I should not be the one in charge of the spam filter. I feel like that should be (insert biggest cheaters name here)that should handle it." But until I left I was the one sorting the inbox. But if I had come right out and said, "hey just got this email from the person you hooked up with off of Craig's List and..." it would have shamed them. It would have strained our relationship. It would have been ugly for the office, and honestly, it wasn't my business so I didn't say anything.

But I did get better about reading the first line of an email and then shutting that shit right down. I felt guilty about reading those personal emails and kind of icky about what I knew about them, and I didn't want to know more. So I changed my behavior. Though for a moment I thought about printing them all off and starting a blackmail file on everyone in the office...I mean, come on, you know that's how it would go if I was writing the story instead of real people living it.

Confession is good for the soul. We are only as sick as our secrets. The truth will out. All of that may be true but I firmly believe you have to ask yourself, who am I confessing for? Whose benefit? If it's not for the other person, if it will hurt them, then you shut the fuck up and deal with what you did some other way.

Though I have to say that the show did address the real truth of the matter. The therapist let her know that no matter what she did she was always going to feel guilty about it and would have to learn how to deal with that. And that's the real truth of the matter.

You know that I think guilt is an actionable emotion. If you are feeling guilty about something you have to stop doing whatever it is that makes you feel guilty. Stop reading the emails even if they are the only interesting part of your week. If you feel guilty about something change what you are doing. But don't push your pain on someone else while you do it.

Confession is only good for the soul if it's not soul crushing to the person you are confessing to.