Why it's important to keep secrets in a marriage

Celia Walden argues that secrets are the key to a healthy marriage

Celia Walden knows all too well the pain of being a plus one Photo: Rex Features

I love a good secret – my own, not someone else’s, which, frankly, are rarely worth the whisper they’re confided in. I’m in a minority, according to a recent poll that shows three in five people have a secret they dread being discovered, and which fear their partner discovering most.

I’ve always maintained that secrets are the key to a healthy marriage, if for no other reason than in moments of extreme tedium – doctor’s waiting rooms or the gridlocked M4 on a Sunday afternoon – you can unleash one and kill a happy hour or three.

The last time our plane was grounded at Heathrow, I casually let slip to myhusband that I used to have a gambling problem. “For six months in my early twenties, I’d spend two hours a day in the Billy Hill over the road from my office. Eventually, my friends staged an intervention. I’m not going to lie: the sight of those little blue biros still sparks a frenzy of yearning which borders on nausea.”

^{Celia Walden with her husban Piers Morgan}

By the time we landed at LAX, the man was still slack-jawed. “Four years,” he kept repeating robotically. “Four years of marriage and I never knew this about you.”

Which is precisely the point. When I’m 87 years old and we’re sitting in a nursing home in East Sussex, I want to be able to liven up a particularly monotonous TV dinner with the words: “I was born a man and christened Cecil. It was only after my second marriage that I became the woman you know and love. More gravy, darling?”