Secrets of the Connubial Couch

In my last post I talked about sex and secrets. I said that secrets are strange: although two people may insist they share the same secret simply because the words that would be used to state one person's secret are identical to those used to state the other's, in reality all secret-originators are keeping their own personal secrets, distinct from everybody else's secrets, however alike.

It's a violation of trust for me to reveal a secret that you have shared with me, even if my own deepest, darkest, most intimate secret can be stated in exactly the same words as yours, and so would seem to be exactly the same secret. If your secret is that you are gay, and my secret is that I am gay, it would be a violation of trust for me to reveal your hidden sexual identity — even if I'm in the process of coming out of the closet myself.

I don't possess your secret, and it's not mine to give away.

Because this is so, I said that secrets in general have no "essence" of the sort philosophers talk about. They do not partake of any abstract form or idea that sets their need for secrecy from within, as it were. In general, there is nothing intrinsic to gayness or anything else that makes secrecy absolutely necessary. In a different world (such as that of the ancient Greeks, where homosexual behavior was rife) there would be no point to being in the closet.


I went on to say in my earlier post that we have no deeper secrets than those concerning sex. The secrets of the connubial couch, if we view them as being kept separately and individually by each marital partner alone, might seem to be his-and-hers secrets, not theirs. His unutterable delight might be his ephemeral own, as might hers also be.

In philosopher-speak, again, connubial secrets might accordingly seem to have no "essence," no universality. There would be no occasion of timelessness, of beauty, of transcendence. Put another way, the two partners' hidden, inner awarnesses might never mingle to make something enduring.

But that's not the way it is.

No, different rules apply to married couples and their shared secrets. A couple may, for instance, reserve from public awareness the fact that they use whipped cream for fun and games in the bedroom. I would be a betrayal for him to tell his buddies about the earthly delights of Reddi-Wip if she doesn't want him to, even if he doesn't see why everyone shouldn't know.

But the reason it's a betrayal is different from that of the previous example; it's their secret — "their" being a plural pronoun with a singular thrust.

In the earlier example, you and I are (we imagined) both hiding the fact that we are gay. We are not lovers; there is no connubial couch for us. Perhaps you are female, and thus a lesbian, while I am a male homosexual. We simply don't have eyes for each other. If either of us reveals the other's secret, it is a violation of trust ... but it is not a betrayal of connubial proportions.

On the other hand, if a wife tells a casual girlfriend about her husband's liking her to wear thongs under her business suits, what is being betrayed is a plural secret. What is being broken faith with is the timeless essence of connubial trust.

From something without an essence — the secrets of a sexual encounter, as kept separately by those individuals whose brief contact produces them — can, in marriage, become something with an essence, a universality, and a timelessness: the beauty of real sex. Real connubial bliss may be the only personal secret with a timeless essence.


Let's give our married couples names. The first couple, the one with the liking for whipped cream and other delights, are Sam and Diane. The second, with the racy underwear thing, are Chip and Dale.

Now, let's say the two couples are best friends.

That means, among other things, that it's now OK for Dale to let on to Diane that Chip likes her, Dale, to wear the skimpiest of undies. And Sam can tell Chip how Reddi-Wip puts spice in his and Diane's love life. Why? Because both couples are on the same exalted plane of marital intimacy, it is somehow not a violation for them to compare notes.

At the same time, these shared secrets cannot be blabbed to outsiders without it being a betrayal at the connubial level. If Diane tells her casual friend — call her Susie — about Dale's thong-wearing, it's not just a garden-variety breach of trust ... it's as bad as if Sam himself had done the blabbing.

Connubial secrets can be shared, but only with others who are personally known to share the same holy paradise of marital secrecy. All who enter the inner sanctum are alike. All who keep its secrets outwardly may share them inwardly.

Yet there are limits. It would utterly destroy the holiness if Sam were to sleep with Dale, or Chip with Diane. Nor is group sex allowed, à la the movie Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice. The inner sanctum does have private compartments.


What if Dale were a he? Would everything I just said remain the same?

Of course, Dale's naughty secret might not involve the same kind of thong undies, owing to the idiosyncrasies of the male anatomy. But would all else remain as it was?

In other words, could Sam and Diane treat a male couple as fellow celebrants in the inner sanctum, with full privileges of note-comparing and shared intimacies?

I'm not sure that if I were Sam, I could. It would seem to be necessary that our imaginary "sidekick couple," mine and Diane's, be heterosexual. Somehow, the meanings of naughty underwear and dairy-oriented enhancements to bliss change when the respective partners don't match up, gender-wise.

You don't agree? Imagine if Sam and Diane's secret is the same as Chip and Dale's: in each case, the wife, Diane or Dale, wears naughty undies to work. The secrets here are not just alike, they're identical.

But if Dale's a guy, the twin secrets drop to the level of being "just alike." They're no longer identical.

You may object that the problem here is due to Sam, Diane, Chip, and a female Dale having imbibed the homophobia of the culture. Change the culture, and Dale could just as well be a guy.

I'm not so sure. Even in ancient Greece, I doubt a heterosexual pair could be marital "sidekicks" with a homosexual couple. But even if you're right and I'm wrong about that, there can be little doubt that as our culture stands right now, gay and straight couples can never occupy the same connubial inner sanctum.


Time for a summary: I am reasoning from a gut-level feeling that the secrets of the connubial couch are different from other secrets. They alone, if shared inappropriately, represent a violation of a plural entity's trust. Other secrecy violations violate only the trust of a single individual.

Moreover, my gut tells me that marital secrets can in fact be shared (at least, some of them) between married couples who know each other so well that neither one can doubt the other's right of admission into the inner sanctum of marital understanding. There is, in effect, a secret handshake that two married couples can use to validate one another's admissibility to the sanctum.

Third, this "secret handshake" is categorically unavailable if one of the couples is made up of two guys (or two gals).