Your partner isn’t as attentive as they used to be. Their mood has changed.
They spend more time looking at their phone than they do speaking to you, and when you ask them what they’re doing, they become snappy and irritable. Understandably, this makes you paranoid.
The conclusion that you’ll inevitably reach about their change in behavior is that they’re no longer interested in you, and they might even have started an illicit relationship with somebody else.
There’s a chance you’re right about that, but it’s not the only possibility you ought to consider.
There are a number of different things your partner might be keeping secret, and all of them might result in behavioral changes.
When your partner hides something from you, they usually do so out of embarrassment.
The idea of an affair being detected would obviously be embarrassing to them, but so might the discovery of something that might make you think less of them. Before you sleepwalk into an argument about whether or not your partner is cheating on you – perhaps even an argument that might end an otherwise happy relationship – ask yourself if there could be something else going on instead.
As examples, here are a few common things your partner might be secretive about.
They’ve Lost Their Job
Whether we’re aware of it or not, there’s a balance of power in every relationship.
Even if both of you come up with ideas, one of you makes the final decisions.
That’s usually the person who makes most of the money or organizes the finances.
When someone loses their job and becomes financially dependant on the partner who earns less, that upsets the balance of power and can put a strain on the relationship.
A lost job can also be a difficult thing to own up to.
You’d be surprised how many people lose their jobs and don’t inform their partners until they’ve found a new one – possibly because job losses can and do lead to relationship break ups.
Has your partner suddenly cut back on spending, or become reluctant to discuss going for dates, nights away, or anything else that would involve spending more than the bare minimum?
Employment issues might be the reason why.
They’ve Become Unwell
Considering the fact that all human beings know that they’re doing to die one day, as a species we’re terrible at confronting our own mortality or even discussing it.
The first thing a lot of people do when they’ve been diagnosed with a serious health condition is to enter a state of denial.
We don’t tell people we’re ill, we try not to make any changes to our lifestyle, and we generally pretend that the illness isn’t there.
The reality of the situation is always there at the back of our minds, though, and it can manifest as stress, anxiety, and profound depression.
As the person closest to them, you’re more likely to notice these symptoms in your partner than anybody else is.
They may not have fallen out of love with you – they may just not want to burden or hurt you with the knowledge of their condition.
They’re A Habitual Gambler
Gambling isn’t what it used to be.
Whether your partner is male or female, they could easily have opened an account with an internet-based casino or an online slots website, they could be accessing that website through their phone and play slots for free here.
Even though gambling is perfectly legal in most of the world, and harmless so long as you enter into it with the right attitude, some people still think that their partners would be furious if they knew they were spending money playing online slots.
To avoid having that debate, they’ll keep their phone away from you, but you might notice that they’re on it more than usual.
It’s down to you to decide whether you’d be more upset if they were playing online slots than if they were sending text messages to somebody else, but at least playing online slots isn’t an act of betrayal.
They’re in Debt
As we said earlier, humans are bad at talking to each other about death. In many cultures – especially western ones – they’re equally bad at talking to each other about money.
It’s often considered rude to ask someone how much they earn, and you’d certainly never dream of asking someone if they were in debt.
Perhaps we should be having those conversations, though, because there’s a debt epidemic in the USA at the moment, and the existence of ‘how do I speak to my partner about debt’ guides online tells us that we’re struggling to address those issues as effectively as we need to.
Depending on the severity of the debt problem, your partner might be terrified of your reaction if they confess it to you.
When they’re checking their phone late at night, they’re probably looking at their bank balance and websites that offer debt advice, not messages from other people.
Someone They Care About Has Problems
However close yourself and your partner are, it’s highly unlikely that you’re the only person they care about in the world.
They almost certainly have friends, relatives, and loved ones who they care about deeply, and any one of them might be going through problems.
They might have health issues, financial issues, or personal problems of their own for which they’ve come to your partner for support, but sworn your partner to secrecy about it.
It could even be someone you know.
Your partner has the right to keep their confidentiality and must be allowed to provide whatever support is required within reason.
They might be keeping a secret from you, and it might be quite a large secret, but they could be doing it for the best of reasons.
Even though we now know all of this, we still have a difficult task ahead of ourselves in opening our partners up and having frank conversations about the situation.
Our advice would be to avoid accusatory tones.
Don’t tell them that they’re acting strangely, or you’re suspicious of them.
Instead, tell them how you’re feeling.
All of us are more likely to respond to an emotional plea from someone we love than an accusation – and that might open the door to getting enough information from them to provide you with peace of mind.