subject: Three Secrets To Keep From Your Spouse [print this page] There are three things that you should definitely not share with your spouse after you're married: high school yearbooks, tax returns from the years prior to your marriage, and any and all mixed tapes or playlists made during high school and college. While these items may seem relevant at one point or another, you should keep them to yourself.
High school yearbooks are the most important ones to avoid. They're also probably the most tempting. We rarely end up anything like what we were in those days. If we were cheerleaders, we probably ended up businesslike. If we were depressed, we probably learned to be happy. If we were studious, we probably learned to have fun. If we were partiers, we probably learned how to be serious. Showing off who we were might seem innocent and funny.
When we're actually sharing the yearbooks, it might be very funny. But almost every yearbook holds clues to the parts of us that we left behind. We left those things behind for good reason, but they are still part of us. And most damaging of all, somewhere in one of those yearbooks there is probably a note from a boyfriend or girlfriend expressing their love for us. No matter how long ago it was, our spouse does not want to be reminded that someone else once had the right to say those things. Especially the way they were always said in high school.
It's unlikely that we'll suddenly have a similar urge to show our spouse old tax returns, but those can come to light in a different way. We might want to finance something (like a house) and need to provide financial documentation from the past. We might get audited (God forbid) and have to produce our old returns. There are a number of situations in which we might have to pull the old returns out of storage.
But even if they have to be provided to some third party for inspection, it's best not to share them with a spouse. Almost everybody misrepresents their past earnings in one way or another, and any hard proof of what we made (or at least, what we reported) can sow the seeds of distrust. Many people also change courses in their lives, and their earnings reflect those changes; but our spouse fell in love with the product of those changes; he or she doesn't need to know the process.
Mixed tapes, playlists, and any other kind of musical compilation are another thing that we should just keep to ourselves. Just like the yearbooks, this is something that 's very tempting to share. We might empty an old storage unit or (under strict orders) remove our stuff from our parents' house, and in doing so we might come across an old mixed tape from high school. Those old mixed tapes can bring up all kinds of memories.
Those memories are great. We should keep them. More importantly, we should keep them to ourselves. Because the fact is that when we're teenagers we don't know anything about music. Our preferences are, shall we say, unsophisticated. We certainly don't want our spouse to think of us in terms of the ridiculous junk we used to listen to. Like the yearbooks, it might be funny, but it's really not cool.
Any of those items can cause a real problem in a marriage. However, if you can just keep your high school yearbooks, your old tax returns, and your mixed tapes to yourself, there is no reason why you can't have a long and happy life together.
