This month's Vogue


In Vogue, out this week, I have a piece on family secrets. This is just part of an ongoing process of writing a family memoir.

As part of my thinking about the role and impact of family secrets I interviewed Anne Hollonds, CEO of Relationships Australia. Anne is always a thoughtful and balanced opinion leader in the area of our relationships.

Here is a transcript of my interview with her for that piece.

V: Do you find lots of people come to Relationships Australia with issues about family secrets?


AH: It wouldn’t be unusual to find people in a new relationship who haven’t fessed-up about something that happened in a previous relationship. These days generally there is a greater degree of openness about things generally, whether it’s coming out and telling people you are gay. Because social norms aren’t as rigid as they used to be. The more rigid the belief systems are in any family – if they are very religious or prescriptive about what should and shouldn’t be done – then it’s more likely there are going to be secrets because people feel what they are doing is unacceptable or might caused trouble or might upset somebody and so they keep things to themselves.

V: What would you advice be to, let’s say, a mother who had a personal secret and wanted to reveal that to her child after a long period of time? How should you go about revealing a family secret?

AH: It depends on what it is. It all depends on what the issues are, what the circumstances are, how old the child is and so forth. It also depends on the kind of family. If the family is one where things are talked about openly and they are pretty relaxed then it might be something you just always talk about and there doesn’t need to be a moment of revelation as such. It becomes part of the family story. If that’s not the case, then you really need to consider the level of maturity of the child. Around sixteen years of age is a good time in that they are already thinking about these things anyway.

V: Yes, they are probably at that stage where they are trying to work out their parents as people.

AH: Yes, that’s true. And also they might be mature but they might be going through some difficult personal times themselves so you probably wouldn’t want to load that onto them then. If there are some things that you have never gotten around to telling your kids and you should consider telling them in their early twenties. They are adults and the sooner they know the better and the risk of not talking about things honestly is that they may feel quite betrayed and question the basis of trust in the relationship. You do hear of people finding things out after one parent has died, the other parent discloses something and that can be a shock but it doesn’t mean you can’t recover from the shock. The more open and honest you are, the better it is for the relationship. It may take a bit of getting over in the first instance. There never is a perfect time to disclose things.

V: Can you imagine a situation where a family secret should be left alone?

AH: On the whole the more you disclose the better. That doesn’t equate with ‘you must say everything’. You don’t necessarily tell your partner every single thought that passes through you might. You might have a one-night stand and never tell them but if you repeatedly do that then that becomes a pattern and can create a wedge between you. It’s often a sign that you are living a separate life. If there are more and more things that are hard to talk about, it usually spells death for the relationship.