Signs of a Secret Life
We think we know those who are close to us, and we want to believe that what we see is what we get. But we can never know for certain because what goes on inside another’s head and heart is essentially a secret. How do we know if that secret is something that will hurt us? There are signs, and we don’t always want to recognize them. The following behaviors might be cause for concern:
Exhibiting a moody, nervous, hair-trigger temper over small things
Acting beleaguered for no reason
Complaining about physical problems with no medical explanation—headache, stomachache, back pain, intestinal trouble
Spending unaccounted-for time on the phone, or making calls from an unusual room in the house—like the bathroom
Gail Saltz takes us into the mind of the secret keeper to show readers how it starts, where it goes wrong, and how (and why) the secret will always come out.
What do these people have in common?
The traveling businessman who brings prostitutes back to his hotel room
The wealthy woman who is arrested for shoplifting
The seemingly happily married man who cruises gay clubs
They are all—despite differences in degree, gender, and age—living a double life, one of our most deeply ingrained, but poorly understood psychological drives. Now, Dr. Gail Saltz steps into the breach to explore —in detail and based on the latest research—our impulse to create and nurture alter egos.
Saltz reveals how assuming a different identity can be healthy and tremendously liberating. For proof, we need look no further than the innumerable people who reinvent themselves by moving to the big city, or the countless pseudonymous bloggers. But, as she also makes clear, leading a secret life comes with potentially serious psychological risks. She shows that, in more extreme cases, leading a secret life can have devastating emotional, social and familial consequences—both for the person leading the secret life, and for those close to him or her.
The definitive popular work on how a secret life is formed, lived, justified, and exposed, Saltz’s Anatomy includes contemporary case studies and historical examples (Lindbergh, T. E. Lawrence, Tchaikovsky, et cetera) of people who have risked it all for a taste of forbidden fruit.
“In this gripping book, Gail Saltz analyzes the origins and consequences of hidden lives, articulating both the seductions that secrets hold and the terrible danger they pose as they undermine the capacity for intimacy. This is a brave examination of the balance between safety and loneliness that we all negotiate at one level or another.”
—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression
“Dr. Saltz is a voice of wisdom and insight in a world of confusion and contradictions. We can all learn from her sagacity.”
—Tom Brokaw
Praise for Becoming Real
“An enormous contribution.”
—Gail Sheehy, bestselling author of The Silent Passage, Passages, and Middletown, America
