"Why Does My Husband Hide Things From Me?" 8 Reasons Your Husband is Secretive - Olubunmi Mabel

If over the years, with your spouse, you have built a marriage that dwells on open communication and transparency, it will become a rude shock to discover your husband is hiding things from you.

On the flip side, he might have just been that way all along, and you’re just realizing it or looking for answers as to why he does that.

As everyone says, there is no hard or fast rule as to how a marriage should be run, it should be based on the reality of the people in it.

For the purpose of this blog post, I will address this issue from the standpoint that your husband has always been a secretive person.

This is not to say that it is all good and nice for him to be secretive, but I will be checking out reasons why he acts the way he does.

It’s okay to feel sad, angry, and betrayed, but let’s find out the reason for his secretive behavior. 

“Why Does My Husband Hide Things From Me?” 8 Possible Reasons

1. Fear of Judgment:

One of the primary reasons your husband is hiding things from you is the fear of judgment.

You probably have reacted or handled some matters in the way that he least expected in the past, and in a way, he has chosen to protect himself by hiding some facts from you.

Sometimes, this hiding of facts is usually in the form of telling half-truths.

Imagine asking your husband if he smoked, and he goes on to explain that smoking makes him get high, but he is not high.

After a few days, you realize that he actually did smoke.

When you bring it up, he might go all defensive to say that he didn’t.

He might even buttress the fact that he was only analyzing what smoking does to him, and you assumed he did not smoke.

This is what it means to tell half-truth.

He probably did this because you know how much you hate his smoking habit, and he doesn’t want you judging him because he’s trying to stop.

This is just one of many instances that can be a reason for him hiding information from you.

Some of this information can be related to his finances or even professional challenges.

Most women do the “I told you so thing,” and to avoid it, which is a judgment on its own, men will rather keep some of these things to themselves.

2. Lack of Communication Skills:

One thing you need to understand is that your husband and yourself are completely different people with different upbringings.

You may have come from a home where communication is the author of the day, and he is from a place where you learn to deal with things silently.

In this kind of scenario, you should expect that your husband will definitely want to deal with things himself.

Communication does not occur magically because someone is in love with you or is married to you.

It is something you learn over time, and once you do not have a grasp of it, it leads to issues like this.

He will have struggles expressing himself openly because it is not something he is used to.

At this point, as cliche as it sounds, you should know it is not you; it is him.

Hiding can be a form of coping mechanism for him, and it stems from fear of confrontation or difficulty in articulating his thoughts and feelings.

He might also have issues with overthinking, especially when it comes to what to expect from having such a conversation with you.

All in all, what I am saying is that he doesn’t know how to communicate, and that is why he is hiding things from you.

3. Protecting You from Worry:

Naturally, men have this protective instinct, while women tend to be the worrier in most situations.

A man who knows his wife overthinks things and worries a lot, and might even lose sleep in certain situations will want to hide some things that may lead to this from her.

Your husband being your shield and protector in this scenario, is just being loving and is trying to protect you from unnecessary worry or stress.

I know as women, we want to know what goes on in our men’s lives to see how we can help.

The panic and worry we will put ourselves through at first might even prevent us from getting solutions to these problems immediately.

If your man knows you worry a lot, even over the littlest things, he will tend to hide some things from you.

No matter how much you express your desire for transparency, he knows what the process will be like already.

I’ll say it is not something that should be an issue as long as what he is hiding is not a major thing that could be detrimental to both of you.

4. Personal Space and Autonomy:

As much as you may want to deny it, everyone wants a degree of personal space and autonomy in their lives, no matter how much they’re into their partners or spouses.

Your husband might be hiding some things from you because he wants to maintain a sense of independence or privacy even in the marriage.

For instance, he might want to keep things that happen between his parents away from you, which in my opinion, is not bad, as long as it is having zero effect on you.

I know it sounds like it doesn’t make sense for him to do that, but look at yourself and answer if you actually tell him everything to the littlest details about you.

At this point, I want you to know that the information he is hiding is not one that should mar you or break you down when you eventually know.

It should not be something that will lead to a breach of trust.

It should be more about respecting each other’s boundaries and respect for each other’s need for individuality.

5. Past Baggage or Trauma:

More than we will ever like to admit, we are all bags of emotions and experiences and we seem to handle them in different ways.

Your husband might be hiding this from you because he has experienced some things in his past, and that is typically a trauma response to that experience.

This might even be unknown to him because he is yet to deal with this emotion or experience from a holistic point.

It is this fear of vulnerability with regard to that experience that may lead him to hide things from you.

Don’t be surprised that this behavior of him hiding things from you is a form of defense mechanism to protect himself from being hurt.

It is not as if we know who can hurt us or who will not.

And I’m not saying you can hurt your husband.

I know it sounds unrealistic to say that your husband is trying to protect himself from you, but you should understand that the thought process of men is quite different from that of women.

He might just be protecting his sanity and even doing all of these unconsciously because it is a trauma response.

If he has not fully healed from the past baggage or trauma that happened as a result of his opening up, he might hide things from you.

6. Insecurity and Low Self-Esteem:

You will be surprised to find out that your husband is actually dealing with embers of insecurity and low self-esteem in his personal life.

If you happen to be an assertive and outspoken woman who has things going for her in her life and your husband, on the other hand does not have as much prospect as you do careerwise, he might be grappling with insecurity and low self-esteem.

This might be a result of the kind of upbringing he had or the kind of people he has been associating with.

He might have been talked down on a couple of times, and he believes that saying some things to you might not resonate with your own reality.

He might also feel that because he is not operating on the same pedestal as you are, you might not be able to relate to what he will share with you.

Low self-esteem and insecurity manifest in different ways in different people.

But one sure thing is that if your husband feels beneath you, he is likely not to discuss a whole lot of things with you.

7. Changes in Priorities:

Change is the only constant in life, and you cannot contain it when it is bound to happen.

You might have a timeline of activities with your husband on how you want to plan your family, your career, and a host of other things with your husband at some point.

However, down the line, his priorities can shift, and at that point, the adjustments and decisions he has to make may be hidden from you probably because he is still largely uncertain about the whole thing at that point.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that he loves you less or doesn’t trust you.

In fact, it could be because he doesn’t trust the new decisions enough yet, or he doesn’t have enough information on his new goals to make him divulge them to you.

8. He Has an Ulterior Motive

Okay, I know I’ve been trying to be positive, but the reality is that sometimes your husband may be hiding things from you for his own gain. 

It could be because he wants to surprise you with a special gift or trip, or it could be something more malicious like hiding financial information or having an affair.

If your husband has a history of being secretive and dishonest, then there is a possibility that he may have an ulterior motive for keeping things hidden from you.

I want you to understand that your husband hiding something from you might not be a bad thing in the interim, as I have explained above.

How he processes his emotions and things around him will be a major determinant of how he will be able to express himself.

Also, the way you receive information and process them too will determine the depth of things he shares with you and how often he will share things with you.

In all of this, you need to know that some of these days do not happen magically.

The fact that you are married does not mean that he will automatically express anything and everything If that has not been a practice you both share before now.

I hope you’re able to find common ground on this and sort out whatever differences it might have caused amicably.