[mahogany]

Dear April,

Hi, how are you?! I’m new to your site and so excited to learn. Okay now on to my question. I have been withholding a secret from and struggling with how to tell by boyfriend a very serious secret about myself. We have been together off and on for two years and I know two years in an extremely long time to keep a secret. The secret that I am keeping is that when I was 18 I was charged with misdeameanor theft of less than $300 for shoplifting from a local Target store. I was stealing by my then boyfriend, but I still knew right from wrong and should have said no and not done it. That is truely the biggest mistake of my life.The ironic part is when I met my boyfriend he was working at that exact Target store. I am now 25, but am still ashamed to reveal this secret to some people out of fear of what they might think of me, but I’m so consumed with guilt I cannot sleep at night. I know that sounds like an excuse, but thats honestly how I feel. I never told my boyfriend for that exact reason although I have wanted to. The time has just always felt wrong or I was paralyzed by fear of losing him from having such a shady past. Now I’m a liar and a shady person. I have had two other incidents with not being immediately truthful with him so his trust is probably shaky about me and I can’t blame him. The crazy thing is I think he knows something is up because he has been asking me about my “record” lately. Please help! How can I fess up?

[Ask April Masini]

There is no easy way around this and there is no shortcut. You have no choice if you want to be honest and intimate with your boyfriend, but to tell him about your past. If you don’t, he’s going to find out eventually and feel you lied to him, or he may never find out, but then YOU will know you purposefully withheld and lied to him. So do the right thing and tell him the truth.

Preference the confession with your feelings of fear and your apology for not having had the courage to have told him sooner, and then just blurt it out and let him react. You don’t know what his reaction will be, but until you give him the opportunity to react, and to have feelings and express them to you, you’ll never know.

So take a deep breath, blow it out, and then tell him. You’ll feel better for having finally told the truth, and this will help you with other difficult situations that may come your way in which honesty is called for.

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