Dad feels betrayed by daughter’s secret

Dear Carolyn: My daughter was secretly married over a year ago. She informed me afterward, then told me not to tell my husband, her father, because of incidents where he shared private information with others. I told our daughter three times that I’m not comfortable keeping this secret from her father. She said she isn’t either, but it needs to be that way for now. Finally, she told my husband and told him I already knew. He is extremely angry with me and says I have damaged our relationship. What should I have done? — Caught in the Middle

Dear Caught in the Middle:

Your daughter dumped only bad options in your lap. You either lied to your husband or betrayed your daughter.

You asked about “should,” so: When that happens, it’s best to stand firm that she’s asking too much of you. Say you love her and respect her right to decide for herself what is best for her relationship with her dad — however, attaching secrecy strings to her news crosses a line into your relationship with her dad. And that’s not fair.

Fair would be to withhold from you both or tell you both. When it’s obviously too late for that, you’ve heard the news, the next step is to say you won’t keep a secret indefinitely. That grants her some time to organize herself, then tell her dad.

If we’re talking strictly about marriage health, then it would be your responsibility to say you won’t keep secrets from your husband.

But I believe this secret, in this family, is more complicated, and not just because you’re being asked to choose between child and spouse. There’s also obvious dysfunction involved when a daughter doesn’t trust a parent to know she got married.

Whether the underlying problem is entirely with her or entirely with her dad, or some combination of the two (plus you?), is something I can’t possibly tell from here.

I put myself in your husband’s position, and I hope that my first reaction would be to look inward, to ask myself why my grown daughter felt she couldn’t tell me she got married.

And I’d be asking myself, I hope, what I can do to build healthier relationships.

I really, really hope I’d do all these things before I tore into you — and then still not tear into you, because adults disagree civilly instead. I could disagree with your reasoning, vehemently even, but not before I made a real effort to understand what it actually was.

This is, as you requested, all under the heading of what you “should” have done. To move forward now: Ask yourself how your family got here. Inventory the grievances, imagined and real. Then have the courage to take your stands accordingly.

Dysfunction this deep points to therapy.