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Undercover love
For ten years Antoinette Hardy has concealed her relationship from her parents... Here, she talks to others about keeping the biggest secret of all
When I tell friends that I've been in a 10-year relationship, without the knowledge of my parents, they tend to shiver with excitement and ask me how on earth I get away with it, revelling in the details of my daily deception.
There's no denying that keeping your love life a secret can be exciting for a while. Like a woman embarking on an extra-marital affair, I was originally swept along by a tide of guilt and pleasure.
But, the knowledge that my boyfriend was sleeping upstairs while my parents came to pick me up to take me (unwillingly) to Mass, was never a thrill. Keeping my secret has always been a question of self-preservation.
My parents' Catholic faith doesn't allow for boyfriends or teenage rebellion. They are unable, and unwilling, to commune with the modern world. Girls who have boyfriends are godless drug addicts, pop music is satanic and Hell bubbles away just beneath the pavement.
Naomi Levy, who kept her relationship with a non-Jew from her family for six years, soon discovered that the frissons of her secret relationship gave way to exhaustion.
'Had I been adolescent, the secrecy factor might have added to the excitement,' she says. But as a mature woman with budding wrinkles, the level of effort involved in keeping the secret has been draining, and the secret potentially damaging to our relationship.'
Dr Charlie Lewis, Professor of Family and Developmental Psychology at Lancaster University, regards the notion of keeping one's partner a secret from one's parents as 'a logical extension of teenager-parent tension'.
'As teenagers, we feel powerless, so keeping secrets is a way of wresting some power from our parents.'
But, within relationships which extend beyond teenage years, far from giving you control, such all-encompassing secrets render you powerless.
Naomi Levy finally broke the taboo and told her parents about her boyfriend. 'I think it's unhealthy to lead such a schizophrenic life. I wanted to show my parents who I am, as a person. And stop being an eternal daughter.'
Naomi's feeling of 'paralysis' is replaced with new-found energy and confidence now that her secret is out. But, her father is resolutely silent on the subject of her partner and Naomi recognizes that, 'telling them is just the starting point. It's not a solution.'
When I tell friends that I've been in a 10-year relationship, without the knowledge of my parents, they tend to shiver with excitement and ask me how on earth I get away with it, revelling in the details of my daily deception.
There's no denying that keeping your love life a secret can be exciting for a while. Like a woman embarking on an extra-marital affair, I was originally swept along by a tide of guilt and pleasure.
But, the knowledge that my boyfriend was sleeping upstairs while my parents came to pick me up to take me (unwillingly) to Mass, was never a thrill. Keeping my secret has always been a question of self-preservation.
My parents' Catholic faith doesn't allow for boyfriends or teenage rebellion. They are unable, and unwilling, to commune with the modern world. Girls who have boyfriends are godless drug addicts, pop music is satanic and Hell bubbles away just beneath the pavement.
Naomi Levy, who kept her relationship with a non-Jew from her family for six years, soon discovered that the frissons of her secret relationship gave way to exhaustion.
'Had I been adolescent, the secrecy factor might have added to the excitement,' she says. But as a mature woman with budding wrinkles, the level of effort involved in keeping the secret has been draining, and the secret potentially damaging to our relationship.'
Dr Charlie Lewis, Professor of Family and Developmental Psychology at Lancaster University, regards the notion of keeping one's partner a secret from one's parents as 'a logical extension of teenager-parent tension'.
'As teenagers, we feel powerless, so keeping secrets is a way of wresting some power from our parents.'
But, within relationships which extend beyond teenage years, far from giving you control, such all-encompassing secrets render you powerless.
Naomi Levy finally broke the taboo and told her parents about her boyfriend. 'I think it's unhealthy to lead such a schizophrenic life. I wanted to show my parents who I am, as a person. And stop being an eternal daughter.'
Naomi's feeling of 'paralysis' is replaced with new-found energy and confidence now that her secret is out. But, her father is resolutely silent on the subject of her partner and Naomi recognizes that, 'telling them is just the starting point. It's not a solution.'
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