The hardest part of keeping a secret isn’t hiding it in conversation, it’s having to live with the secret alone and being unsure whether you’re doing the right thing.

Most common secrets include romantic desire, money and finances, family secrets, secret ambitions, and violating another person’s trust.

We hide stuff from other people because we are afraid of intimacy, ashamed of our past, and what does secrecy cost us?

Michael Slepian, a psychologist at Columbia University, has spent a decade studying secrets and has a lot to say about what they are and what motivates them.