The not-so-secret life of Bill

04 December 2011 - 04:06 By Paige Nick
A million miles from home
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Paige Nick: A million miles from home
Paige Nick: A million miles from home
Image: Lifestyle Magazine

There has been much talk about the secrecy bill lately. I knew a secrecy Bill once. He and I had been dating for two weeks before I discovered he had a wife and three children.

So it is with all my past dubious experiences with men in mind (too many to list here, this is a column after all, not War and Peace) that I can honestly say I'm all for truthfulness and transparency, particularly in the media, and most definitely in the dating world.

However, my desire for transparency is often put to the test on the dating website that I frequent.

I recently started chatting to a very charming gentleman. By the end of our first online conversation, he'd let me know that he was completely broke and starting over after a messy divorce, that he had no car, and that he had major back issues from an old surfing accident which required a number of surgeries every year just to keep him comfortably upright.

He also revealed that his cat was diabetic and needed a series of carefully timed shots every day, oh and that his brother had been in hospital for a number of weeks and required numerous daily visits.

It was a lovely, open, honest conversation. But somehow it left me wondering if perhaps he hadn't been a little too open and honest.

I hadn't even met the guy in real life yet, and after just a couple of hours I already knew what he'd had for breakfast that morning, and that if I had to get into a relationship with him there would be very little wild sex (bad back), and quite a bit of medical admin, caring and lifting to do in my foreseeable future.

So while transparency is a must for me in any relationship, perhaps it's simply a matter of timing. Maybe when it comes to dating, we should consider an ever-so-slightly-extended secrecy bill.

I'm not saying wait 17 years before you tell your girlfriend you're a cross dresser (a man who wears women's clothing, not someone who gets grumpy when they have to put on pants). I just think maybe some of our secrets are best left for a second or third date, and perhaps our other even deeper, darker ones should be left for that moment when your partner is so hopelessly, irrevocably in love with you that even your incurably smelly feet, or impossibly bad cooking skills, or six exes who have all died in house fires are overlook-able.

That's why babies are so well designed. If parents didn't already love them so completely and unconditionally from the very second they popped out of the womb, there would be no way on earth those already exhausted folks would put up with the endless dirty nappies and constant middle of the night crying. That's clever design we can learn from, people. Fall in love first, reveal massive production flaws second.

I know this sounds like I'm advocating secrets, lies and half-truths in dating, but really I'm not. Please be open, honest and transparent about every dark, dingy, scary nook and cranny of your life, but maybe we should meet first.

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