Secrets are by definition monogamous things: you don’t share the secret. A secret told is a person betrayed, which may be the other main reason why holding a secret feels so much like fucking. Telling another a secret is an intimate, trusting and ultimately imperiled act. It’s handing another a tender slice of power. It makes you vulnerable. It bonds you to that other in ways that make the two of you glow subtly incandescent in the crowd. Nothing hurts as much as having a lover tell your secret to some stranger; it’s a double betrayal and it flays the figurative flesh.

I agree— secrets are delicate and deadly: poison orchids dripping blood red in a garden full of razorweeds, thorns, and strangling vines. The more you tend to them, the deeper their roots sink in, rooting themselves to you in an ever-frightening embrace.