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" My wife and I have an honest, open relationship, mostly because Karel can read me as easily as a Stephenie Meyer novel, so I can&amp;#039;t lie to her. But there are a few things I simply don&amp;#039;t tell her. I&amp;#039;m not hiding a heroin addiction or a mistress, nothing that could financially ruin us or cause bodily harm \u2014 just moments of my life I need sole ownership over. This is what \u2014 and why \u2014 I don&amp;#039;t tell: 1. How much crap I eat when she&amp;#039;s not around. The other afternoon I left the kids with Karel and went to the bar to write. (It&amp;#039;s quieter there than at my house \u2014 amazing, I know.) This bar is famous for serving a sandwich called the Schmitter, which is made with grilled salami, steak, tomatoes, fried onions, cheese, and &amp;quot;special sauce&amp;quot; on a kaiser bun. It was such a rare treat not to have to put the kids to bed that I cut loose and consumed three in a row. Let me repeat: I had three in three hours (along with three pints of Guinness). When I got home and Karel asked me if I&amp;#039;d eaten, I just said, &amp;quot;Yes,&amp;quot; as I staggered to the couch. Had I been more specific with my semi-vegetarian wife, I would&amp;#039;ve caught hell. But I&amp;#039;m a generally healthy person, so three Schmitters didn&amp;#039;t kill me, and not knowing about them didn&amp;#039;t kill Karel. In fact, telling her might have backfired (on Karel, not me), because when people tell me what&amp;#039;s in my best interest, I tend to do the exact opposite. After reading The Omnivore&amp;#039;s Dilemma, I craved McDonald&amp;#039;s. The Surgeon General&amp;#039;s warning makes me want to smoke. If she&amp;#039;d given me grief about eating three fatty sandwiches, I might have headed right back for a fourth. 2. What&amp;#039;s on my fix-it list. I love watching football on the weekends. Unfortunately, Saturday and Sunday are the most logical days to do home repairs. So if I told Karel everything I know is wrong around the house, I wouldn&amp;#039;t watch football for the next three years. I figure she&amp;#039;ll notice it all eventually, but my current plan is not to address anything until the off-season, including that leaky ceiling that occurs on the first floor when Karel showers on the second floor. 3. My complete computer history. Self-gratification. All men do it, and now, thanks to the Internet, all men have an endless supply of visual aids. I&amp;#039;m not talking about an Internet porn addiction here \u2014 no one&amp;#039;s missing Great Gram&amp;#039;s 90th because they can&amp;#039;t pry themselves away from Booty Detectives 4. I&amp;#039;m just a regular guy who watches a normal amount of the stuff. Most wives don&amp;#039;t want to know about this, and that&amp;#039;s fine with me. Especially when my, uh, hobby causes technical problems. I see no reason to tell Karel that it was probably a visit to naughtynurses.com that crashed the computer. (So many things could crash a computer \u2014 why must we always blame the naughty nurses?) The repair guys at Best Buy will figure it out, and that will be all the embarrassment I need. 4. That I can&amp;#039;t deal with being outearned. Back when Karel was bartending and I was working at after-school programs and doing security at bars, our incomes were pretty even. Then she got a salaried job, and I had an hourly paycheck, which soon dwindled to no paycheck. On the outside, I&amp;#039;m cool about staying home with the kids and making less than my wife, but deep down it drives me nuts. It feels totally emasculating. Contributing an equal or greater amount financially is the main motivation behind my writing career. Someday I&amp;#039;d like to point to my kitchen ceiling and say, &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s no leak up there because I paid someone to repair it \u2014 like a real man.&amp;quot;  5. About the occasional tingling in my arm. Unless I can see bone or can&amp;#039;t staunch the bleeding, I&amp;#039;m not going to the doctor for anything other than a checkup, so Karel doesn&amp;#039;t need to know about my arm tingling, the semi-regular searing pain in my lower back, or the time I nearly passed out at the end of a four-mile run. Sometimes these things keep me awake at night, but they usually go away. Again, I&amp;#039;m a pretty healthy guy (see, I run), but like most middle-aged men, I&amp;#039;ve become acutely aware of my mortality, and it would be cruel to subject my wife to my existential angst. I also fear that sharing my concerns with Karel would be akin to telling a doctor: Suddenly they&amp;#039;d be real, and there could be something, or several things, really wrong. Ignorance is bliss for everyone involved. 6. The details of my night out with the guys. I don&amp;#039;t go out much. Neither do most guys I know who have kids. So when I do manage to wrangle a group of friends, all bets are off. I&amp;#039;m staying until the bar throws me out, and I&amp;#039;m buying drinks. It&amp;#039;s a release \u2014 a few hours to pretend I&amp;#039;m a teenager again. Will I regret it when the kids get me up at 5:30 the next morning? Sure. Will I regret it when I realize I blew my half of the weekly budget and I&amp;#039;ll be eating buttered noodles for lunch all week? Sure. But it&amp;#039;s totally worth it. It&amp;#039;s my night out, and as long as Karel isn&amp;#039;t eating noodles and I&amp;#039;m pulling my weight as a dad the next day, it&amp;#039;s none of her business. And if she gets nosy, I remind her that I can be equally interested in the financial ramifications of her new jewelry-making hobby. 7. That I flirt with other women. For several years after we were married, I wasn&amp;#039;t confident enough in my ability to be faithful to even smile at another woman. I didn&amp;#039;t go to after-work drinks without Karel, and if she went out of town, I stayed in. But I&amp;#039;ve relaxed about occasionally bantering with other women. Karel is a beautiful woman, and I imagine she sometimes finds herself in the same situation, which is great, because I firmly believe in the sexiness of a little outside validation. But I don&amp;#039;t want her to tell me about the guy she had a drink with on the plane \u2014 I just want her to jump me when she gets home. I guess I believe we both need our own stories or we&amp;#039;d lose interest in each other pretty fast. Having private thoughts, fears, and guilty pleasures keeps me sharp and interesting and makes me feel that I still might be able to surprise Karel one day, and that I might also surprise myself. REDBOOK columnist Aaron Traister lives in Philadelphia with his wife and two kids. Read his blog at redbookmag.com/aaron. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/love-sex/relationships/advice/a11331/understanding-men-what-hes-not-telling/?link=emb&dom=yah_life&src=syn&con=blog_redbook&mag=rbk>