Hey guys let me ask a hypothetical question. This situation came to my attention over the weekend; what do you think?
I’ll present this in a gender neutral fashion to get the broadest response.
This is how the story has been presented:
One member of a marriage is going with a college friend (same sex) across the country for a long weekend to visit family. This member has told their spouse of the trip but the airline ticket was NOT purchased by them, it was bought by someone else. The traveling spouse refuses to tell the other spouse who bought the ticket.
What do you think about this situation? Does it make a difference if the traveling spouse is the man or the woman?
Buying someone else’s ticket is kind of odd but maybe explainable in some sense (“She had expiring miles and I’ll pick up the cost of meals”). Refusing to talk about it or explain it is super weird and would definitely bother me.
I’m not a suspicious person, but this would make me wonder. The scenario that immediately comes to mind is a romantic interest in the destination city. I guess my imagination isn’t good enough to come up with an innocent explanation.
Maybe the buyer was a family member that doesn’t want it to be known that they’re making several hundred dollar favors for certain family members but not others? That’s the most innocent thing I can come up with.
One member of a marriage is going with a college friend (same sex) across the country for a long weekend to visit family.
Okay, sounds reasonable and essentially normal (in some people’s circumstances).
This member has told their spouse of the trip but the airline ticket was NOT purchased by them, it was bought by someone else.
Okay, not everyday normal but not inherently unreasonable, again could fit some people’s circumstances.
The traveling spouse refuses to tell the other spouse who bought the ticket.
Not so okay. Why the refusal? It’s hard (though not impossible) to imagine a legitimate reason for such secrecy. Suggests something is rotten in Denmark. Note: 1) We’re talking about not sharing with a spouse – this isn’t about blabbing down at the club or somesuch; 2) “refuses to tell” indicates knows but won’t say, as opposed to “can’t tell” due to not knowing.
What do you think about this situation?
Sounds like it’s designed to be suspicious.
Does it make a difference if the traveling spouse is the man or the woman?
No.
How strange. I mean I had this exact scenario, almost - I went across the country, but I was alone, to visit family, and I didn’t pay for my ticket because I was so poor*. But I told my SO that my aunts paid for my ticket so I could visit them. It wasn’t a secret.
*Honestly, I could have paid for it, but at the time the money was a big portion of our discretionary income, and I wanted to use it to have fun, not airfare. I used my own money to have fun on the trip.
Except in this story, no one is being dishonest or deceptive; one spouse is withholding information from the other. That’s wrong, though. If I tell a secret to a married friend, I fully expect the info to be shared with the spouse.
I don’t think spouses necessarily have to share other people’s secrets with each other. But in my view, if someone bought me a plane ticket, that’s now MY secret, and I think there better be a damn good reason for refusing to share it with the person I’m married to.
If the trip is with a same sex friend, it wouldn’t on its face appear to be a romantic getaway. Spouse A is going to visit family, spouse B knows about the trip. I honestly can’t imagine a scenario where secrecy is required regarding who is paying for the ticket. When I can’t imagine a scenario, I get suspicious. If I were Spouse B, I would be wanting the explanation.
But if that was the case, I would think Traveling Spouse would say to Other Spouse “Uncle John bought the ticket for me because of reasons, but he doesn’t want everyone to know, because then Aunt Sally and Cousin Ethan will start bugging him for money.” Or something like that. There are some things that can be kept secret in families to keep family peace, but withholding information between spouses seems like a bad idea.
I’d call that deception, and even dishonesty by omission. There’s a reason the one spouse is not telling the other and that keeping that reason secret isn’t likely to be a good thing. Maybe it’s just a dumb reason, but it leaves the uninformed spouse wondering, and that’s going to affect the communication between them in the future.
Is it possible that the spouse has a history of blabbing and not being able to keep secrets? That’s the only legitimate reason I can think of to keep something like this secret from the spouse.
Unless the traveler has some sort of highly confidential job that might involve top secret travel.
That could be. It would be in the category of keeping other people’s secrets, but the spouse could still explain they promised not to reveal the information because it would be a problem for someone else. Perhaps that’s information missing from the OP. I can see how that can lead to an uncomfortable discussion between the spouses, but I think no explanation at all would be worse.
There could be some innocent reason, and Traveling Spouse doesn’t realize how suspicious they sound. But I would think Traveling Spouse would say something like “I can’t tell you who bought the ticket, I know it sounds weird but it’s not my secret to share.” So I guess it depends on how the rest of the conversation goes. If Traveling Spouse says something about how they just can’t say who bought the ticket and they’re sorry that they have to keep a secret then it’s strange but not necessarily terrible. But if Traveling Spouse just clams up or tries to change the subject and won’t offer any explanation on why they can’t talk further, then that that would be more suspicious to me.
If I were the travelling spouse, I either wouldn’t mention who bought the ticket at all because it was such an incidental fact (like, I probably wouldn’t state the words “I purchased it myself” because that seems so random, and if someone else bought it as a gift a long time ago it might not even be on my mind to mention) … but I also wouldn’t say “someone else paid for it but I’m not telling you who.” That’s just bizarre.
Now, it is also possible there is more to this story. If my spouse had a history of sneering at the generosity of my godparents (for example) as being show-offy, and they bought my ticket, I probably wouldn’t mention it at all but if it came up because my spouse was nagging at the money I was spending on travel, I might, I MIGHT, say “whatever, don’t worry about it, it’s not coming out of our checking account, I’m not getting into this with you.”
