A lot of couples come to me for counseling after they have become emotionally involved, and this one question comes up again and again: “How much of my past do I share with the person I love?” This issue causes tremendous agony for many. My advice is not to feel compelled to “tell all.” If you know you are loved and accepted for who you are now, then your love is secure. However, if events in your past could cause either of you to question the relationship, you are on shaky ground.

A young man named Chris found himself struggling with this question. After listening to his story, I suggested he not share some of his apparent mistakes with his partner, unless his motive for silence was fear — fear that revealing his past would negatively affect the relationship and her love and acceptance of him. If this was his real reason for withholding the information, I would counsel him to share his past with her and let her love be tested. If the fear was there, he would never feel able to open up to her completely, and it would continue to haunt him.

David Mace, in Getting Ready for Marriage, offers this: “I offer you a simple rule about confessions. If you feel you must make them, and you are quite sure you can do so in a loving way that won’t cause distress to your partner, go ahead. But if you are in doubt about it, follow this plan. Go first and make the confession in full to someone you respect and trust, and discuss whether it would be good to make the confession to the one you plan to marry. If the decision on which you both agree is not to do so, you should find that the matter won’t worry you any further. You have shown your willingness to tell, and that is what matters most. If at some later time the facts should come out, and your marriage partner asks you why you didn’t confess before, your reply is that you were quite willing to do so, and that you have in fact told someone (whom you could name). You then explain that you withheld the confession from your partner, because it seemed at the time to be the most loving thing to do.”

Remember this: a clear conscience is like having a clean and properly prepared canvas surface upon which God is to paint the masterful painting He wishes your life to be. If the surface is dirty, or the images left by a previous artist aren’t blotted out, the painting will have great difficulty being all that is visualized in the mind of the Master Artist.