你觉得是时候说出心底的秘密了吗

Can you keep a secret?
你能保守秘密吗？

Of course you can -- if it's about yourself. Communication researchers say nearly everyone -- more than 95% of people -- reports having a fact or bit of information about themselves that they don't reveal to anyone. (The other 5% probably aren't being honest when they say they don't have one, experts say.) And many struggle with whether, when and how to tell.
当然可以──如果秘密是关于自己的话。传播学研究人员表示，几乎每个人──超过95%的人──都有关于自己的一件事或一点信息瞒着别人。（专家说，还有5%的人说自己没有，那可能是在说谎。）很多人都纠结于是否要把秘密告诉别人，以及何时以何种方式告诉别人。

Most of these secrets aren't worthy of tabloid headlines. Yet they aren't small trifles, either. Typically, people say their secrets relate to topics that either they themselves view as shameful or believe others will, researchers say. Financial problems, extramarital affairs, poor health habits, addictions -- these are common secrets.
大多数这种秘密连小报的头条都上不了，但也并一定就是细小的琐事。研究人员说，一般人们的秘密涉及的话题要么是自己认为不体面，要么以为别人会觉得不体面。财务问题、婚外情、不良的卫生习惯、上瘾──这些都是常见的秘密。

When I started working on this column, I was worried. Who would want to talk about a secret? A lot of people, it turns out. I asked about personal secrets and heard from readers about teenage pregnancies, 20-year-long extramarital affairs, sexual abuse, mental health issues and pornography addictions. Some people, like a self-described 'CIA operative' I heard from, kept secrets about their work life from their families for years. One man told me he had to keep his whole life a secret when he was 'a fugitive sought by the FBI for seven years (wanted for freeing mink from fur farms.)'
开始写这篇专栏时，我有点担心。谁会愿意谈论秘密呢？结果发现，愿意谈的人很多。有关私人秘密的问题我收到了读者的很多回复，涉及未成年少女怀孕、20多年的婚外情、性虐待、心理健康和色情成瘾等话题。有些人会把工作中的秘密瞒着家里人好几十年，回复我的一个自称是“CIA特工”的读者就是这样。一个人告诉我他“被FBI追捕了七年（为了把貂从毛皮农场解救出来）”，于是有关自己的一切都不得不瞒着所有人。

Laura Hedgecock's grandmother took her secret to her grave. Ms. Hedgecock, a writer in Farmington Hills, Mich., says her grandmother had always maintained she was an orphan, after her mother died when she was a young child and her father chose not to raise her. But after her death at age 95, her family discovered, through a genealogy search, that their grandmother actually had lived with her father and had 11 siblings.
劳拉・赫奇科克(Laura Hedgecock)的祖母把秘密带进了坟墓。赫奇科克是一位作家，家住密歇根州法明顿希尔斯(Farmington Hills)，她说她的祖母总是坚持说自己是个孤儿，母亲在她很小的时候就去世了，父亲不愿意抚养她。但在祖母95岁去世后，家里人通过宗谱搜索发现，她实际上由父亲抚养长大，并且有11个兄弟姐妹。

Ms. Hedgecock says when she first learned her grandmother's secret, she felt angry on behalf of her own father, who died without knowing that his mother had a large family. 'It gnaws at you. You wonder what happened, and what she went through,' Ms. Hedgecock says. 'And it really makes you yearn for what you missed.' She may never know why her grandmother kept her secret but guesses there were painful memories of growing up in a big family with a stepmother just three years older than herself.
赫奇科克说，当她得知祖母的秘密时，她为自己的父亲感到很生气，他一直到去世都不知道自己的母亲有一个大家族。赫奇科克说：“它会折磨你，你会想知道发生了什么，还有她经历了些什么，让你很想知道自己错过了什么。”她也许永远不会知道祖母为什么会瞒着他们，但她猜测，在一个继母只比自己大三岁的大家族里长大肯定有很多痛苦的回忆。

We tend to think of secrets as skeletons in the closet, yet they aren't all negative, experts say. Sometimes we keep a secret to protect a loved one or a relationship. And we keep secrets from different people. There are the ones we keep from family members or other individuals, and then there are the ones the whole family knows and conspires to keep from everyone else.
专家说，我们往往会觉得秘密是见不得光的，但秘密也不全是负面的。有时我们保密是为了保护所爱的人或一段关系。我们跟不同的人保守秘密。有的秘密会瞒着家里人或其他人，有的秘密全家都知道并且齐心协力瞒着其他所有人。

Secrets are tantalizing plot drivers in many a movie and TV show ('Downton Abbey' fans, you know this). But keeping secrets from a loved one can put an emotional wedge in the relationship and change the way we communicate. Research shows that when we keep secrets from a mate, our relationship satisfaction goes down. And the more we ruminate about a secret, the more we want to reveal it.
在很多电影和电视剧中，秘密是引人入胜的情节推动器（《唐顿庄园》(Downton Abbey)的粉丝们，你们懂的）。但瞒着所爱的人会导致关系出现情感裂缝，会改变我们交流的方式。研究表明，有秘密瞒着配偶时，关系的满意度就会下降。对某个秘密考虑得越多，就越想公开这个秘密。

'When we have a secret and mull it over, we develop stress and it makes our body sick,' says Tamara Afifi, professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa, who studies secrets. 'To get our body back to a sense of health, we need to reveal or cure our self of the secret.' Researchers call this the Fever Model, she says.
爱荷华大学(University of Iowa)研究秘密的传播学教授塔玛拉・阿菲菲(Tamara Afifi)说：“当我们有秘密并且反复想的时候，就会形成压力，身体就会不舒服。要让身体回到健康的状态，我们就需要把秘密公开或者不要让自己再纠结于这个秘密。”她说，研究人员称之为“发烧模式”(Fever Model)。

Mike Speakman, a substance-abuse counselor in Phoenix, kept a secret about revenge until he couldn't stand it anymore. Several years after his divorce, he sneaked into his ex-wife's house, took a valuable Native American kachina doll he'd given her in happier times -- and threw it into a nearby canal. 'I suppose it made me feel better for a while,' he says.
凤凰城(Phoenix)药物滥用顾问迈克・斯皮克曼(Mike Speakman)保守着一个有关复仇的秘密，直到他再也无法忍受为止。离婚几年后，他溜进了前妻的房子，拿走了在二人甜蜜时光时他送给她的一个贵重的卡奇纳玩偶(kachina doll)，然后扔进了附近的一条水渠中。他说：“我想在短期内这让我感觉好受了一些。”