Dirty Little Secret

Sometimes it is not all Relationship Bulletins, declarations to the world about you and me or announcements across the fabric of social media about our perfect love. Sometimes you are the dirty little secret.

This is never the title afforded to the primary source that we have chosen. It is those who are  secondary sources who find themselves labelled in this way.

Do you have a friend who makes demands of your time, often calls you and ensures that you give up your time so he or she is able to tell you all about what they have been doing, obtain your advice and uses you as a sounding board? Does this person tell you all about the brilliant weekend or she has just had with a group of other friends at some weekend away or at a concert but somehow no invitation came your way? Do you perhaps politely and subtly ask whether you can attend some forthcoming event which this friend is enthusiastically telling you about, maybe even gloating about how brilliant it will be, but this friend shows all of the perception of a plank of wood and never picks up on your hints? Even if they do or perhaps if you are more forceful as you ask whether you can attend or you point out how you never get invited along, are you met with comments such as:-

“Yes, I know you would have loved to have come but I didn’t organise it, John did and it is his fault he didn’t ask you.”

“I didn’t think it was your kind of thing.”

“There was only a few places available but I will make sure you can come to the next one.”(Of course this never transpires)

“I thought you hated rock music. I am sure you told me that you did.”

“I have been so busy I must have forgotten to ask you.”

“I did ask you and you said no.Dont you remember?”

(Of course this is a lie.)

These people are our inner circle. The select few who are our guardians of our reputations, loyal lieutenants and brainwashed and indoctrinated to fawn over us, carry out our demands and provide us with fuel and you are not in the inner circle.

In fact, the inner circle does not ever know about you. When we spend time with you, we string you along with future-faking, we allow you to bask in our greatness and at first it feels good to have such an interesting, charismatic and seemingly attentive friend. You may attract the label of friend and you sit in the outer circle but you are a dirty secret secondary source. We do not want our inner circle to know about you because whilst you serve an excellent purpose in providing us with fuel, your enthusiasm when we tell you with a moment’s notice that we are coming to visit is just the tip of the fuel berg. We know you are loyal, dependable and faithful. We know you will provide us with the fuel that we need and you above everybody else will be the go to person when fuel stocks are running low. Whether it is 3am call or an appearance on a wet and windy Monday evening in winter, you always welcome us in, always take the call and you always oblige. We do make you feel special, trotting out the easy to mouth platitudes about how much we like being with you, how we enjoy your company, how it is good to know that we can depend on you but this is just to keep you sweet and functioning. The reality is we do not want other people knowing about you because you do not fit with our idea of how our life looks. You might not be as good looking as we would prefer, you might not shine in a group, or you are apt to saying unusual things which we feel would make us look less impressive in front of our all important facade. No, you are kept in the background, used but rarely abused because you are the long-serving indentured servant of the narcissist. The loyal hound that sits in the corner of the kitchen, always ready to wag your tail for us but too old and unappealing to be paraded at the show. This is the role of a dirty secret secondary source.

There is also the Dirty Secret Intimate Partner  Secondary Source (“DSIPSS”). You were seduced and made into a secondary source and within the blind of an eye you were bedded and the platitudes of love and dedication came pouring forth in order to secure your loyalty. There are those who are earmarked for promotion to primary source, they are destined for better things so long as they come up to proof with regard to the provision of fuel, character traits and residual benefits. Those who are on the fast-track to being installed as the primary source can expect to meet our children, meet our families and our friends, be paraded and attend certain events with us, all at the humiliating cost to the currently devalued primary source who is on their way out, all being well with the seduction of this Intimate Partner Secondary Source. The future is rosy for this person.

The DSIPSS , at the outset, is never considered for promotion. Words may be whispered to that effect but they are just false promises, more future faking and the crumbs of comfort which are scattered to stop you foraging elsewhere. When we allocate you the role of dirty secret next to nobody knows about you.

Whereas the IPSS who is in waiting for the top role may find themselves being picked up and put down, with intervals of silence in between the weekend hook-ups, as we test that person to gauge their suitability for promotion, it is a different story for the dirty secret.

The dirty secret actually may well see quite a lot of us. in the backs of cars, in seedy motel rooms, in the back of the warehouse, the disabled toilet, the alley behind the house and such like. You are never to be seen by our family, our friends or even our colleagues. You remain hidden because your presence will offend our facade. We are the dedicated family man and thus we cannot be seen hanging out the back of you down some leafy lane at dusk. We are the champion of morals in our local community and it would not be the done thing for us to be know to be engaging in the debauchery that we insist on when we are with you. The primary source may well be devalued but we do not want them to be sullied by the knowledge of the filthy whore that have twice a week. You are a pit stop for a delicious injection of fuel. That snatched two drinks in an out of town bar where you had to sit and wait for two hours before we showed up? You are a dirty secret. Never allowed to call or message us before we have contacted you first? You are a dirty secret. Never allowed to meet our friends? You are a dirty secret. We wish to portray an image and you do not fit with that image but you are a potent bundle of fuel, dedicated and desperate, always hanging on for that stolen hour in bed together, the occasional afternoon when we pretend to work to have a meeting in the next state or county. You live for those moments because in that instant we make you feel wonderful, we focus on you, we give you the best sex, the excitement and the promises, oh the promises of what could be yours.

The future faking with an IPSS is born out of being torn between not wanting to lose a good source of fuel and the potential this IPSS has to perhaps become a primary source at some juncture. We do not want to lose that, thus we keep the IPSS hanging on as I described in the article ‘What Am I To Him?’ It is a different set-up for the DSIPSS. You were not initially selected for potential promotion. You were selected because you are a dependable, reliable turbo-boost of fuel and when we demand it, you always provide it. Why would we ever let that go? We would not.

Like the friend who is the dirty little secret above, you are the same but with you comes the intimacy. you are the recipient of our oft-spewed sugary charms and in receipt of our desire to use you for sex and the provision of fuel. We rarely take you anywhere, for fear of detection and our engagements are covert, hurried and secretive, yet this adds to our charm, our mystery and you find it as addictive as we do. It is only when we are going and you wonder what we are doing and who with, that you are left to rue the emptiness and the loneliness. You want to provide us with what you think we need, to allow your goodness to shine for us, but we will never let you do so, not outside of those hotel walls where we meet every Thursday evening.

Unfortunately for you, you do not fit in with the image we wish to convey to the world. You do not fit with what we wish to show. If we ever saw you, by chance, when we are out with our facade, be that family, friends or colleagues, we would ignore you and pretend we did not know you. Of course, later that day we would lay on the charm to excuse our behaviour because we do not want to let you go either. You are a brilliant stick on emergency fuel patch. You provide fuel and you remain hanging on, waiting for the day that you hopefully emerge blinking into the light of the golden period for the primary source.

That is never going to happen directly and at the outset of your allocation to this role.  Not that we will admit it to you.

Stay in that dark corner and wait for our call.

You are a dirty little secret.