Hiding the past

He: Are you hiding something?
Me: The hell I'm not. Why do you think I'm wearing clothes, dum dum?

That was an extract of a conversation I had with Wee Shan a friend of mine yesterday. We were trying to figure out what his girlfriend meant when she said he should have told her everything. We were struggling to decipher what 'everything' meant.

Shan's girlfriend had somehow got hold of an old photo album of his and well, the past caught up with him. In it was an old picture of him and another girl in a lovey dovey pose at Genting Highlands. My friend said the picture was taken 8 years ago and the relationship lasted 3-4 months. He didn't think it was significant enough to mention.

But his gf thinks otherwise and accuses him of hiding things from her. Nothing he says will settle the matter and to use a euphemism, he's now 'locked out of the house.' Poor guy.

So the question of the day is how much of your past should you reveal to your partner. How much do you not tell, purposely or not purposely, before you're seen as crossing the line? Does not telling on account of bad memory mean lying?

I had to tell Shan that if his gf cannot distinguish between a lie and an unintentional ommission of sordid detail, then he's better off without her. Otherwise he would never heard the end of it. After all he has already apologized and explained there has was no one else that she didn't already know. But if she still wants to be silly, then both of them can play the silly game all the way. Why not accuse her of hiding something too - like the panties that's covered by her jeans. Why not do the honest thing and wear it outside so everyone can see?

I told him to forget trying to fight emotion with logic. If she still cannot put it down, then she's got bigger issues than seeing old photos. Its better that he discover it and deal with it now than much later.