Secretiveness

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I love my secrets, and I hate explaining myself also, the problem is that my wife insists that I be completly honest and open with her, fortunatly for me my wife is also extraordinarily paitent with me. The biggest thing is that I have never felt so absolutly safe with anyone else on this weird planet, she loves me unconditionally and thats that, but nothing hurts her more then if I don't demonstrate my faith in her by being completly honest and open with her, thats pretty much all she asks of me, and it's the least I can offer her.

The only things I am more secretive about are my diagnosis, stimming and my identity on the Internet. I will admit it is far easier to be more "open" online on grounds of anonymity, since you do not run the risk of being fired or drawing undue attention to yourself on the account of your "weirdness." When I still lived with the parents, I was very secretive about purchases I made because I did not want to have to explain why I bought what I did (and lying about the real reason for purchasing would not be right either).

For me its usually I either just am not to great at wording things so I feel its too much effort to always explain where I'm going or whatever. Also, since I was a kid me and my siblings kinda snuck around my mom a lot since she didn't give us much freedom to do our own thing and just be ourselves so we sometimes told little lies like 'we going to have a picnic at the park' but we'd really just be going there to smoke cigarettes for instance So yeah even as an adult I sometimes get irrationally afraid I have to do that or I'll get in trouble even though I know I am 23 and I cannot get in trouble unless I do something illegal other adults being angry at me does not=in trouble, my brain does not seem to get that yet.

I do this to avoid questions from nosy people. *cough* my parents *cough* Honestly, being secretive usually works against me because I am incredibly open and if I am suddenly dodgy that raises alarm. I need to learn how to lie. Unfortunately, I can't, cuz when I try my face is like this.

Yeah, I do this, too. When I have to deal with people, I usually can't wait to get back into my own world, and secretiveness protects this world.

Like Kjas and emimeni said previously, many neurotypical co-workers do not interpret social isolation positively. There is an expectation that we will be excited to interact and gossip, that it fulfills a basic human requirement for us. If we do not partake, then we must be either disturbed or duplicitous. Most NTs are not so bad about it, IMO, but there are always those people - social ringleaders, maybe, or head gossips - who love nothing more than talking about other people, and who become the greatest persecutors when you do not fit into their mold. This is the proverbial boat in which I find myself at the moment.

Likewise, there are numerous aspects of this that I relate to too so I'm really grateful to OP for managing to formalise and "verbalise" this concept on here. I had also wondered if this might be a spectrum trait, but equally I wonder how much it affects the general population.

I have some additional thoughts also, in particular, how many of you extend secrecy to health issues too?

My main area of secrecy is health issues. Like another poster mentioned, I have overprotective parents due to fairly severe asthma as a child. Now that I'm an adult, I'm terrified that they'll be overbearing and make demands on me and how I look after myself if I ever get sick. As far as I'm concerned it's none of their business anymore and I should be free to care for or neglect my body as I wish.

Ideally I'd actually like to care for my body, but due to my fear of interference I have major problems going to the doctor about anything. The fear being that if I got bad news from a doctor, I'd feel obliged to tell family and I'd also have to do something about it. I'd be electing to make myself vulnerable, to share confidential info and to have to do something about whatever was wrong e.g operation, treatment, time off work etc. I just don't think I could handle becoming that person, losing my independence, gaining a million phone calls every day asking me how I am and what I'm doing to fix things and offering piles of un-asked-for advice.

To conclude: I've rationalised that either I'm fine and don't need a doctor, or that I'm not fine and a doctor could only make things worse for me. So in effect I now live by the secrecy and die by the secrecy and I think I'm actually happiest this way. Am I alone in this?

^^^
I was like that until my health issues got too severe to ignore - to the point that I could only do a hours worth of chores a day until I had to go back to sit down somewhere, or back to bed.

I don't tell people IRL about my health conditions unless they are trying to give me something that will make me sick and I have said no multiple times and they are refused to accept and respect my answer, then I tell them the reason. Most of the time it doesn't get that far though. I haven't told my family - only my housemate since it was necessary as we do live on the same property.

You don't have to tell people - most conditions mean that you don't have to tell people unless you want to. Most of the time it is unnecessary.
So If I were you I would go to the doctor and just keep it to yourself. If they come back with something,then only tell the people that you have to, and it's likely there will only be one or two of those that really need to know.

I'm always secretive. Mostly, it's to avoid questioning and/or having to explain my reasoning for anything. There's also the fear of judgement if I'm open. I'll make up excuses to get time alone, and excuses to leave an unpleasant social situations. Also, I'm very secretive about my personal life. I've never told anyone that I believe I have Asperger's, and I've really only told a couple people anything about my past.

Over the last few years, I've become quite good at hiding my true intentions or reasons for anything. For some reason, people (especially people in my family) think that I am always telling the truth and am incapable of lying (which used to be true when I was younger, and still is except for when I plan it in advance - then I'm actually pretty good at it). Whenever I want to get away from somewhere or am trying to avoid going to something, I just say I've got schoolwork that I need to get done. I've also discovered over the last couple months that my family's convinced I've got a secret girlfriend (don't ask me how they came up with this - I don't really get it at all) so they aren't pressing for details when I say I'm not going to be around or anything, since they think they know the reason.

It also doesn't hurt that I've never, ever, been an open person at all.

I'm very secretive. I'm not good with explanations (pertaining to myself); they (explanations) frustrate me and the majority of the time, I see no point in them. I'm also a "good" liar (people can't usually tell I'm lying, and I don't do it to harm anyone). When I was in school, I created an elaborate tale about friends (even going so far as creating fake profiles on certain sites and making it seem like "they" were talking to me). I did this for the sake of my family (mainly my grandmother). They wanted me to be normal (something I have never been and cannot ever be) and it seems my only goal back then was to keep them from being disappointed in/because of me. So, I figured if I can't be normal, I'll create this fantasy world so I can appear normal. It worked, they stopped asking questions (for the most part - for a while the abuse from my parents even dwindled down to almost nothing, as they chose to simply ignore me instead) and it gave me the time I desperately needed to recuperate from life. I'm not sure if my secrecy, deception, and manipulation stems from AS or if it's a result from childhood abuse (or perhaps a mixture of both) but I do know, that while I engage in them often, my intention is never to harm the others, simply to resolve a situation as quickly and calmly as possibly while protecting both them and me from the potential disaster that could be a meltdown.

I'm bad at explanations

I too have a very hard time not acquiescing to sharing myself with those I don't deeply trust.

It's the kiss of 'deaf' in esp my old office life, where if you're the low dog on the pole you share despite no reciprocity from more tenured droids. No surprise then, that I don't live in that environment anymore -- it's very sailor-like, and having lived and worked in Seattle six years, having a reservoir of absolute privacy is an uphill battle I wasn't willing to fight anymore. As ex-Army, those tactics were never going to work anyhow; happier now.