We've all got secrets that we wish weren't there, but they are, and we do not let them affect us one way or another. They just live inside our heads. Occasionally, however, we keep secrets so big that our physical and mental health is affected, sometimes in serious ways with negative consequences. Men's Health recently conducted a poll of its readers and found that 78% of all men said they have at least one serious secret. 31% of the secrets were about infidelity

Those numbers are high enough to make us wonder just what our men are up to that we don't know about! 54% of the men said they believe their wife or girlfriend has a big secret, but only 23% of those men said they wanted to know all of her secrets. To uncover a girl's secret, 38% of the men have read her emails, 44% have checked her telephone call list and 37% have read her text messages. These are things that men accuse girls of doing, but it looks like men do them, too!

Almost half of all the men polled said they would trust a girlfriend, wife or parents to keep their secret if they told, but very few would trust a friend, co-worker, pastor, or boss to keep that very same secret. Researchers developed the following criteria to help a person decide whether to tell their secret or not. If the secret is not causing physical symptoms like headaches, nausea or back pain, it might be best not to tell, they concluded.

If the secret is serious enough to cause physical symptoms, the researchers recommend getting it off your chest by either telling a discreet, nonjudgmental confidant or by writing the confession down to yourself, on paper. Researchers found that writing down the secret and confessing on paper brought more comfort to those who wrote it down than to those who did not. Share your secrets and what happened when you did or did not tell by writing the Love Doctor, Kerry@dontdatehimgirl.com.