Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. If there were one person you might label as the Trump administration’s current Ultimate Wife Guy, it would probably be Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Although the former Fox News host has a history of infidelity, he seems particularly attached to his third/current wife, Jennifer. She was at his side throughout his rocky confirmation process, including in meetings with senators who reportedly felt awkward grilling him on the sexual assault allegations against him (which he denied). And since Hegseth began leading the Pentagon, the pair’s close relationship has continued to raise eyebrows—and concerns. Per the Wall Street Journal, Jennifer has accompanied her husband to at least two meetings with foreign counterparts where sensitive information was discussed. According to CNN, she even submitted paperwork to obtain a security clearance despite holding no official role in government. And then, of course, were the recent revelations that Hegseth had included his wife (among others) in a second Signal chat in which he shared details about planned strikes on Yemen. Yes, it seems Secretary Hegseth can’t seem to do his job without including his wife on matters of national security. But while the reporting about the Hegseths’ apparently flippant handling of classified information has sparked outrage and calls for his ouster, some couples reading the news might be inclined to react differently. In relationships where at least one person might be under legal or ethical duty to withhold information about their job—say because they work as an attorney, medical worker, teacher, or therapist—secrets can (and do) occasionally slip. In some cases, it’s even expected. “I would be so pissed if he was keeping fun secrets from me,” said one woman whose husband works as a doctor in a hospital emergency room and frequently shares who is coming and going with her. “I would be like, You learned this interesting thing about our neighbor that came in and you didn’t tell me?! I want to know!” (She, like others interviewed for this story, requested anonymity in order to speak candidly.) “I hear all the things,” admitted another woman whose spouse works in a different hospital. “We also live in a smallish town, so we know some of the people who come through.” She tells him everything, too—she works at a school, and she reveals things like which parent no longer has custody, which child was pulled into the office by social workers, and other information she isn’t supposed to let slip. To be clear, sharing top-secret information with anyone not authorized to receive it is illegal and you shouldn’t do it—but it’s also not entirely surprising. More than half of the 1,000 couples surveyed by a jewelry company in 2023 said they would share confidential information with their partner even if they had signed a nondisclosure agreement. (That apparently includes The White Lotus star Sam Nivola, who has said he is scared of getting sued by HBO because he told his girlfriend, Iris Apatow, about his character’s incest storyline during filming despite having signed an NDA.) For a variety of reasons that can range from the selfish to the deluded, certain couples might consider their dynamic to be uniquely sacrosanct and thus a safe space to share. “Some people may feel like, OK, this is a safe zone. I can release here, and it stays here,” said Elizabeth Overstreet, who is a couples counselor, self-described “relationship strategist,” and the author of Love Can Be Messy but You Don’t Have to Be. (Overstreet herself was once in a long-term relationship with a man who received classified intelligence as part of his government job, but she said they maintained strict boundaries between their personal and professional lives.) In 2020, for example, the Pentagon’s Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals released a decision in the case of a man who’d applied for a government security clearance, but admitted that when he was previously deployed overseas with the Navy as a helicopter crewman he would occasionally let his concerned wife in on some details of his missions. Although he didn’t share locations or mission particulars, he would tell her if the mission was dangerous and whether it would take place in the morning or evening, so she could know when she next might hear from him. The administrative judge in the case concluded that while the veteran may have shared that information “with the best of intentions” in order “to put her mind at ease”—and that this may have even been “common practice among members of his unit”—she was still not authorized to hear it, especially given concerns about who else might have been listening. In another case, David Franklin Slater, a civilian employee with the Air Force and a retired Army lieutenant colonel, was charged last year for allegedly sharing secret information he was privy to about the war in Ukraine on a dating website with a person who claimed to be a woman living in that country. According to the indictment, this person would often call the lovestruck Slater “my secret agent” and ask him for more information. “Dear, what is shown on the screens in the special room?? It is very interesting,” read one message. “You are my secret informant love! How were your meetings? Successfully?” read another. Perhaps the most famous pillow-talker in recent years, though, may be David Petraeus, the former CIA director who pleaded guilty in 2015 to mishandling classified information. The retired four-star general gave Paula Broadwell, a biographer with whom he was having an affair, black books containing the identities of covert officers, war strategy, code-word information, and information from White House National Security Council meetings. Not everyone in the government does this, of course. One lawyer I spoke with—who often shares client information inside their relationship—said their partner, who works in government, does not return the favor. “As they like to say, ‘I would literally go to jail,’ ” the lawyer told me. “It’s not the same.” Lawyers are professionally obligated not to reveal information about clients to anyone, but Lawrence J. Fox, the former chair of the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility, said he also believes “that kind of pillow talk goes on all the time.” But as Fox told the ABA Journal back in 2005, “it’s a hard violation to catch because the person they’re confiding in typically isn’t going to let it go any further.” Well, that is, until they split up: Consider a 2022 case in Canada where a lawyer was found to have committed professional misconduct by sharing deeply personal information about clients with his wife, who later made a complaint about him to regulators after they divorced. The information included clients’ medical and financial information, pornography and drug use, and allegations of domestic violence and abuse. His ex-wife said he would tell her things like “You have to read this,” or “Can you believe this?” He once even forwarded an affidavit to his wife from a client who suspected his daughters were being sexually abused and labeled it “bedtime reading.” If any of this seems outrageous, consider that the common law views communications between a married couple with a high degree of reverence. Both criminal and civil law recognize (with some exceptions) the concept of spousal privilege, which can protect someone from testifying against their spouse or having their confidential marital communications admitted into evidence. This is because, per the Supreme Court, it has a “perceived role in fostering the harmony and sanctity of the marriage relationship.” And while that may be so, spousal privilege is just an evidentiary rule—not a defense. Overstreet, the relationship strategist, said she suspects in Hegseth’s case that he may be relying on his wife because of how spectacularly unqualified he is for the role. “They are probably over their head, and they may find some comfort in allowing some of that downloading to happen with that person and involving that person in their decisionmaking,” she said. “Because often, behind the scenes of someone who we perceive has been a powerful person, there is someone behind them supporting that powerful person.” But while there might be understandable or even noble reasons why couples might spill their professional beans to one another, there is a simpler, more obvious one: Gossiping is fun, and it can make people feel closer. One former nurse told me that whenever a famous person was admitted to their hospital “the gossip would get juicy, juicy, juicy,” meaning other colleagues (and their spouses) would soon find out, even though they were violating patient privacy laws. This even happened, they said, when a member of the Trump family and a member of Congress were separately admitted. “My partners knew the moment I got home, if it wasn’t a text already,” she said. “Like, ‘Guess who I took care of today!’ ” A doctor in another hospital also admitted to sharing with their husband when they treat the children of famous people, partly just for fun but also because they trust that he would never bring it up with other people. “HIPAA found dead,” the doctor said. The woman whose husband works as an emergency room doctor said she can often tell when he is keeping something juicy from her, which makes it all the more delicious when he finally shares it. Sometimes, she’ll hear stories from him about their friends or others in the community. Once, it was even about their nanny. “I feel like he will try to not tell me, but then a week later, he’ll be like, ‘So actually …,’ ” she said. “He can’t keep it in because he knows that it will bring me joy to hear the story, or he just wants to gossip, and he can’t not do that with me.” Still, she said, there are limits to what she expects he would divulge. He wouldn’t, for example, tell her something that someone had explicitly asked him not to share with her. She also doesn’t believe he’s dishing out medical secrets to his friends and family members. “He’s only telling me,” she said, “so it’s more of a relationship dynamic where if there is something that we know is going to amuse the other person or that they’ll find interesting, then we’re always going to tell them that thing.” This woman said she knows of other couples in medicine with a similar dynamic—so much so that she would be “honestly shocked” if they didn’t share such secrets, and she might even consider it a “red flag” in their relationship. And what, you might wonder, does she make of the scandal involving the defense secretary? “That’s so funny,” she said, “because I’m like, You could have just talked to her over dinner. He didn’t have to add her to the group chat.”