We are always told to confess our sins, ask for forgiveness, but there are times when it is better to keep our mouths shut. Right now you are probably confused, let me give you an example.

I have a friend, Leslie, who dated a man for 4 years. They had prepared for a life together knowing that they would end up married. He paid off over $20,000 of her school loans so they would have perfect credit to buy a house together. They had everything planned down to how many children, when, and what names they would have.

The big night came. He took her to a very nice restaurant and proposed with a beautiful ring. She said yes and they went on to have a wonderful romantic evening together.

The next day he sat Leslie down and told her that he had something to tell her before they got married. It turns out that 3 1/2 years earlier they were doing the long distance thing. They had only been dating for 6 months and had been apart for the last 2 months. He went to a party, got incredibly drunk, and slept with someone else.

He thought it was no big deal to make this confession. To him it was something that happened 3 1/2 years ago and shouldn't matter now. He just felt like she should know before they got married. What he didn't realize is that while it was 3 1/2 years in the past for him, it was a fresh wound for her. A fresh wound she couldn't get past. She gave him back his ring and left. It's been 2 years since then and they are not together anymore.

OK, you don't think that's enough to show that confession is selfish. You probably even think that's what should have happened because 3 1/2 years earlier or not, he did cheat. I think he could have kept his big mouth shut and now they would be married instead of secretly pining for each other(by the way, NEITHER has dated anyone else since). But if this is not enough I offer one more example.

I have a friend Jeremy(this is not his real name). He had a girlfriend who he dated for a while. I am not sure of the exact time, but I believe it was almost 2 years. During that time he cheated on her. He actually cheated on her quite a bit. She never found out and eventually they parted ways. Some time later, again I am not sure of the exact time but I believe it to be anywhere between 6-12 months, he wrote her a letter confessing all of the times he had cheated on her. Several people, including me, counseled him against sending this letter but I am not sure if he did or not. All i know is that this would have been an incredibly selfish gesture.

He was not confessing to help her at all. He would have been telling her in order to assuage his own conscience. He would have felt better, she would feel 100x worse.

Basically it all boils down to one simple statement. Before you confess, think about if you are truly doing it to help the person you are confessing to, or if you're doing it out of a selfish need to feel cleansed.