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Keeping secrets from your significant others concerning their family
OldSlacker
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Last spring my wife's parents told me that her mom just got back home after spending a week in hospital because she had a minor stroke. They asked me to keep it to myself and not upset her because they intended to tell her themselves once we get back home. I did as they asked of me and when she found about it after we visited them 2 months later she got very angry with me for what she calls "lying to her" because she believes that I should tell her everything concerning her parents. Because we are having arguments about it to this day I need to ask: Did I do the right thing and if something like that happens again should I do otherwise?
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I guess if it comes up again you can ask that they not tell you anything they don't want her to know, but... I don't know. I've been in a similar position (sort of) and it sucks. I kept it to myself, but then there was no one else to blab that they'd already told me.
If it helps you any, I don't think you were wrong to respect that they asked you not to say anything, but then I'm not your wife and can't make your life miserable, so I'm not sure it does.
Were you wrong in respecting their request? No, it was a reasonable request made for a reasonable reason. Would you have been wrong to tell her? No, it was something important to her and after the fact, you're the one who's got to go home with her, the rest of the family doesn't. Either way is justifiable, but either way, you're still the bad guy - if you told her she'd be happy, but now you've betrayed the trust of her family.
If they insist on putting you in the position again, I'd tell them, "You know I can't keep this from her." And whatever their counter ("We're family," "We're friends," "We trust you," etc) my retort is, "And she's my WIFE." Her trust, her relationship, her status as family can trump theirs. Even if it's for no better reason than the fact that she's the one who can really make your miserable if you piss her off.
I'd say that even if you didn't do the right thing, it was a tough enough situation that you shouldn't really be blamed too harshly. Assuming your wife's parents were pretty serious about keeping it a secret and really wanted you to promise to keep it a secret, it's definitely bad to go against their wishes, but of course it's also bad to keep something from your wife that she would really like to know. I wouldn't stay up at night worrying about it. Of course, your wife is angry at you about this, but I think the best route here is to acknowledge that you did something wrong by her (maybe not wrong overall, but that's sort of irrelevant), apologize, and tell her that in the future...
"If something like it happens again should I do otherwise?"
...yeah, as ceres and Hevach have said, if someone ever tries to put you into a position where you basically can't do the right thing, your best bet is telling them that you can't do that. In this case, you would tell your wife's parents "I'm sorry, I can't keep this from my wife, I don't want to deceive her." They'd be mad but that's their fault for not realizing that you don't want to deceive your wife. And you can tell your wife that this is what you'll do in the future with respect to information she would want to have. If anyone ever tells you something that you ought to tell your wife, you can just go ahead and tell her. Make that your policy and hopefully your wife will understand that you messed up this time and that in the future you won't make any mistakes.
Here's the way I see it: when someone asks you to keep something secret from your wife/parents/children/whatever, but the secret is something that you feel like you ought to tell your wife/whatever about, then it's the fault of the person asking you to keep a secret. It's not OK to go around loading burdens onto people without knowing whether they're OK with keeping these sorts of secrets.
She also decided we weren't to tell their dad that he was dying, something I regretted agreeing to, as he came to realise he was, and wasn't able to talk about it with anyone. He left a folder for my husband filled with allsorts of important stuff in it, that knowing him, he would have been happier talking through.
Having gone through that experience, we made a rule that we tell everyone anything important as soon as we can, so that they know, but do it face to face, so that we can support them.
Every family is different, though, you just need to decide who you need to be most loyal to. Whilst I understand your wanting to respect your in-laws' request, if my husband kept something like that from me I'd be pretty angry about it, with him and my mum.
They shouldn't have put you on the spot like that, it was very unfair of them.
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"The power of the weirdness compels me."
@LewieP's Mummy: Really sorry to hear that, how can you even decide not to tell someone that they're dying?
You may want to communicate that to them right now, so it doesn't happen again.
All the same, it's probably best to apologize for fucking up (even though her family put you in a situation with a no win condition)
I know, it was absolutely dreadful - husband's sister was/is very domineering, took me having our daughter to start to stand up to her. We have to be firm sometimes now. This was a long time ago, when death wasn't really discussed, very different now though, at least in my family - when I found out my second dad was dying, we talked about everything, including him planning his funeral, so it all happened how he had planned it.
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"The power of the weirdness compels me."
Go with a time-limit if you're asked to keep a secret. She is your partner and holding secrets is something you can only do for a little while. 2 months is far too much, discretion on family matters requires adults and if your wife's family can't be adult enough to inform her in their own time (a few days is okay, more than a week not) then you have the responsibility to inform her. You're married to her, you know when she should know about happening in her family over whatever her family tells you. (any of my previous girlfriends would've found the very idea of this kinda fucked up btw, not so much your actions as the fucking family not straight up telling your wife.)
Next time simply say that your wife is an adult and can say what she wants to happen in such a situation. Apologise to her and straight up say that the thing you want to know is how to handle these kind of situations. Forget her family's wishes, what does she want? Any discretion about such things should be about you knowing your wife (e.g. if you know she can't handle things at times), not about whatever the fuck her family wants.
That said, there is only so long you can reasonably hold something over your partner's head. If it gets to be too long and too much and you start to feel like you've paid for it enough, it's okay to tell her that too.
My worry would be that if there were more complications during those two months, my wife wouldn't have the option to do anything because I didn't give her a choice. She would see that as a betrayal of trust, and close me out emotionally to cope with the complications / death alone in addition to coping with the betrayal of trust. It's not even about getting 'blamed', it's about her being hurt worse and having to deal with a really shitty situation alone.
I'm especially cognizant about this though. When her (estranged) father died of cancer, her grandmother didn't tell her, and she only found out months later by chance. If she would have seen him while he was sick, or if she would have gone to the funeral doesn't matter, because she never got to make that choice.