Kristen Gaines has a hard past from her time undercover. On FBI Most Wanted, she only told her story when she was ready.

During the most recent episode of FBI Most Wanted Season 3, Kristen Gaines opened up to her ex-husband about her past. Those scars on her back didn’t come from a car accident like she once told him. They came from an undercover mission that went terribly wrong.

Why didn’t she tell him? That’s something he wanted to know. Well, it all comes down to victims (actually, more like survivors) have a right to tell their stories on their own time.

FBI Most Wanted brings up an important topic about survivors

Gaines explained her reasonings, but she didn’t really have to. She could have just said “I wasn’t ready to tell you” and that would have been good enough. That should have been good enough.

As survivors, we owe people nothing. We don’t have to tell you where we got our scars from, or why we take a certain route home every day and refuse to take the shortcut. We don’t have to tell you why we can’t sleep well at night, or why we still sometimes get pain somewhere even though nothing happened.

Our stories are our own.

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Gaines did explain why, and her statement was true for so many people. She didn’t want the safe space at home to become infected by the story. Survivors deserve a safe space. We deserve to have people who don’t know the full truth because once they do, there are always those looks.

It’s not that Gaines didn’t trust her husband at the time. It’s that she didn’t want to affect their relationship or her safety within their relationship by telling him. In the end, they broke up. Now she’s told him without expectations of them getting back together. But she did it when she was ready and on her own terms.

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What did you think of Gaines’s decision to tell her story? What would you like to see covered on FBI Most Wanted? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

FBI Most Wanted airs Tuesdays at 10/9c on CBS in the U.S. and Global TV in Canada.