This article examines the practice of individuals disclosing their serostatus, drawing upon a case study of 23 Tunisians treated in the infectious diseases department of the Hedi Chaker University Hospital in Sfax. The objective is to examine the factors that led to their decision to maintain their HIV status secrecy and its subsequent impact on their day-to-day lives. The analysis elucidates the personal, social, and altruistic issues that underpin this decision. Secrecy aims to protect the self-image and the risk of stigmatization, but also to protect others. This protection of the other is understood here in the dual sense of preserving face, well-being, and health. When examined from the perspective of subjective illness experience, secrecy emerges as a component of a broader repertoire of strategies employed to reorganize a new life with HIV and maintain a normal social life, in continuity with that prior to infection. Secrecy is now an integral component of these people's lives and a pivotal element in the reorganization of their new lives with HIV, to the point of becoming a life-shaping force. This article examines the practice of individuals disclosing their serostatus, drawing upon a case study of 23 Tunisians treated in the infectious diseases department of the Hedi Chaker University Hospital in Sfax. The objective is to examine the factors that led to their decision to maintain their HIV status secrecy and its subsequent impact on their day-to-day lives. The analysis elucidates the personal, social, and altruistic issues that underpin this decision. Secrecy aims to protect the self-image and the risk of stigmatization, but also to protect others. This protection of the other is understood here in the dual sense of preserving face, well-being, and health. When examined from the perspective of subjective illness experience, secrecy emerges as a component of a broader repertoire of strategies employed to reorganize a new life with HIV and maintain a normal social life, in continuity with that prior to infection. Secrecy is now an integral component of these people's lives and a pivotal element in the reorganization of their new lives with HIV, to the point of becoming a life-shaping force.