AIBU to think telling your partner something I told you in confidence makes you a bad friend?

I didn't say it's a crime. Personally, I think it's deeply warped that you think it's acceptable to have sex with someone who you know would not consent to sex if they knew you were having sex with someone else behind their back. That's unhealthy - and horrible. It is, in fact, non-consensual.

Someone's wife being horrible does not make it acceptable for them to cheat on her, exposing her to STIs, and taking away her ability to give informed consent.

If a person chooses to share information with someone else, they then lose the ability to control what the other person does with that information. And if it's something morally abhorrent or problematic, there is a chance that the person they tell will feel they should do something about it, because they no longer feel loyalty to that person in light of what they've been told.

I'm not sure how you think I'm speaking as if my DH is my property? I've said that he has the right to do whatever he likes, but that our values align, he has high moral integrity, he respects my boundaries, and he would prioritise me over a cheating friend. If you think that's unhealthy, then I'm sorry for you.

It depends on the person but l wouldn't assume they would automatically tell their partner,we all have secrets,so l feel she has let you down.Also not only did she tell hubby she didn't emphasize it was confidential,to the extent he used it when talking to you.
I would definitely not confide in that friend again.

Your opinion that cheating is akin to sexual assault is warped.

Sorry it is.

It is not a crime because it is not deemed to be something that society deems deserves a custodial sentence.

It really is not.

Despite of your desire to know the ins and outs of a friend's marriage, you do not.

The friend may not be bragging at all.
Maybe his wife is horrible and he's torn on what to do.

I understand that your experiences may view you to take a black-and-white view of cheating and put you in a situation where you feel you must know everything.

I sympathize with that but that does not mean you are correct.

You speak as if your dh is your property. I find that unhealthy.

Hm. It's really not complicated or difficult to not have sex with someone else while your partner believes that you're in a monogamous relationship. Even in abusive relationships there is no need to have sex with another person - in fact, that's only adding more risk and danger to the victim's life, should they be found out (although no, I wouldn't consider that morally abhorrent, as an abuser has lost the right to their partner's faithfulness).

More like, 'I don't agree with what you're doing but you are my friend so I won't disclose it to anybody else. Not even my wife.'
Well, that's the difference; my husband and I wouldn't want to be friends with someone who's so lacking in moral integrity that they'll brag about cheating on their wife to their mate.

Well, first of all I’m not ‘duty bound’ to tell my DH anything.
Secondly, if it was couched as you described, I probably wouldn’t tell him. Not straight away anyway.
To cover off the thrust of your questions, my friends know I tell DH stuff, and I know they tell theirs. If we don’t want OHs to know something, we are explicit about that.

Yeah. I do say so.

Your experiences as a child are awful and I despise child abusers. I'd put them in a pit to starve if I had my way. I really would.

But that does not change the fact that I most definitely do not equate cheating with sexual assault.
Most people do not. They really don't.
We understand that life is complicated.

It is not always morally abhorrent at all.

The fact is that you do not know the ins and outs of your friend's marriage and your dh would have every right not to betray his friend's confidence.

This is not the same as applauding him or cheering him on at all.
More like, 'I don't agree with what you're doing but you are my friend so I won't disclose it to anybody else. Not even my wife.'

It's someone else's secret, not the wife's or husband's, so absolutely no reason to share.

So if a friend said that she wanted to tell you something in confidence about a traumatic incident that had happened to her, I assume that you would tell her that you were duty bound to tell your husband so that she had the choice whether to confide in you or not? Or would you just say OK, listen to her and then tell your husband without her knowledge?

If you say so

Well, I'm just glad my husband has more moral integrity than you do! He has every right not to tell me, but I know that he would. You don't have to tell your partner everything, but I see no moral superiority in hiding the affair your friend chose to tell you about from your partner, who is good friends with the person being cheated on.

I had a friend who anytime I told her anything would immediately tell anyone , we are not friends now because I got really sick of hearing private information being told back to me by random people, when someone breaches trust its hard to go back to that friendship with the same feeling. Husbands and wives shouldn't keep secrets from each other about themselves but other people who's private information that doesn't affect the relationship is off limits.

Yes.

I don’t tell my husband my friends’ business or other people because it never yet has anything to do with him. I don’t have to have friends tell me not to tell anyone. Why would I tell others barring dangerous situations and even then I would talk to people who I know and can actually help.

My husband tells me things about people and I don’t see a reason I need to know and I will tell him so or not tell anyone what he has told me.

Unless it is a situation that has warranted it, I’m keeping my friends’ privacy.

Why the need to tell spouses ‘everything’ when you know it was said to you in confidence especially when it has no effect on them is strange to me.

If you’re that type of friend who has to tell everything to a spouse, you’d be an acquaintance, not a friend. Not everything needs to be disclosed to a spouse.

Does that mean that you share confidential information about your patients with your husband?

Tell us you can't read posts or context clues and rank your husband above every other relationship without telling us, honestly. Repeating "spouses tell each other stuff" back at someone who's already said several times that she knows that isn't the gotcha you think it is. Her whole point is that spouses sharing things generally doesn't mean anything and everything someone else tells them in confidence becomes fair game. Your response is kind of proving exactly what she said, that for a lot of people "he's my husband" just automatically trumps any expectation of trust in a friendship, full stop, no exceptions, no thought required- your poor friends

Nope I'm not a cheat.

Your experiences while awful do not give you the right to declare that cheating is morally abhorrent because it is not always morally abhorrent at all.

Your post changes nothing about what I said.
You still only see the world through your own viewpoint, not others.

Your husband still has a right not to tell you about his friend's cheating.

Holding confidence is not keeping secrets!! Do you think therapists should tell their spouse their clients details?

I do agree that if it's not something morally abhorrent/dangerous, then a person either shouldn't share which friend is experiencing the situation and should keep it anonymous, or they shouldn't say anything more than generalities and not share specific details. I think generally it's possible to share with your partner (if you feel you need to) without exposing your friend's private details.

I can totally understand being upset that your friend shared the 'gory details' (so to speak) and associated them with your name. She should've been more discreet.

It is really interesting to see women defending a man protecting his cheating mate, and praising that as something they'd be proud of... while simultaneously demeaning and degrading women as 'busybodies', 'sticking their beaks in' (for being told something), 'borg-like', 'delusional gossips' and 'mugs' who are lied to by their husbands (even though apparently, husbands keeping secrets is something to be proud of?)

It's just the same old misogyny.

Tell my DH things & expect otherwise but I have never discussed things with him that are extremely personal even without friend specifying. Would not talk about anything to do with private health, sexual, trauma. Had to support a friend once after a rape and he knew it was going on but I didn’t tell him who - friend was ok for people to know much later on. Waited until then.

So many emotive assumptions! Are you a cheater? It sounds like it, if we're making assumptions.

As someone who suffered CSA and sex trafficking as a minor, yes, I do consider having sex with someone without their informed consent to be a form of rape, morally speaking. And as someone whose father cheated and ran off, which indirectly led to my CSA, it is admittedly a particularly sensitive trigger for me - something my DH knows, and respects. But even setting my own history aside, he's not the sort to want to socialise with a cheating prick, so he'd choose to distance himself anyway.

Again - if someone doesn't want something to be your business, they shouldn't make it your business by going out of their way to tell you that they're doing something morally abhorrent.

I'm not sure how a man protecting his cheating mate is 'for the greater good' - it just seems like garden variety patriarchal misogyny to me; men colluding together to treat women the women in their lives like shit, while keeping them unawares.

You also need to read the room. Spouses tell each other stuff.

You seem to me to be somebody who thinks that you are the centre of the universe.

You find cheating morally abhorrent to the extent that you will equate it to rape.
Have any f*ing idea how offensive that is?
I guess not.

Newsflash: not everybody finds cheating to be morally abhorrent.

Do I think that some abused woman who finds comfort in another man's arms to be 'morally abhorrent'? No!!!
Foolish perhaps, yes but not scum as you suggest.

Your friends' marriage is none of your fucking business.

You have no right to know anything about it, and your dh should be applauded for not betraying a confidence.

(BTW, you associate with cheating people everyday. You just don't know it.)

And yes, male loyalty, when used for the greater good, can be a very good thing.

You just strike me as being a controlling busybody who feels they have a right to know everything about those around them to be frank.

I guess you'd forbid your dh from seeing his friend if he told you anyway.

Why are you misrepresenting what I said? I haven't once said people should tell their spouses everything.

Control freak? No, I just expect my husband to have moral integrity, and to know and respect my boundaries. But apparently you think that male loyalty, and men protecting their cheating mates, is a special bond that trumps all else, and glues society together...

You're not inserting yourself if they drag you into it, though. That's my point. You would've had no clue, but they're making it your business by going out of their way to tell you that they're doing something morally abhorrent to another person.