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

Totally agree.
@OtterlyAstounding sounds a bit of a control freak to me.

How could her knowing possibly change anything, anyway?
The cheating husband will still be cheating.
Maybe the friend knows. She assumes she knows everything about her friend's life.

Bandies about words like misogyny.

How can those who believe that marriage turns two people into a borg-like entity who must share everything with a spouse accuse others of misogyny?
It's a joke.

My stance is clear: people are autonomous individuals with their own right to secrets and an inner life.

To hell with this tell my spouse everything bullshit.
Abusers often insist they are told everything, don't they.

Agreed. Some things are very obviously personal and private.

Anyone who assumes that obviously private and sensitive information shared by their friends can be shared freely unless the subject of that information has explicitly said that they want it kept confidential is just a shit friend, frankly. It shouldn't need spelling out that a friend's personal business isn't fodder for gossip.

No sticking your beak in is inserting yourself into a place where you have no business to be - like someone else’s marriage.

It would depend what it is. It would also depend how discreet your husband was. I can guarantee if I told my husband something that was told to me in confidence, I can guarantee he will not pass it on nor allude to it to the original secret teller!

There have also been things told to me by my closest friend that are very personal and private and I have never told my husband.

'Sticking your beak in' would be snooping or eavesdropping and finding out something a person didn't want you to know. If someone chooses to share with you that they're doing something morally abhorrent, then they've chosen to involve you, and what you now do with that information is up to you, ultimately.

And my husband knows I wouldn't want to associate with a cheater, so if he knowingly allowed me to keep doing so, I would consider it disloyalty.

You're the one who thinks women have a f*ng duty to tell their husbands everything. After all if he tells you everything, then you must do the same in the spirit of equality, right?

I never said this, actually. You're arguing against a position I haven't taken.

I said quite clearly that I fall somewhere in the middle, where I think sometimes disclosing can be appropriate but generally it's not called for. In that particular scenario, I think it is, though.

It’s got fuck all to do with loyalty to you. Loyalty to you is being faithful to you. That’s where his obligation starts and finishes. Don’t stick your beak into other people’s relationships is a very good maxim.

You can save your passive-aggression.

In any case if cheating is rape, shouldn't it apply equally to men and women?
(Or maybe in a woman who cheats on her husband is guilty of sexual assault?)

If so a woman who finds some relief in the arms of another man from her abusive prick of a dh is now guilty of sexual assault.

Do you know how ridiculous that is?

I'm not the one here who thinks that spouses are one borg-like entity who have to blab everything to each other.

I think that we are autonomous beings above all else!

You're the one who thinks women have a f*ng duty to tell their husbands everything. After all if he tells you everything, then you must do the same in the spirit of equality, right?

You're the one with misogynistic views. Not me.

I think having sex with someone when you know they wouldn't consent to sex if they knew you were cheating on them, is a type of rape, yes. Because you know they wouldn't consent. I don't think it's possible or appropriate to make it illegal, but I do think it's morally abhorrent.

👏

In the scenario the pp gave, you would be close friends with the wife, while your DH is close friends with the husband, and you socialise frequently.

I would be incredibly disappointed in my DH if he colluded in another man cheating on his wife (worse, my good friend!) - and didn't tell me, so I continued socialising with the disgusting prick. I would expect him to either immediately tell the husband to come clean, or to talk to me later on about how best to handle it.

If I discovered a few years later, after the husband got found out, that he'd known all that time and had kept it from me while I'd unknowingly socialised with them both, I'd be so disappointed in his moral compass, and his lack of loyalty to me.

In most situations I don't think you should tell your partner your friend's private business, but that's one of the exceptions, imo.

Whoa, it's rare to get an exactly 50-50 split with people so firmly on either side of the debate. I share everything with my husband, and I'm amazed that people wouldn't think that's normal.

So you have a problem, you want to feel better by sharing that problem with someone else but then they have to keep it inside? I work in mental health and we have supervision for this reason, you can be vicariously traumatised. It's a lot to ask of a friend not to tell anyone at all.

And tbh you probably dont want to know either.

I'm not arguing with you.
You think that anybody who cheats-men or women is a rapist.

I find that to be absurd.

If I have to explain it to you you wouldn't understand, anyway.

Not telling your spouse something you’ve been told in confidence isn’t a question of priority. If my bloke’s friend is cheating I don’t need to know. It’s nothing to do with me.

I said morally rape, not legally. As in, if a person knows someone wouldn't consent if they knew the truth (that the person was cheating on them) and they hide the truth in order to have sex with them, it's morally rape. Any person who cheats on their partner, and then goes home to have sex with them, is morally (not legally) having non-consensual sex.

I'm sorry that you have such a misogynistic worship of male bonding above all else, and a disdain for women, and moral integrity. That's very sad.

I mean, this is just really odd. You think male loyalty wins wars...that males start? You think male loyalty...protects the social tribe? Erm...

I'm not sure how a man covering up for his friend cheating on his wife (who is your good friend) does either of those things?

Then you say 50% of women have no understanding of this - when the question in the OP wasn't about male loyalty, but just whether women might share a friend's private news with their spouses?

And then you say you 'get it' on an instinctual level - get what? What do you just 'know'? That men need to prioritise their friends over their wives lest...society fall apart if they don't? It's a little bizarre.

Yep. I'd be proud of him.
Though I think your 'rape' comment is ridiculous. Not only that but legally untrue.

It also suggests that you'd be happy for anybody-male or female-to be locked up for cheating.
Another ridiculous comment on this thread on a par with a husband and wife are a borg-like like entity with no autonomy of their own.

Ahh, so this is some weird sexist thing on your part, where you think all men must be stoic, macho, silent types, or else they're incapable pansy wimps? As if there's no reasonable middle ground?

Actually, male loyalty to each other results in patriarchy, gang-rapes they do together to bond with each other, other rapes and sexual assaults being covered up, general gang criminality, and women being treated as sexual objects by men who have more respect for each other than they do their wives (ETA: or any of the women in their lives).

It's not a good thing.

I tell my husband everything unless I've been specifically asked not to tell anyone. In which case I don't and he understands that. If I havent been told not to tell anyone, I still don't tell anyone else, apart from my husband.

That's because you don't seem to understand that male loyalty to each other wins wars and protects the social tribe.
It is thus encouraged in places where it matters like the armed forces.

50% of women here have no understanding of this.

I get it on an instinctual level. I just know it.

I'd be pissed off OP. I've kept secrets for my friends, because my husband doesn't need to know everything that's going on in someone else's life.

I don't understand the 'I tell my husband everything because I trust him' thing; your friend trusted you not to tell anybody but you did! It's a not very fetching mix of betrayal and naivety, and while you may have a weird fundamentalist view that a married couple are literally one entity that's certainly not how everybody sees it. If you've been told something in confidence then (barring extreme situations where disclosure is necessary to avoid serious harm), you keep your noise hole shut.