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

Yeah- your friend probably thought that about you…..

Surely you needed to talk things through with your partner, so he could support you in managing your friend's trauma.

Seriously though - some of the 'friends' on this thread should come with a warning label.

If a person can't respect the privacy of a close friend, why would said person be so confident that their spouse (who is less invested in the friendship), will respect it and not gossip to someone else, asking them to 'keep it a secret'?
Married people don't need to tell each other everything. Getting married doesn't wipe out the obligations one has to the other people in our lives, who trust us. Blabbing secrets about friends to a spouse is disrespectful and it makes a 'friend' dishonest. 'In confidence' means something!

Everyone of your posts on this thread have given me the infamous MN "ick"

My idea of a facsimile of a friend

DP is a woman, I'm male.

DP could support me without needing to know the details. She's fully capable of giving me a hug if I need it, or being able to empathise that something was a rough conversation without actually needing to know what it was about.

Edit: Sorry, just realised based on your other posts that you were being sarcastic.

Well I'm sure that we wouldn't be friends in real life. But at least I'm not rude and I also don't judge people for thinking differently to me.

We are not talking about "thinking differently". We are talking about actions which can have an impact on other people. Everyone judges people for that including you i am sure.

I think it depends on what it is and whether or not you specifically told her not to tell her DH.

I talk about my friends in general conversation with DH so he knows a lot. He also tells me a lot of stuff about his friends, much of which I don’t care to know.

There are some things I keep to myself though as I know he wouldn’t approve and I don’t want him to think badly of my friends. Such as when one married friend had a ONS.

I always wonder how many of the people who just can’t possibly keep their mouths shut to a spouse are our doctors, police offices, teachers, social workers, lawyers...

@Ifiwere the lesson is make sure you know your “friend”s intentions of keep their mouth shut before you trust them with anything private. Most people manage to get through long marriages without spilling their guts on others’ confidences but IME people using this excuse use it to tell wider circles as well.

You talk about your friends in general conversation with your DH? Including their confidences?

Well some of my friends are newer friends than others. Also even with older friends you never can guarantee what other people will do.

Plenty of people swear they know their bestie/other half would or wouldn’t do X and Y then are flabbergasted when they find out it’s not the case. I’m sure OP was sure her friend wouldn’t tell her partner.

Well that would’ve wiped the smile off her face. 😆

Yes I have known similar things like this to happen too!

💯

I noticed in uni many men wouldn’t even tell their “close” female friends if a man who they were only vaguely acquainted with was cheating on them.

the lesson is make sure you know your “friend”s intentions of keep their mouth shut before you trust them with anything private

Absolutely, because once you’ve told them you can’t un-tell them. It’s crazy how many women are so determined to betray their friends confidence. I’m sure most of the time the man isn’t even interested in hearing the “goss”

Well no, not if they’ve told me something that they don’t want shared.

But I will regularly say to DH things like I saw Claire today for lunch and he’ll ask how she is and I might say she’s doing well, got a new boyfriend or she’s having a tough time, her kid has been diagnosed with autism and is refusing to attend school etc.

He would never be so indiscreet though to then tell my friend or let on that we’ve been discussing her! That is highly insensitive.

Of course many people are unreliable and can’t keep anything confidential. The point here is that so many people think that is a virtue when it comes to husbands. It’s absolutely shocking.

I personally don't divulge things to one member of a serious relationship, if i'm not comfortable with both of them knowing.
I don't like the idea of making someone keep a secret from their serious partner. Ok if it is something silly like I've done something embarrassing then its not "bad" if they kept it from their partner, and i might be a bit embarrassed if they knew,but if it is something "heavy" that can make them feel bad/upset etc i'd never want them to not have their partners full support.
I always specifically say if it is something i'd like them to not share outside of the couple though, and i've always asked if it is okay if i shared with my partner (back when i had one) before sharing.

Say you’re friends with a couple and the man in the couple tells your husband that he’s having an affair but says “don’t tell anyone”. Then when it all comes out your husband says “yeah I’ve known a year”. How would you feel?

I wouldn’t ‘feel’ anything. Not my relationship to worry about.

Is the implication that if you don’t share your friend’s personal issues with your husband/boyfriend you will do the same or you are responsible for it?

So if I don’t share Mary’s private marital/health/financial worries with my husband then I’ll suffer or deserve the same?

Confiding a private problem in a friend is just that. I’m not confiding in her husband.

That’s interesting, I think a lot of people would feel differently about their friend being cheated on by her husband.

That's very differnt thoug. In OP's case, her secret doesn't involve her friend's husband at all, it's not information that's actively harming him or deceiving him by omission. Your example only really works as a "would that hurt you" scenario because the secret is directly about someone lying to your husband's face for a year, that's not comparable to a friend sharing something personal that has nothing to do with either husband.
A better comparison would be something like, would you be hurt if you found out your husband's friend told him he was abused as a kid, and your husband sat on that for a year without telling you? Or could very well something less 'heavy' but still personal lik had a threesome oand so on along the same lines. That's the actual equivalent, someone's own personal information, not something that's actively deceiving you or someone you love.
Your example isn't really a parallel, it's a bit of a whataboutism, it swaps in a totally different kind of secret (active deception affecting your own marriage) to argue against a totally different kind (someone's personal disclosure that affects no one but them).

Eh? No? Where did you get that? I meant I’d be upset that my husband had effectively gone along with the lie the male friend is telling his wife and not told me about it. I think that was rather obvious.

My DH wouldn't want to know. Even if I did tell him, it would go in one ear and out of the other!

What difference would telling you have made? It’s none of your business.