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

I love all the casual misogyny on this thread.

Women who share most things with their husbands are these deluded little wives who are desperate to encourage a truthful relationship with their husbands who are all running around behind their backs concealing secret affairs and the like.

Some people on here have very fertile imaginations. The truth is much more boring.

Sadly it is. They simply dont care about others people's right to choose who their private information is shared with.

You are probably right.

Massively depends.

If you havent specifically asked me to keep something secret, it wouldnt occur to me not to tell DP

If you tell me a secret it becomes my burden too. And if It was something I needed to talk about - maybe if I was worried about you id tell DP.

That said i defo wouldn't gossip or joke about it. I just dont keep secrets from DP as a general rule

It really depends what it was. If it was something very very personal (something sexual/medical) wouldn’t tell a single person. However, if it was just a bit of guess what such and such said about her work friends I probably would. If explicitly told not to tell anyone (even DH) I wouldn’t.

Different people and all that - if my close friend told me something in confidence I wouldn't share with the OH. But there are things I tell my OH that I know are not told in confidence.

But at the same time if I tell my close friend something and I'd rather not have their OH know, I'd categorically ask that it is not shared with OH, which translates as strictest confidence.

My friends know I care about them by making g sure that anything they say to me in confidence is kept just like that. If the partner of the cheating spouse came to me then I would show her the support my friend asked for, I don’t need to blab to my own husband to do that. That would just be gossiping. My husband is the same. My husband is a grown man with his own emotional intelligence. He doesn’t need me to tell him how best to ‘approach a situation’ and since a situation that involved a friend having it away with someone else would have nothing at all to do with either of us, he would t need to approach anything.

Yanbu.
I wouldn't tell my dp something a friend told me in confidence. It's none of his business.
I don't 'do' gossiping, which is what it would feel like if I repeated private information about my friends.

I'm wondering if the people who share everything with their partners have different conversations with friends to I have. I can't imagine coming home from a coffee date with a friend and telling him all about Sue's infected pore in her groin due to an ingrowing hair in her bikini line or that Alice has decided to try the coil as she bled for 6 weeks on the pill.

There's the mundane too - my partner doesn't want to know that Natalie was feeling a bit bleugh as she didn't sleep great the night before and woke up with a massive spot on her chin that morning and had an important meeting that morning looking like a teenager.

There's also the big and the scary, the waiting for mammogram results, going to a memory clinic with a parent, the waiting for ADHD assessments, the wondering how they are going to keep affording for them to not work and not knowing how they could work for various reasons. There are things I hear and see that I stay quiet about, I've noticed boxes of medication in people's recycling before and have enough understanding about what they are used for.

Oh be honest with yourself. This thread has nothing to do with women being honest with their husbands, it's all about women giving themselves a free pass to gossip about their friend's intimate details to their husbands.

I recently discovered a friend was going home and telling her husband personal things I’d been discussing with her. I’ve since stopped telling her anything. My other friends and I know that what is said between us remains only between us.

There is an old saying that goes "a good friend will help you bury the body". The same with keeping a confidence.

It's been really interesting to see. I think there's a middle ground between telling your SO everything and never telling them a thing, but there's been a lot of very intense, derogatory comments about women's marriages, declarations that their husbands don't care what they're saying, that their husbands are lying to them, schadenfreude at stories of a husband lying to a wife who told him everything, name calling, and other very high emotions.

There's even people saying that a husband should collude to keep another man's affair secret, and not tell his wife about it, even if she's good friends with the wife who's being cheated on.

So the husband should lie to his wife, cover up for his friend doing something unethical, and allow an innocent woman to be exposed to STIs, and morally if not legally be raped by her husband because she doesn't have the information to give informed consent? Honestly, I'd be disgusted in my husband if he did that, and valued his loyalty to his awful friend over his loyalty to me, and the morally right thing to do.

I'm surprised to see pp defending a husband doing that.

No if a friend tells me something in confidence it’s in confidence between the two of us. I do tell my DP some things, more as a support for me, never gossiping. But never a really private thing.

I’ve had some serious past traumas and sadly over the years I discovered my best friend I confided in told people. Her DH and via a bizarre conversation once when I realised another close friend of my friend was trying to be supportive (failing miserably) on a private matter they should not have known about.

id be ok if a friend said to DH oh she’s got a few family problems at the moment, or oh it’s personal stuff from her past or oh it’s a private medical thing. But not all of the details.

Exactly, no good the friend helping you bury a body if they go home and tell their DH.

@Ifiwere my husband is my closest friend, so yes, I would tell him. But I would also trust him not to embarrass you by mentioning it.

I'm always wary because my 'best' friend knows I was abused as a child, and a few things her husband has said has made me pretty sure she has told him about it.

Now, I guess it's not a "secret", but it's also not something I go around telling just anyone.

I'd told her about it many years before she even met him, so it's not like she would ever have been sharing the new information of the day. She must have made an active decision to tell him about it.

I really think it depends on the context of how person A shares the confidence with person B (and to an extent, if A and B’s husband have a warm relationship). If it’s something major or taboo (e.g. people up thread have mentioned terminations) then I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s not for discussion with another soul, and it should be obvious not to tell hubby. Likewise if A says “please don’t tell anyone”, that of course means don’t tell hubby.

However I think there is a zone of stuff where it’s fairly private but not super confidential, where I’d be annoyed if a friend broadcast it down the pub but don’t mind them mentioning to their husbands e.g. “screentime is a bit fed up at work and thinking of changing jobs”.

I think it’s normal to care about the major characters in your partner’s life (ie their friends) and so talking about how they are getting on isn’t coming from a gossipy place. Sometimes it’s kind of more like knowing that others are going through similar struggles (“x is having the same trouble we are”).

Might be relevant, though, that my husband and I know a lot of each other’s friends fairly well and inquire as to how they are. First questions I ask when he comes in from a night out are 1. Did you have nice food and 2. How is [name]? But we wouldn’t then repeat stuff more widely, so it’s clearly not for public consumption.

I work on the belief that anything I tell anyone will become public knowledge. People can't help themselves. Clients would be shocked what I know about them, usually because their family/friends who are also clients blab in appointments and it becomes office gossip at morning tea. I have zero faith in anyone's ability to keep their mouths shut. I also have a DM who is like a one person broadcasting station. Within 5 minutes the entire world knows.

So I don't tell anyone anything I don't want the world to know.

You're not a bad partner, your a rubbish friend!

I would never repeat anything that I was told in confidence to anyone, including my husband. I honestly can’t believe how many people think it’s okay to share their friends’ private business with their partners — it’s not.

I would rather my husband had the hump with me for not telling him.than my friend had the hump for me telling him. (Not saying he would cos he wouldn't know and even if he found out, tough)

I am not sure why it is necessary to share another person’s secrets with your husband . I would be really unhappy if I asked you to keep it to yourself.

I used to confide in my Sister until I realised she was sharing my confidences abour my partner's impotence with her husband. His attitude towards me and my partner changed. He acted arrogant and superior with my partner and started making passes at me and suggesting we meet up to "help" each other! 🤮

Well, at least you found out he was a dirty sleaze, and could tell your sister that! Yuck!

Was your partner okay with you telling your sister that he was impotent, though? Because I find it hard to believe any man would be fine with his partner's sister knowing that!