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

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.

And tbh you probably dont want to know either.

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.

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.

👏

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.

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.

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'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.

'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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.