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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How is somebody elses business being kept shtum classed as 'keeping secrets' from your husband?

I don't want you passive aggressive pity.

It's deeply f ing warped that you place cheating on the same level as rape.

Society does not agree with you as it would be a criminal offence if it did.

Nobody takes possession of another adults body just because they're in a relationship.

Nobody.

It's your view that is twisted not mine.

it’s a transparent attempt to make gossiping a moral imperative.

It's not passive aggressive. I'm genuinely sorry that you think a man protecting his cheating friend is something to be proud of, that you think sharing values somehow denotes 'ownership' instead of alignment, that you think people don't deserve to be able to give informed consent, and that it's acceptable to have sex with someone when you know for a fact they would not consent if they knew you were betraying them.
There's a lot of internalised misogyny tied up in that.

(Also, you're allowed to swear on Mumsnet, just fyi.)

I'll add that your personal boundaries are off.
You do not seem to realise the concept of autonomy.

We can hope that somebody we're in a relationship would be faithful, but as it is their body to do with what they want we should not automatically expect it as a right.

It's really weird that anybody would think it's akin to a criminal offence if their partner cheats.
They can be upset, that's OK, but they have no right over what that person does with their body.

Very childish and immature to think otherwise.

@OtterlyAstounding
What you also fail to grasp that if cheating were seen as 'morally abhorrent' then it would be us women that would suffer not men.

We would be branded whores for cheating and strung up, not men.

So actually my view is feminist.

You either believe that adults have bodily autonomy or you don't.

I do and if that means some people cheat so be it.

You keep misrepresenting me. I have specifically said it is not nor should it be a criminal offence. It's quite possible to acknowledge that someone has the right to do as they wish with their body, and that it's morally abhorrent for them to cheat on their partner.

I'm not sure why you're so keen to defend exposing your partner to STIs, betraying them, or having sex with someone when they wouldn't consent if they knew the truth, but it's clear your moral compass is very askew.

Apparently your husband telling you that his friend is cheating on your friend would be morally unacceptable...but your husband cheating on you would be totally morally acceptable? I'm not sure how that works, in your head.

As I said, it's odd to see the vitriol on this thread towards women for sharing things (that perhaps they shouldn't!) with their husband, while simultaneously a man cheating on his wife and sharing that with another man is being represented as acceptable. Women, it seems, are nasty, delusional, gossiping busybodies, whose husbands think they're mugs, while husbands who partake in keeping patriarchal secrets that hurt women, are praiseworthy.

Erm, I think most people do see cheating as morally abhorrent. I'm not sure many people (except cheaters) are going to defend it. It's possible to believe people should absolutely have the right to exert their bodily autonomy, but to also disapprove when they use it to hurt, deceive, and endanger other people. That's nuance.

I'm very firmly in the camp a secret is a secret, and there's things I'll take to my grave.

No matter how posters are trying to dress it up, telling your DH others personal details is gossip, pure and simple. I just can't IMAGINE violating a friends privacy and dignity by spilling every detail to my partner.

There's some extremely emotionally immature people on here.