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How do you deal with gossiping?

6 replies

Kittyscurlytail · 04/11/2025 17:31

How do you guys deal with other people gossiping?

I don't usually engage in gossiping. It doesn't usually serve a purpose or help me. Also I am too busy too really care about drama that happens to others. I just don't care. Sometimes people would confode in me about whatever, and often it never gets repeated because I don't gossip.

I am subjected to gossiping now.

A few months ago I was going through a bad patch. I don't want to explain it. It's bad. At the time I took my frustration out in the wrong way wrong to a distant family member of mine and said something awful in an 'anonymous' message. It wasn't gossiping. I did something awful.

A few months after that, she knew it was me and she came to confront me and at the time I denied it. Over the weeks that followed,.I felt coeircoined and she wasn't very nice either about it.

Eventually, I did own this and I admitted things and explained myself and apologised.

It was kinda all smoothed out at the time between me and her.

I never updated my parents about this. I never admitted it to anyone else in the family. So they still have a version of it that it wrong.

My mother was on a call yesterday with someone else and I overheard my mother going on a rant over the phone about my distant family member in relation to this topic. My mother was trash talking this person for ages. My mother is unaware that I am responsible for doing something bad.

I also know, my mother hated this distant family member for years but kept it hidden from the distant family member. All I heard yesterday was a n episode of excitement and gossip and an opportunity to trash talk the other lady. But it was all surrounding events of what I did.

I know all this is probably so confusing especially how I am unwilling to share exact details of what I did.

The gossiping over the phone between my mother and someone else a while entire two months after the initial confrontation. I thought it would have died down and they would have got something else to talk about.

OP posts:
reversingdumptruckwithnotyreson · 04/11/2025 17:37

Frankly I just accept that everyone gossips, I don’t really have an issue with it. I don’t think gossip is inherently negative.
The only times it would really bother me is if it was something that I particularly, specifically asked to not be shared.
Mundane day to day gossip doesn’t bother me, I work in a very small company and we all know far too much about each other. I don’t tell anyone there anything that I wouldn’t be okay with everyone knowing.

However if the issue here is that this person is being trash talked unfairly because of something you’ve done, then you should tell your mother.

Kittyscurlytail · 04/11/2025 17:47

reversingdumptruckwithnotyreson · 04/11/2025 17:37

Frankly I just accept that everyone gossips, I don’t really have an issue with it. I don’t think gossip is inherently negative.
The only times it would really bother me is if it was something that I particularly, specifically asked to not be shared.
Mundane day to day gossip doesn’t bother me, I work in a very small company and we all know far too much about each other. I don’t tell anyone there anything that I wouldn’t be okay with everyone knowing.

However if the issue here is that this person is being trash talked unfairly because of something you’ve done, then you should tell your mother.

Yes, she was unfairly trash talked but that's only just a small element of this.

My mother has hated this relative for years and this is just something else for her. This relative did nothing wrong on my mother ever. My mother just has a reason now to hate her more.

Yesterday's call had no aim. It was a call just to spread resentment and hate from my mother outwards.

OP posts:
SpottyAardvark · 04/11/2025 17:52

I always make a point of ignoring gossip, particularly at work. This means I am often the last to know that X has been promoted, or Z is shagging Y, or whatever, but that’s fine by me. If the information is directly relevant to me I will find out eventually, and if it isn’t I’m not interested & I don’t care.

Mollydoggerson · 04/11/2025 17:53

Tell your mother the truth and ask her to stop spreading misinformation and hate.

reversingdumptruckwithnotyreson · 04/11/2025 19:03

@Kittyscurlytail if you don’t want to own up to it with your mother, just call her out on it and hopefully she’ll drop the subject.

Although realistically, if this is a distant relative, how likely are they to feel any consequences of your mother’s gossip, really? If this is all localised drama and you really don’t want to out yourself I’d just leave it.

MorrisZapp · 04/11/2025 22:10

Is this actually gossip? All the women in my family (myself included) have lengthy conversations about all the issues that come in the wider circles. Isn't that just normal chat?

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