To walk away from a friendship because she told other's my secret

[pingu2209]

My 'friend' of 3 years was one of 7 people I told about having barriatric surgery (vertical sleeve). I didn't even tell my parents or siblings.

Over 7 months I have lost 9 stone (only 1 1/2 stone to go whoop whoop).

This week my 'friend' admitted to me that she has told people that I have had an operation, after she was asked a lot by others (e.g. mum's in the playground) how I have lost so much weight.

I am furious. I can't tell you how angry I am. Of the 6 other people who know, some don't even know that each other knows (if that make sense) so don't talk to each other about it.

I asked her why and she said that it was because she felt that people had guessed that I had had an operation as it couldn't just have been via diet and excercise.

The last person she told reacted very badly to 'my' news and said that I had been 'lying' to other mums in the playground by not telling people about my operation. That my losing weight made other fat mums feel bad that they couldn't lose weight themselves.

I have already posted on this thread but have name changed because this could out me.

It's about the dreaded Facebook too. I have a large circle of friends on Facebook who originally met through being part of the same organisation. As time has gone by people have left the organisation but remained friends on Facebook. Some are closer than others and not everyone from the organisation is on everyone else's friends list, but we have enough mutual friends in common with others that pretty soon gossip can make it's way through to everyone anyway.

A friend on my list has recently lost a lot of weight and has done very well for herself, as far as I know all through diet and exercise. At first most people were very supportive of her, then some concern slipped in because she admitted she has lost more weight that was recommended and has been told she is anaemic as well but she is frightened to put the weight back on and feels she has to keep up with her diet. If she eats anything she 'shouldn't eat' she posts a lot of statuses talking about how greedy she has been, how full she is, how much her stomach hurts and what she will have to do to make up for it the next day.

And people have started to turn on her. There's a lot of sniping and nastiness behind her back and I've already deleted three people because I don't like the nastiness, especially because they are also posting how great she is doing on her statuses.

Her weight is her own business. The concern I can understand and have shared. The sniping and nasty comments are wrong, and they are not restricting it to just her weight now. It seems as though it's become a habit for some people to sneer at anything she posts now.

Posters here have said that it is natural for people to notice and comment on the OP's weight loss. Well perhaps it is but why? Why are we so obsessed about someone else's weight that we feel we have the right to question their friends about it? And why to people feel such spite and nastiness to someone like my friend because of a diet? My friend has been very honest, as far as I know, and has still fallen victim to behaviour like this? I'm not surprised the OP wanted to keep her operation quiet.

Having said that, I do feel sorry for the OP's friend. From her reaction today it doesn't sound like she was gossiping maliciously, as the OP suspects. She sounds genuinely sorry that her actions have caused the OP such hurt feelings. I hope when you have both had time to calm down you can talk things through and save the friendship OP.

Who has decided how many people knowing makes it no longer a secret? Who is in charge of that definition then?

I really dont understand how this friend has suddenly become Mother Theresa. Is it because she cried? She babysat the OP's DC's for one day, she didn't take them for weeks on end, while single handedly nursing the OP back to health at the same time.

Taking the situation away from fat, as it seems to bring out the most spite in people. Imagine the OP won a certain amount on the lottery. Not millions, but say 500,000. She didn't want to announce this to everyone for very valid reasons, but she told this friend who she trusted and the friend promised not to tell anyone. The OP then bought a sensible, not flash but expensive car (she'd previously had an old banger) and maybe a new handbag.

Behind her back friend is telling everyone in the playground who asks how come OP has suddenly bought a new car, that OP has won the money. Despite being asked not to, and having NO PROBLEM with being asked not to. She never said she was uncomfortable about it at the time, she never expressed any problem with "lying", she said that she absolutely definitely wouldn't tell. But she told everyone who asked, with the proviso they didn't let the OP know that she'd told.

That's not acceptable, that's a betrayal of trust. And it's no different from the actual situation. I don't blame OP at all for deciding she doesn't want to be best friends with someone who has shown her feelings no respect whatsoever. If the friend had come after she'd told person one and said "I'm so sorry, she pressed so much and I felt so uncomfortable lying" then the OP would, I'm sure, have been fine. Instead she just kept on telling people and only admitted to the OP that she'd been mouthing off to all and sundry when she thought one of the people she'd told was likely to let on that friend had told her.

I suspect you've left the thread OP since there is a lot of viciousness suddenly, but IMO you handled it very calmly, and you have every right to decided that you don't want her in your life anymore.

Cly excellent post

Cly - big thumbs up. You have summed it up beautifully.

Why are so many people being horrid to the OP? Her friend betrayed her confidence and it doesn't matter one jot whether you, me or the binman thinks it was no big deal, she does. She is hurt and feels the friendship needs to cool.

And she cooled it. She owned up to her feelings and when opportunity presented itself, she spoke the truth.

That's a really hard thing to do.

Well done OP and like I say, people go weird when others lose weight, you stay true to yourself.

Tread - the op has shown quite a nasty side and has acted very self-importantly. She could have spoken to her friend not been so so nasty and uninvited her to the egg hunt she was organising. As someone else said, she seems to enjoy acting like some kind of queen bee. Noone has a problem with her weight loss - but the problem is her self-importance in this whole matter. Funny how she has flounced off now she realises so many people think she is out of order.

Whatever - Hope your Easter Day BBQ and Easter egg hunt goes really well OP and everyone enjoys the chocolate.

Leave the OP alone !!! Why call her vile?? Grow up!

What you've done has taken willpower and guts. Your friend betrayed your confidence and she shouldn't have. End of.

I've been thinking about this far too much today, and I agree that there is a difference between 'good news' secrets and 'bad news' secrets, with people taking far more care with the bad.

To use the money analogy, no the friend should not have told others that she had won the lottery if the friend didn't want her to. However, if the OP had passed off the same questions with 'We just worked hard" or "DH's business is doing well" then that puts the friend in a difficult position when other people comment on something she knows to be a lie.

The OP said she didn't want people to know in case it wasn't successful. However, it clearly has worked so the original reason she gave her friend doesn't really apply - given that her friend only told others when it became clear that it can't have been through diet alone.

I would say this situation was a little like being pregnant. Recently I knew about a friend's pregnancy before a lot of other people. Actually she wasn't really my friend but the wife of DH's friend. They wanted to keep the pregnancy secret due to early complications. I respected this and didn't tell my friends even though many people commented that she had been ill, what was the matter with her etc etc.

However, if she had turned up at school with a 6 month pregnant bump, and it was perfectly obvious just by looking at her that she was pregnant, it is slightly disingenuous to ask people not to comment or feign ignorance.

Any one who googles it, as I would have to having never heard about it, will see it takes a level of self control. Maybe she was telling them in defence to playground rumours. well done in getting help, but I realy dont think she has done any actual harm. I don't understand the levels of secrecy, what have you been telling people?

And I didn't realise this was 10 pages .. I stand by I don't think she was doing any harm, and now you have binned her as a friend?

Haven't read the whole thread but here is my 2 cents. I think it has a lot to do with the dominant ways of thinking and scripts we have about weight - which are about how everyone wants to lose weight, that doing so is an arduous journey of personal effort and sacrifice (but is always worth it) which is a badge of pride but only if you don't seem too immodest about your achievement. Anything that doesn't fit this script and people on the whole get very uncomfortable at best and unpleasant/aggressive at worst. I lost a lot of weight as a result of being seriously ill. I looked ill. However, I had stacks of people commenting admiringly and asking me for my dieting secrets, then getting totally thrown when I told them and said I would not wish it on anyone. People resent others not giving the 'right' response a fair amount of the time.

I think that is a very good point, EightiesChick. For some strange reason, people have a lot of fixed ideas about The Right Way To Lose Weight. My friend had a similar experience to you, lost loads of weight through stress when her DD was very ill, she has kept it off and looks great but has had some funny responses about it, as if she lost weight in the "wrong" way.

And IMO this is the problem here - the OP is feeling judged, and embarrassed, which is why she has over reacted. I think the OP is right to be upset but I also think she has punished her friend out of proportion to the crime.

I agree, EC. There's a certain social code among women at least when it comes to weight.

There is a tangible sense that in order to be 'admired', you have to be either slim enough OR have a buoyant personality to compensate for the fact that you're fat/not extremely slim.

Of course if you have the weight and the personality you're going to be someone other women really want to be like. And wanting to be like someone is a double edged sword. It involves adoration and resentment. It's actually painful to want to be like someone if you feel you are not able to be like them.

A lot of people experience this pain and rationalise it on some level as being because the person they want to be like has caused it. This isn't true.

It leads to an awful lot of bad feeling between women because of their different weights. And that thing of 'haven't you done well' or 'battling to lose weight' as though it were so, SO important to be slim that almost any sacrifice is worth it.

I admit that when I stopped eating almost entirely in my twenties, and started to lose weight dramatically, it was after a few years of struggling with my body and hating the parts that had grown a bit fat - I'd been skinny since primary school and always was given admiration for the shape of my body.

And as this happened, as I shrank and became able to wear clothes that I'd never nave dreamed I'd get into previously, I was thrilled. It was so exciting to have this sense of power, of being looked at differently, as though I was somehow special because I could wear what I wanted to.

It did not last very long. Soon I found I could not stop the weight loss and it began to frighten me, and the clothes I'd felt so excited about for a brief few weeks now hung off me, and I looked very unattractive. I did not feel attractive again for about 4 years, when I began to eat again. then I went through the same process backwards and luckily, thankfully, stopped somewhere I felt alright.

So I know how powerful it is to lose weight and how magical it can feel. And how having people know how you did it, if it involved something very much NON magical, would take away from that - perhaps necessary? - sense of personal power. And why people finding out this secret would resent it, because they too know how magical it would feel to you, and that's why they might see it as cheating.

But it isn't. There is the reality and there is the fantasy and it's important to keep these discrete. No one has the right to know. The feelings around your own weight loss (or in my case gain) are yours and yours alone and an intrinsic part of the process. No one else should care.

I hope you can sort it out with your friend, it sounds like she made a judgment that everyone would guess anyway, and yes thatwas wrong of her but she sounds sorry.

Let us know how you go with this, if you can OP. And good luck.

The analogy of winning the lottery only works if as shotinthefoot says the lottery winner was also talking about how hard they had worked or how well business was going.

Basically the OP is courting admiration for her will power, determination and conviction when that isn't wholly deserved.

I think, since the OP has had a history of serious eating disorders, which the friend knew about, it's not a "good" secret.

I really don't get "Queen bee" from the OP's posts. I get someone who's had a very difficult relationship with food, serious eating disorders and finally may have found something which is working for her. But she doesn't want to splash it all around the playground in case it doesn't work or goes wrong, and when you've had serious eating disorders you KNOW how wrong it can go.

With all that in mind - even if the friend wasn't being deliberately malicious, the OP, with all her history of serious illness, is going to feel massively betrayed. I don't see queening over anyone - if someone did similar to me I wouldn't want to look at them, never mind invite them to a party I was having. OP as polite and restrained in how she spoke to the friend, I would have shouted at her, or cried myself.

Maybe that's why people are now siding with the friend, if OP had broken down in the playground everyone would have been flocking to be sympathetic. But because she maintained her composure then people think she's a bitch with a power play. There is quite a well documented history of people rounding on women who keep their composure despite being destroyed inside, nowadays you seem to need to weep and wail to get sympathy. Dont cry and you're a cold bitch.

Would people still be on the friend's side if it was a recovery after cancer? An alopecia treatment which was showing results? Is it because they are eating disorders that we don't consider them a valid reason for not wanting to tell all and sundry about it?

I think that the problem is that OP wanted to keep secret something that was pretty self evident.

Not that means her ex friend was right to tell people, but why lie if they had worked it out?

"Basically the OP is courting admiration for her will power, determination and conviction when that isn't wholly deserved."

Have I missed a post where the OP says that? OP says she hasn't talked about it at all with people. She's not preening.

Also major surgery, followed by will power, determination and conviction (have you read the posts detailing what is involved?) is hardly the easy option. Especially after having years of serious eating disorders. I admire her greatly for that. More so than if she'd done bloody atkins or something.

There is a lot of jealousy on this thread about how OP has taken some kind of shortcut easy option and that seems wholly unjustified in this case.

If the OP herself doesn't consider it the easier option why has she pretended that she has "eaten less and moved around more"?

I think there was some mention by the oP of telling people the bare minimum of facts, ie she had eaten less and moved more.

that is hardly courting admiration; if you are someone who perceives that as such, perhaps you are someone who admires people for the wrong reasons.

It shouldn't be about admiration at all but of course the gritty reality is there for nearly all of us, as nearly all of us have had feelings about our eating and weight that we did not find comfortable.

So when someone else destroys the suspension of disbelief, breaks the spell we were believing about them, tramples the magic by actually having something as tangible as surgery in this context we are angry with them.

I think people are angry that she hasn't lived the dream, that it didn't just fall off, that she didn't find the magic key they've all been after.

How better to deal with it than to blame her in some way.

"would people still be on the friend's side if it was a recovery after cancer...."

It's not about the recovery itself though is it?

I would be similar to having suffed from obvious PND and when people remarked on how well you were doing following drugs and counselling saying "oh I just started going for some spa days and trying o be a bit more positive".

What should she have said, Sara?

This is thething, I think it would be very very hard to find the right words without going into complete detail about what she had done. And she was afraid to do that in case it somehow jinxed it, I think (reading between the lines/projecting, take your pick)

what exactly would you have said?