To tell my DP things friends tell me?

[CharlieMouseWillDoIt]

One of my closest friends told me that her and her DP are going to start trying for another baby soon. She didn't tell me not to tell anyone, but it obviously was implicit that I wasn't going to start shouting it from the rooftops. I did, however, tell my DP.

This got me thinking - my husband and I tell each other pretty much everything, including things our friends say and do. DP and I keep what we say between ourselves and don't spread gossip between friends.

Are we being unreasonable??

"The only stuff I don't talk about with DH is stuff that is covered by confidentiality at work and that is because I signed an agreement to that effect when I began working there and I take contracts very seriously."

Ah. Well, I take friendships very seriously!

Bizarre that you would keep a stranger's secrets but not a friend's.

I honestly don't tell dh Anything that friends have told me if it's private. Often my friend choose to share things with him themselves but that is their choice. If a friend comes round for a chat my dh will often head upstairs to watch tv as he and I feel it's very important to have friendships outside of our marriage which can be confidential.

At the risk of upsetting everyone before I leave for work..... Those putting there dh before anyone and everything do you not think that sometimes your friends would be the only ones getting you through some situations ie. marriage breakup, partner passing away or something equally devastating. The reason I ask is if you honestly think of yourself and dh as 'one'. What would happen to you emotionally if there was a time when you were not indeed 'one'.

Everyday we hear of people whose marriages have broken down and they are getting divorced. I know it's not something you can plan for or be governed by but I think it's health to have relationships with friends and family that are completely your own.

Do people really think that if a friend asks for your opinion that they want the opinion of your dh's. Surely if that was the case they would be friend with your dh and not you?

Possibly bizarre.

But there you go, that is how it is.

I take my friendships very seriously as well, I don't pretend to be anything that I am not and I don't expect anyone else to.

My friends know who I am, I am a very uncomplicated type, as are they on the whole.

I don't really have any secrets, the work thing has never come up because DH has never asked about work and I have never asked about his, we are just not interested and we have both signed confidentiality clauses, we talk about work in the general sense but not in the specific.

Friends are different, there is overlap, he cares about the same people I care about, if it effects me then it effects him.

DH is socially adept, he is very unlikely to pass on any sort of secret I tell him, it isn't a concern because I don't know any and intend to keep it that way.

'Mate before Dates' was fine when we were 16, but he is a husband of 14 years and a mate of 20, I am not interested in my other relationships as I am in the same way.

That is how it is and it works for me/us so I really can't see any reason to change things.

husband and wife (or other arrangement) are one person. telling one is telling both. its up to them whether they disclose or not, partner might not be interested. but you can't tell one of a pair without being ready for the other to hear.

I love DH to bits, trust him absolutely but we are not one person!!

I can see now that I was quite right whenI worked out aged 6 yrs that if you really want to keep a secret then you don't tell anyone.

I have friends who have asked me not to tell anyone and I never have, even years later.
I might well discuss it with DH but I wouldn't if they had specifically asked me not to. Of course you should be able to tell one of a pair and expect it not to go further or you have very strange friends- not ones that I would particularly want in the first place!

As I said- people who cast aside friendships when they get boyfriends often end up very unhappy.

All my friends know that I consider DH and I to be 1 unit. I am completely open with him and have no secrets, even other peoples secrets, that he does not know about. DH is the same with me.

That said, if a friend says to me "Don't tell anyone about this", before they tell me I always make it clear that I will share with DH, so if they don't want DH to know what they are going to tell me, don't tell me IYSWIM.

Ah well, after 20 years it is a risk I am willing to take.

I have friends that predate DH, friends that have nothing to do with DH, friends of DH who are now mine, couple friends, single friends, close friends, peripheral friends, all sorts of friends, it is all good.

Nothing on this thread has led me to think I need to rethink any of my mates and our relationships.

I can see that I was a very wise DC at 6 yrs!

So what if somebody told you something,then said "don't tell anyone"?

Would you say "I'm sorry, I am obliged to tell my dp- otherwise our perfect union will be tainted"?

I think it would be very very silly to do that seeker if it is that important then you would think they would have a think before they opened their mouth at all, to anyone.

I am confident that all the people who would be sharing this sort of stuff with me know my deal. So it isn't a problem.

I worked out aged 6 yrs that if you really want to keep a secret then you don't tell anyone

That's it exactly. And it's bloody naive to think if you tell a friend something it stays secret, DH or no DH.

'I can see now that I was quite right whenI worked out aged 6 yrs that if you really want to keep a secret then you don't tell anyone.'

I too, totally agree with this.

Once two people know something it isn't a secret anymore.

I don't know about "casting aside friendships" but I've never had a best female friend apart from a couple of years at secondary school. I see my friends from school twice a year or so and we do confide in each other a fair bit when we meet up. I'd probably only tell DH this stuff if he might put his foot in it by not knowing.With my local friends I don't know them well enough to swap secrets. So my husband is my best friend, also I'm very close to my parents and inlaws. I guess with the friends I see most often we tend to just socialise & have fun & I'm not that close to them, but may be one day.

Having read all this I will will stick with don't tell anyone if it really is a secret.

I am surprised that people's DHs are so interested!

It would be bloody naive to tell your closest friends your secrets, if they were all like you, then, Whatme!

I would hope that my friends would be there to listen to me, in a crisis, without gossiping my confidences to others. What about "a problem shared is a problem halved?" or should it be, "a problem shared is a problem just made a million times worse, because now, potentially, everyone knows about it!"

I don't think it is unreasonable to share things with your husband/ partner provided that the friend confiding in you knows that's what you will do. If you make it clear that everything you are told will be repeated then fair enough, if you don't make that clear however there is a chance that the person is trusting you to keep it to yourself.

I was put in this situation recently, a very good friend told me a secret and asked me not to tell anyone. So I told no one, not even my partner or best friend, both of whom this information was relevant to. After a couple of weeks I started to feel really bad, I felt like I was effectively lying to them because when we had conversations about x I was withholding really relevant info. I became really upset and anxious about it. I then went back to my friend and said look, I can't keep this secret, it's doing my head in. My friend understood and agreed thatnincouldntalknto them. I would never have just gone behind my friends back to blab the secret, but I have also made it clear to him that he can't expect me to keep stuff like that to myself for any length of time. His choice now if he chooses to confide in me again or not.

Sorry so long, basically I think we should be upfront with our friends about who we will tell what to, so they can make an informed decision about who to confide in.

YANBU

I tell DH almost everything. Unless it was a case of TMI where DH perhaps wouldn't want to know or I was not asked to tell anyone at all.

If I didn't tell him, and I began to fret about it, then DH would nag until I told him anyway. He wouldn't want me to worry. He is discreet and would use common sense if the situation were to present itself, IYSWIM.

"I think it would be very very silly to do that seeker if it is that important then you would think they would have a think before they opened their mouth at all, to anyone."

Possibly. But if they did?

But what you did was fine, happy, because you asked before you told. Presumably, if the person with the secret had said no, you wouldn't have told ( or you wouldn't have asked in the first place).

I think that people need to be upfront and actually say ' don't tell me if you don't want my DH to know'. It is unfair to be told a secret and then pass it on to anyone as a 'special case'.

Then that is unfortunate seeker because if my DH did express an interest (which is unlikely) then I would tell him and if the friend finished this conversation with such a qualifier then I would feel like I had to tell her that I would, perhaps it would mean the end of the friendship, who knows.

DH isn't terribly interested in my 'girl'friends by the way, I can remember one time in the whole time I have known him that he has asked me if something was wrong with a friend of ours and at that time I didn't know what was up (turns out she was having problems TTC and did eventually share with us which was great as we were able to be of help as they did IVF).

He has friends who I don't 'know' as well and other than a general 'How are they?' if he has seen them, I am not terribly interested in his mates either.

I can see how I have given the impression that we spend our time gossiping about our friends, we don't. I just don't feel the need to keep a 'secret' but neither do I feel the need to volunteer unnecessary information.

If we were having marital problems I would talk to a couple of my friends about DH, I would not expect them to not mention it if their DH's asked, I would expect it to stay between them though and go no further.

"Then that is unfortunate seeker because if my DH did express an interest (which is unlikely) then I would tell him and if the friend finished this conversation with such a qualifier then I would feel like I had to tell her that I would, perhaps it would mean the end of the friendship, who knows."

But WHY?

At the risk of being flamed again, I really find it hard to believe that some posters on here NEVER discuss ANYTHING about their friends with their DH/DP.

I also think that what I meant in my OP has been rather overblown. I wasn't talking about a friend sitting me down in confidence, with her taking a deep breath and divulging a massive secret and then me going straight to DH to tell.

This is an example of the sort of thing I share with my DH - an ex-colleague/friend had been TTC for many, many years with several failed IVF attempts. Finally one worked and she emailed me with the news once she got to 12 weeks. She said that she wasn't going to announce it on Facebook until she'd had the anomaly scan at 20 weeks.

My DH was in the room when I read the email - I almost literally had tears running down my face. I immediately told him the good news. But the chance of the news spreading any further than us was zero (my DH and her have only met a handful of times and no overlap of friends etc). If, on the other hand, I'd blabbed to someone my ex-colleague and I used to work with - that would be unforgivable.