Would I BU to confront this person?

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During and after my tough break-up with exP, I shared personal things with friends about the situation hoping for advice or just a shoulder to cry on. I am not one for airing my dirty laundry in public (bar Mumsnet where I'm anonymous!), but I found out from my ex that a certain person has been going around saying I have been telling 'everyone' he's done X,Y,Z. He would not say who the culprit was.

I have serious suspicions about a certain 'friend' who has been acting really bizarrely lately. e.g. distancing herself on purpose and then complaining that she's feeling left out. Not bothering with her friends and only chiming in when there's some interesting gossip in it for her. Sharing another friend's upset with someone and gloating about knowing something they didn't. I don't want to start a witch hunt in case this person is genuinely innocent, but she has made certain comments which prove that she is capable of this.

If it is not this person, then my only other conclusion is that exP has made the whole thing up to make me look bad. But neither of us have anything to gain from doing that, and we have been civil with each other up until this point.

I just want it to blow over and forget the whole thing, but if I never find out who betrayed my trust, I might always be wary of my own friends. I think everyone has the right to feel comfortable sharing personal things knowing it won't go any further.

Long story short, would I be unreasonable to confront (or at least ask casually) oddly behaving friend if it was her, or should I just let it go?

Might your ex be shit stirring?

For something like this you have to plant a lie.

Tell her something that only you know, then when your ex says something about it, then you know for sure you cant trust her.

Seeing as everything she has said before is a pack of lies, no-one will believe her anyway if it was the truth.

It's not a great way of doing things and can backfire, but you need to know who you can trust and who not to. I learnt this the hard way and found out I could only rely on 1 person out of everyone that I knew. Including family.

It could be the ex shit stirring, but I've no idea what the point is in that for either of us, we aren't friends exactly but we're civil in public and I've always maintained a dignified silence about the relationship breakdown unless talking with (who I thought were) close friends.

The woman who I'm suspicious of has been distancing herself lately, so I haven't had a chance to talk to her properly in order to test a fake bit of gossip, I do worry about that backfiring though! Probably just best to avoid, but this is a small town full of gossips anyway. It would only take one 'friend' to casually mention something to someone and for it to be passed on multiple times, get blown out of proportion and taken out of context! Ex-P and I had a lot of mutual friends too, so you just never know. I hate this backlash, we had a difficult but relatively clean break-up with no contact until this has come to light!

In my town once you get a reputation for yourself, it's hard to shake off. Luckily I'm thinking of moving anyway to pursue a new career!

I used to live in a small village andi do understand how it is. I was always amazed anyone did anything other than look out of the window whilst on the mobile:)
I wouldn't tell her anything else, just chat to a few of the more prolific gossips about how people have been gossiping and got it wrong. That's all you cn do, I think. And carry on- someone else is bound to hog the limelight soon.
Good luck with your new job, I moved away too, but I did miss the cameraderie after a bit, but I am older now and not really gossip material ( fingers crossed)