"Well of course I was going to tell BF"

[WarwickDavisAsPlates]

I originally wrote quite a long post detailing the entire situation and how this came up but it got too long.

So basically what I want to know is: if a friend told you something and said "but please don't tell anyone" would you think that included your OH?

I just asked my husband whether he'd tell me a friend's secret. His face was

I wouldn't breach a confidence. I'd make sure friends were aware that if asked I wouldn't lie to my husband. If they couldn't cope with that then they'd need to not tell me. It's not that I'd rush home from seeing a friend to say"Guess what...." My relationship with my husband trumps all others, absolutely and totally. Of course there is confidential information at work that I am professionally bound to respect but that's, in my opinion, very different from keeping secrets.

Someone I know had a problem with incontinence and told me not to tell anyone. If I came home and announced to my OH "guess what, some random woman you barely know keeps wetting herself!" OH would think I'd either gone completely insane or was actually a malicious gossip. Would the tellers really insist on not keeping that secret?

Come to that, I don't really have secrets - I think they are usually destructive because they inhibit integrity and honesty. What would I hide?
Do you make a public announcement every time you have diarrhea? Huge difference between "not blabbering every tiny irrelevant thing" and "keeping secrets." Of course don't keep a secret if it's your own secret, but these aren't.

I am genuinely shocked there are people who would roll their eyes at a child sexual abuse survivor wanting basic privacy with the attitude of durrrr it happens to tons of people you aren't special stop being "a drama queen." That either speaks to some unresolved trauma (which I truly sympathize with) or a pathological lack of empathy.

Just live a straightforward life and don't do things you'd be ashamed of people finding out. I'm not ashamed of the abuse anymore - if someone judges me for it that's on them, not me.
I'm so sorry that happened to you and glad you've managed to find peace, but outing abuse victims against their will is not okay! And the wording of "don't do things you're ashamed of" is pretty victim-blamey. Most of the examples ie rape, miscarriage, medical issues are hardly by choice.

I tell my DH things that I am told in confidence quite a lot. I think it is assumed that when you are in a long term relationship that you do just tell your partner everything.

Eg) I'm friends with 4 girls from uni. friend A is having marriage issues. We all met up at friend B's house and friend B started talking about it in front of her husband. Friend A didn't bat an eyelid as she assumed we all told our husbands, even tho she'd told us previously not to tell anyone. She wasn't bothered we told our husbands.

Also i went on a long car journey with my boss last week and he told me a few things in confidence about himself, some feelings about work and some personal things about some mutual associates. I told DH as I needed someone to discuss with. Again, I'm pretty sure my boss wouldn't care that i told DH ... but of course I wouldn't tell other colleagues or anyone who knows the mutual associates etc

Do you do that to make yourself seem more interesting to your husband?

I wouldn't tell my husband. If it was regarding one of my friends he wouldn't be that interested any way. If he had a secret concerning one of his friends I'm happy not to know. We have enough in our own lives mot to want to be enmeshed in each other's friends' lives

I would say that DH falls under the umbrella of 'anyone'

Agree that it isn't me keeping secrets from my husband but me not revealing intimate confidences from MY friend to my husband. We both have jobs that require us to keep confidences so neither of us feels the need to gossip about stuff that doesn't concern the other.

I do feel this is about nasty gossipy tendencies, not keeping secrets from your husband that would otherwise destroy your marriage

crumbs
Several years ago my friend was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
When she initially found out she was in total shock and needed to confide in someone. She wanted time to get her head around the information. She told me over coffee and begged me not to tell anyone. She wanted to do it in her own tome and she did eventually. My friend died 5 months 4 days after finding out. I dint tell DH until she was ready for that info to be shred. It was her story not mine. I was just the support.

I love DH dearly and I don't think I did anything wrong. If I kept a secret that is personal to me , now that is a different story. We share our stories but I don't need to gossip about others.

Whathaveilost, strangely people confide deeply personal stuff to me quite frequently. Nasty stuff like middle class domestic abuse, sad stuff like marital problems a variety of stuff. I'm quite a good listener and totally un shockable. I would never agree to holding that information from my husband, if asked, but then he'd not usually ask unless I seemed upset (and I am not given to tearful breakdowns). Then again I wouldn't rush in saying "Guess what".
Neither of us really do gossip unless it was to check a neighbour was ok or similar (e.g. Have you seen Rosie since Sunday, her bins not been put out? Regarding 90 year old who lives alone).
Tobascotoastie Do I blabber on about diarrhoea? Not generally, I have good hand and food hygiene so it's not an issue. Would my husband ask if I seemed to be unwell? Of course and I would say I'd an upset belly as we'd need to mitigate against risk of spread.
My husband wouldn't be asking about whether anyone had mentioned incontinence to me, so I wouldn't again start the "Guess what" conversation. That's not what I perceive as keeping a secret. Similarly with child sexual abuse, if it's a secret don't tell anyone apart from those with a professional relationship but if you ask to tell me I'd make clear I wouldn't lie to my husband. I can't see why he'd be asking unless someone was downstairs in our kitchen weeping and wailing. He might then ask "What was all that about?" I don't tend to lie to anyone, in fact so always make clear my boundaries.

Secrets to me involve lying - telling husband I was at Waitrose when I'd gone for a drink with a male colleague, saying my shoes were £40 not the £240 I paid for them, not telling him one of our children had been arrested or that I was pregnant again.

Me and DH are not a singke entity so of course I wouldnt tell him
I have a friend and anything you say to her becomes a Tim and Jane piece of information.
It annoys me.
As a result she doesnt get told certain things and i wouldnt confide in her.
Sure there will be lots of people like "but me and DH are a team and we have no secrets at all because not vomuntarily discussing everything any friend says is going to destroy trust in our relationship". Im not buying it.
Its simple if youve been told not to tell anyone then OH/DH is somebody.

crumbs 3 out of those 4 situations you described involved information about yourself. Do you not differentiate between your husbands right to know things about yourself (and your children in the other example), and things about another person, which presumably would have nothing to do with him?
What would you have done in the situation described by whathaveilost?

Nobody rushes home to share titillating gossip with their DP to make themselves look more interesting, for goodness sake.

People have different processing styles- I process externally, it's hard for me to think about something serious inside my head. I need to talk it through. If you tell me something that I need to think about, I'm going to talk about it with DH. I will not know what to do or think or feel until I do, not because he tells me- in fact he barely listens. He isn't that interested and probably begrudges the time he could spend reading the paper, but that's just him.

Confidentiality means different things to different people. Professional is different to personal. Even professionals often have a mentor/supervision type relationship where they are allowed to discuss the usually confidential in order to decompress from the stress of the knowledge they are holding.

I can't imagine a friendship close enough to confide solely in me wouldn't know that I might need to tell my husband. It's kind of assumed amongst out friends that we don't lie to our husband's/wives. So, when I was diagnosed with cancer I didn't want most people to know (and very few did). I did tell our two closest friends as we eat with them often and go away together etc plus doesn't feel right not being truthful to people we are close to. I absolutely understood that when I told wives that they would tell their husbands-even though I'd said I didn't want people to know. I wouldn't ask people to lie to their husbands on my behalf.

Thats sad crumbs. I don't see that as being a true friend really, whereas whathaveilost is.
Not betraying a friends confidence isn't really the same as 'telling a lie' though, at least not to me.

Why is not mentioning something "lying"?

I was out last night with a couple of friends. We talked about loads of stuff-am I lying to my dp if I don't faithfully tell him everything we talked about? We talked, for instance, about a screw up one of them had made at work. She didn't as it happens, tell me not to tell anyone but I probably won't, because it's complicated and he doesn't really know her. Do the tellers think I should tell him anyway? And if not, why does it suddenly become "lying" if she had asked us not to tell anyone?

I am, as ever, appalled by the people who don't understand that "don't tell anyone" means "don't tell anyone".

Me too motherinferior.

Every time this subject comes up, it horrifies me that people are so incapable of keeping their friends' confidences.

The exact example in this OP is exactly why. The men here have been told about something by the women. But the man who was being talked about doesn't know that they have been talking about him. It's gossip, pure and simple.

I don't keep secrets from dh. But I would make that clear to anyone before they unload their problems on me. I don't pass on every last detail though - so when I was a safe ear for a friend who was coming to terms with childhood abuse he knew she'd been abused but that was it, except when she chose to tell him some stuff herself.

I absolutely 'keep secrets' from my partner if they're not my secrets.

I didn't tell an ex, for years, that the mutual friend who introduced us had been abused as a child. It wasn't my secret to tell.

Barbarianmum- when you say you don't keep secrets- do you mean that if you have an evening with friends you tell your dp everything you talked about?

BertrandRussell Have you not RTFT? This exact question was answered yesterday

So much unnecessary drama. People asking to keep things secrets, or the ones so keen on keeping "secrets" from their partner are really trying to make their life more interesting and make themselves sound all important. Who really cares? We are not talking about idle gossip, and telling the whole neighborhood that someone just had a miscarriage or you found proof of serious fraud happening at work. Privacy is one thing, but "don't tell your husband I am telling you that" is very childish.
Or is it pride to tell your husband you can't trust him so you don't tell him anything? That sounds even worst.
It would never occur to me that my friends would keep things hidden from their partners. They don't have to tell them, but expecting to be mute is silly.

Eh? We're just saying - if it's private, it's private. Of course I don't tell my partner someone else's private stuff. It's very simple.