"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?

noeffing: I've got to say, I wouldn't post my friends confidential information on mumsnet, either. I know it's anonymous, but it still doesn't sit well with me. This forum can be read by anyone.

Exactly. I find it remarkable that posting a friend's confidential disclosure on a massive, public forum, in writing that can be searched, retrieved, and read years later, for a huge audience of anonymous people whose characters are largely unknown, on a site where threads are regularly picked up by the international media is somehow not a breach of confidence - at least for Ithaka, yet conveying something privately, in speech that vanishes from the outside world as soon as it is said, to one person (typically the DH) whom one hopefully knows very well is somehow the most appalling blabbery gossipy nastiness imaginable.

ForTheSakeOfFuck

After all, I doubt that you think people who take mini-breaks to Italy or the Alps or New York or Dubai are boring, right?

Okay. Now I get your issue. You're reading it as a slur on Denmark, rather than mini-breaks. (On a side-note, why do you think a mini-break in Dubai, of all places, would be seen as exciting on MN? )

I am not the poster in question, but "I'm not boring, I'm taking a mini-break to [ anywhere ]" is a great comic line. I'm envisaging what Victoria Wood, queen of deadpan and irony, could have done with that!

TabascoToastie I should find your comments irritating, but I can't help finding them quite sad. We claim to have an amazing life and perfect marriage because we talk with our husbands? You must have incredibly low standards.

No, because you talk about everyone else's private stuff with your husband.

And you still haven't explained the demarcation between 'gossip' and 'non-gossip' apart from saying oh it's because you care so much (which is a bit ironic really).

Fwiw no, I don't debrief my partner rigorously on every issue in my life. I'm quite busy. So is he.

photograph I just don't understand why you don't draw a line between 'things that are about my husband and myself' and 'things that are about a third party that therefore aren't really any of my husband's business, even though I may know about them'.

I was taking the piss out of the fact someone would brag about a mini-break anywhere as proof of how much better and more exciting and glamorous they are.

I'm sorry but I genuinely don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about - since when does Copenhagen have the slightest negative connotation? I think Copenhagen is a wonderful place and it's somewhere I would absolutely love to visit. If there are negative slurs/stereotypes associated with Denmark then I whole-heartedly apologise but that's literally the first time I've ever heard that! Anyway the conversation is about tourists, not Danes. "Tourists who take mini-breaks to popular tourist destinations" are not a protected minority group.

As you ask, yes I would have said the same about any mini-break anywhere. Copenhagen is certainly perceived as a lot more upmarket/slagged off less than Dubai so not sure what's that about. And I don't see how the difference between a Copenhagen mini-break and a Swiss mini-break, aren't they basically more or less the same?

And really the "mini-break" post was . There are plenty of MN posters with international/accomplished lives (published authors, filmmakers, media hotshots, diplomats, politicians, academics) and plenty of MN posters with pretty shit lives (poverty, disability, chronic illness, DV). In that context bragging about how expensive your hotel room is, is pretty tone-deaf.

gossip
ɡɒsɪp/
noun
1.
casual or unconstrained conversation or reports about other people, typically involving details which are not confirmed as true.

gossip
^noun UK /ˈɡɒs.ɪp/ US /ˈɡɑː.səp/^

B2 [ S or U ] conversation or reports about other people's private lives that might be unkind, disapproving, or not true

This thread is horrifying. Some of you really do not deserve to have friends at all.

*Tara: On a side-note, why do you think a mini-break in Dubai, of all places, would be seen as exciting on MN? "

I am woefully under-educated on some of the MN tropes, it turns out.

Tabasco: I was taking the piss out of the fact someone would brag about a mini-break anywhere

So the "joke" was, effectively, "I'm not boring, I'm taking a mini-break"...? Uh-huh. Okay then.

thankfully, some of us have close friends with the same values and understanding, so everybody is happy and no one is throwing a tantrum. It wouldn't occur to most of us that there is so much drama and over-complicated rules.

That's the beauty of MN, you discover new things and new reasons to be offended every single day.

We claim to have an amazing life and perfect marriage because we talk with our husbands? You must have incredibly low standards.

The 'tellers' are the ones who keep insisting the fact they would repeat every piece of random minor gossip to their husbands even if asked not to is proof of their deep abiding connection, their commitment, the true trust and honesty in their partnership, etc etc and that anyone who would respect a friend's desire for privacy is obviously in a terrible dishonest marriage to a partner they don't really love.

Obviously all of us talk to our husbands! "Talking to our husbands" =/= "not repeating totally irrelevant gossip when you've been explicitly asked not to."

Personally when I talk to my OH we are so busy talking about our own hectic lives and careers, or talking about international politics (Trump!), or talking about films and books, there would simply be no space to go, "Ooh did I tell you Mavis wet herself in the checkout queue in Homebase, her pelvic floor is a mess since she had the twins, but it's secret so don't tell anyone!" If I was to start doing my best impression of Ena Sharples my OH would think I'd gone insane.

ForTheSakeOfFuck - yes because the poster was acting like she was announcing she'd won the Nobel Prize when actually she was bragging about something very very commonplace and ordinary. Mocking delusions of grandeur is one of the mainstays of British comedy.

good day ladies

So many women embracing the stereotype of being women gossiping here its sad really. Either that or the "all money is family money" thing has been expanded into all "all knowledge is family knowledge".

Photograph

I am woefully under-educated on some of the MN tropes, it turns out.

You are. You really are!

I read Tabasco's post in exactly the way she explains, you know. I think the people on a UK-based website who find profligate spending to constitute the opposite of a fascinating personality will vastly outnumber the number of people who stereotype Denmark as boring. So give her the benefit of the doubt, eh?

Denmark is too far away for negative prejudices to really develop a foothold in the national hivemind: we save that for the Germans and the French.

By the way, I am a deeply boring person with some interesting hobbies. If I ever said, "I'm not boring, I go kayaking!", I would expect everyone who heard me to take the piss solidly for the next six months. Going Kayaking on my annual leave does not make me interesting. Becoming a kayaking instructor might, but a couple of holidays? No.

Or, "I'm spiritual, I stayed in a monastery for a week on my gap year". The monastery isn't the object of ridicule, it's the idea that staying at one for a week makes you a higher being...

I've never been on a mini-break.

Do I win the thread?

PS Top post TaraCarter

I would like to go to Denmark. I am part Danish and I've never been. Also I could drink beer there.

Tara: I read Tabasco's post in exactly the way she explains, you know. I think the people on a UK-based website who find profligate spending to constitute the opposite of a fascinating personality will vastly outnumber the number of people who stereotype Denmark as boring. So give her the benefit of the doubt, eh?

When reasoned like that, I'm happy to concede the point. Also, you exemplify discussion without acrimony. I wish there were more of you on here.

Peter: I've never been on a mini-break.

Me three. I wish there were some sort of MN oracle that you could plug various details into and it would tell you What This Means About You.

Wait.

I've just remembered. There is. It's called AIBU.

I still think I win.

tabasco Tellers have not been explicitly asked to do anything. If they had eg don't tell anyone including dp. That would be a different discussion.

However for some people telling nobody means just that, for others it doesn't include dp. As long is that is understood, it is literally nobody else's business.

I assume anything I say to a person, is also said to their partner.

When my parents say, don't tell anyone, they mean nobody outside of our immediate family. That is what is understood.

If anything else is required. That is explicitly stated.

Doesn't Denmark have a superb line in beers and pastries?

Sounds like heaven to me.

I vote me, Peter, mother, and whoever else is interested all go have a mini-break there. I am so up for eating a blimp-sized pile of fatty, sugary crap right now.

Doesn't Denmark have a superb line in beers

Probably

ForTheSake and FlyAway, thank you.

My head is swelling as I type. I will have to eat twice as much Easter chocolate to get my body to match!