"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?

Soapbox But how do you know if everyone has different definitions? I wouldn't tell anybody including DH, so friends may be surprised I didn't tell him but they won't be upset by it. Where as I'd be pretty pissed off if my friend told her DH things I'd asked her to keep private. How do you know who you can trust?

DH and I spent a weekend in Bournemouth once, it was a night out that turned into a three day bender... does that count as a mini break? Or does it have to be abroad?

And things like spettecake, which I've never seen but apparently is a huge cake thing you make by turning it on a spit. Like a sort of cake kebab. I'm in.

Photograph, you know - or should do - perfectly well that cutting and pasting a dictionary definition of 'gossip' does not answer my question - it was at what point does your relationship purge other people's personal details of the taint of 'gossip' and become a Crucial Thing You Must Discuss?

motherinferior: a sort of cake kebab

That sounds somewhere between disgusting and orgasmic. I have never wanted to try a cake-on-a-spit so much in my life.

Okay. I'm off to buy lunch before I eat my own arm.

Also, you exemplify discussion without acrimony. I wish there were more of you on here.

Shame you don't wish it enough to follow their example. Apparently it's perfectly fine for posters to be "acrimonious" (ie constantly make the nastiest of personal attacks and aspersions on posters' private lives simply for having a different opinion) if they happen to agree with you.

Sorry if being a rape survivor on a thread where rape survivors have been attacked as "whiny attention-seeking drama queens" for wanting their privacy respected doesn't exactly predispose me to being overly pleasant. I believe in giving as good as I get.

PS my last mini-break was to Leicester. What do I win?

Me: Also, you exemplify discussion without acrimony. I wish there were more of you on here.

Tabasco: Shame you don't wish it enough to follow their example. Apparently it's perfectly fine for posters to be "acrimonious" (ie constantly make the nastiest of personal attacks and aspersions on posters' private lives simply for having a different opinion) if they happen to agree with you. Sorry if being a rape survivor on a thread where rape survivors have been attacked as "whiny attention-seeking drama queens" for wanting their privacy respected doesn't exactly predispose me to being overly pleasant. I believe in giving as good as I get.

Just as things were starting to go so nicely.

It would seem that you are accusing me of being acrimonious. Kindly go back over my PPs, and point out where I have "made the nastiest of personal attacks and aspersions on posters' private lives" or called rape survivors "whiny attention-seeking drama queens".

my last mini-break was to Leicester. What do I win?

Red cheese

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.

And when we're there, we'll take loads of photographs of our hotel bedrooms, and houses in shrubberies, and beer, and ...

Tabasco, let me try to offer an olive branch. I get that PP have said things that have upset you and appear to have stubbed a nerve for you in a very particular way. Perhaps I'm wrong, but if I'm not, then whatever lies behind that, I'd like to offer you .

Ultimately, though, there's a big wide world out there and plenty of people have plenty of different ideas about these moral quandaries. To some, the answers seem very black and white, and I rather envy them. To others (and I'm one of them) they seem much more grey and very difficult to negotiate. I am constantly blundering in these kinds of issues and will go on doing so probably as long as I live. I don't do so out of malice but because, in some cases, the rules are unwritten and what one person thinks of as "common sense" is entirely inaccessible to another person with a different upbringing or frame of reference.

I don't apologise for, or excuse anyone else who has been rude or mean-spirited to you, but for your own well-being and happiness, maybe it's time to shrug off their actions, which are ultimately all about them, and think to yourself, "Eh, well, your choice, your life, you have to wake up with yourself every day, and I get to wake up with me."

warrick As I've said before, these are all conversations I've had before with my friends and family. Not explicitly. There's never been a friendship induction meeting. However, knowing somebody for years means that at some point, a conversation has occurred because most of us assume dp may be told or understand that some people have very close relationships with a parent, sibling etc that they do not consider to be 'anyone'. Relationships are complex.

I know and accept that people have different expectations, and am therefore explicit if I need to tell somebody something but don't want a linked person to know.

I'm not upset at all, I've been laughing at most of the thread. Merely pissed off at the hypocrisy (hypocrisy of any kind always grinds my gears) where saying "Toastie's marriage* is obviously crap and she's childish and kinda racist and oh btw rape survivors who want privacy are attention seeking drama queens" is fine but mildly laughing at something half the thread has been mocking, or posting "people who brag about their perfect lives are a bit suss" starts WWIII.

*I'm not married.

Soapbox I've known my friend since secondary school (nearly 20 years) and she's never said to us that she talks to her Bf about the things we say.

In my position would you tell a mutual friend that their issues had been discussed with another person?

learnt allot from this, don't trust people in serious relationships/married and to be glad I am single as apparently I will lose all sense of individuality and become a lousy friend when I do find someone.

Tabasco, you did see the bit where I conceded that your post was probably not culturally stereotyping, right? In case it helps, I was missing the context about the poster using it as some sort of weird bragging rights.

Also you say you're not upset at all but then nine words later you say you're pissed off. Whatever the case, I am going to take my own advice about living and let live, wish you well, and enjoy my cheese and onion crisps and tea.

NotCarylChurchill: Oh stop being so PA, ForTheSakeofFuck.

That's actually the first time I've laughed on this whole thread.

Afternoon, Caryl. Have a good one.

Upset and pissed off are not the same thing?

Pretty rum "olive branch" though, isn't it? First you 'subtly' cast aspersions on my personal life and motives by suggesting that if I'm pissed off at hypocrisy and personal attacks etc it's probably because of some problem in my personal life that I'm projecting onto you. Which is pretty problematic in a thread where other Tellers have directly said: "You must have a shit marriage" about various posters who are non-Tellers.

Then you explain that you're just sooooo much more sophisticated in your ability to view the world in shades of grey and how much you envy us poor simpletons who see the world in black and white. (Which is ludicrous anyway -- I've detailed several "grey" circumstances where non-Tellers might tell or Tellers not tell, while the "I always tell my husband everything, period, if you have a different opinion you must be in a shit marriage" brigade typify black and white thinking.)

It's really a masterclass in the art of the passive aggressive faux apology. Brava!

You know, Tabasco, it is like you WANT to see offense. I will try one last time and then I give up.

I acknowledged that PPs have been rude and mean-spirited. I then suggested that some of their comments might be more hurtful than they would otherwise be because of something in the background, not to "cast aspersions" on you, but to acknowledge that you'd have a pretty good reason to be upset if that's true. I didn't want to seem dismissive if there were indeed extra aspects at play, since being dismissive of people with awful circumstances surrounding them seems to be something that you have taken exception to.

I then said that some people see things as black and white because they get it and I don't. Not "oh clever me, stupid them". Literally exactly the opposite. I envy the people who can look at these complex problems and see the answer instantaneously. I literally feel like I am missing some wiring in my brain that helps me to understand what the correct course of action is to these things sometimes. The black-and-whites seem able to just look at the problem and go, "That's the solution", and despite it taking them a nanosecond to process, they're often right. I have to sit and calculate like some sort of ancient computer and come up with, "Well, based on logic and reasoning, this looks like the solution" and then, a good proportion of the time, it turns out that I'm wrong. If that somehow sounds to you like I am making myself out to be oh so clever then for god's sake come and live a life in my shoes for a few weeks and see how much fun it is.

But yes. This was all a terribly elaborate insult disguised as an olive branch. (It was not an apology, incidentally - I can't apologise for what others have said, only my own actions.)

Caryl: I thought you said you were leaving?

It seems my continued presence here is important to you?

Yes. My OH has his friends and I have mine and I would never expect him to tell me something a friend told him not to tell anyone about and vice versa nor would I ask for him to tell me because we're married. A friendship is also a relationship and the most important thing in most if not all relationships is trust. If my bf trust me enough to tell me something that she doesn't want anyone to know then I'm going to show her I appreciate that trust by not telling anyone including OH. I'm pretty sure anyone includes everyone and unless a friend says you can tell OH, don't tell anyone.

warrick I answered this before. I said you should all sit down and discuss it because either you have different views and didn't know it or she's knows fine well what your views are (and that of your other friend) and did it anyway.

Eitherway you need to come to a new understanding or not be friends.

ForTheSakeOfFuck

Thank you, Tabasco. No hard feelings, I hope.

soapboxqueen my sibling and partner told myself and DM they were expecting a baby when she was 8 weeks (the reason for telling us early is irrelevant).

My oldest and most trusted friend (and housemate) knew they had "news" as I was invited round for that reason. It would have been odd to say, "I can't tell you if they're getting married or she's pregnant" but in hindsight I should have said, "It's good news but I can't go into detail."

I know this because even though I asked her not to tell anyone, a few days later I was at her parents' house celebrating her DGM's birthday and her DM asked in front of her family "How's your mum Mog? Looking forward to being a grandma?"

I obviously gave a sharp look as she tried to make out that I had told her personally "the other evening," which was bollocks.

At no point in our long friendship have I ever imagined I would have to clarify what "Please keep it to yourself" means.

Had the pregnancy ended in mc (thankfully not) my friend, her DM, her DGM and her DF would all have known.