AIBU to avoid neighbour after they gossiped about other neighbours

[TonyMammoth]

How does this work? I don't want to be nosey but I am curious. Our neighbours across the way have lived here for about 2 years. I presumed they were a lesbian married couple, they both wore wedding rings. They went away for their 20th wedding anniversary last year and we looked after the dog. Then another neighbour - have not got into conversation with them about this as it's horrible - has said that one of the couple used to be a man and had gender reassignment 9 years ago and changed his name to the female variant (Simon now being Simone) and they dug around to find this out because they knew same sex marriage wasn't legal in 2005 "so they must have had a handfasting ceremony that isn't legal" then they found this out. It was almost an a-ha moment. I genuinely didn't realise Simone was once Simon and haven't told anyone - they moved from Scotland too so nobody around here knows them.

The neighbour said their marriage is no longer legal and they will have to marry again as a same sex couple and that the other partner found a man when her husband transitioned but didn't want to break up with him/her. How they have found this out is a mystery.

AIBU to think this is a nasty thing for the neighbour to do - they literally said it over the fence - and not to get involved with any conversation about it, ghost the neighbour and treat the couple just the same. They're great and we like them as do others in the close. It all beggars belief. What if they find out that people know? The other neighbour is what you would have in the 1960s called a curtain twitcher.

It isn't anyone else's business is it?

Before I am accused of gossip all details have been changed. No way am I talking about this to people I know.

Well let's face it, instead of shutting the conversation down immediately, you stood there listening to it all.

In my opinion that makes you part of it, as your neighbour can't gossip to you if you don't listen.

So be the change you'd like to see.

I agree with you, they had no reason to find this all out and certainly no reason to tell you the couple's private business.

Part of me would want to bring up a very similar story ie 'at work this woman told me all about someone else's private business and now I can't STAND her, what do you think of people like that?' But that could backfire on you and you have to live opposite them.

They have told you all you need to know - about them.

To be accurate they talked at me as I was putting the washing out, this woman just goes around talking to everyone. I just grey rocked her. Should have said I don't want to know really.

Do nothing and avoid the nosy, rumour spreading, neighbour. Just say hi and move on. If you like the other couple, carry on liking them.

It's not very nice to be gleeful about a marriage not being legally binding and in any case it may not be true -they may very well have married somewhere where it was legal or have done so since.

In any group of people, people will talk about others and gossip. Neighbours will do this. Just like people who work with each other might idly google colleagues.

Unless you live in an isolated pile in the highlands, you will be proximate to people who are like this and who see you and what you do from their curtain twitching windows.

I have a neighbour like this and figure it's useful to keep things civil because sometimes they will be a useful source of information about neighbourhood stuff that actually matters and indeed they are. Be civil and don't tell them anything personal about you. No need to avoid them.

You give a very detailed account of this couple’s relationship & life story for someone who claims to be disinterested in gossip, OP. You made sure you were on top of all the juicy details, didn’t you? Sounds to me like you & your ‘nasty’ neighbour are as bad as each other & both of you should mind your own business.

Same sex Civil partnership legislation was introduced in 2004.

Ignore anything being told over the fence by a nosy bint with no life. Treat the other people as you would have before. If it matters to you whether it is true or not then deal with your own internal feelings on it but do not just believe the idle gossip you hear.

Just hold your hand up and say ‘I’m going to have to stop you there, Angela — I barely know one set of neighbours from another’ and continue hanging out your washing.