Watch Your Mouth
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[0 Comment]"You told Rich what!?" Leslie exclaimed.
"Oh, he doesn't care if you lost 50 dollars," I said defensively. "If you didn't want me to tell him, you should have told me it was private."
"Excuse me," Leslie retorted. "But can't you just assume I don't want everyone to know my stupid mistakes?"
Good point. All of us talk with friends about our marriages—whether we tell our best friend everything or simply throw into conversation an occasional "I know what you mean—Tim does that too." But what you don't tell your friends about your marriage is just as important as what you do tell them.
Protecting your spouse's confidence is critical to building a relationship of trust. Unfortunately, some couples become contaminated by gossip. Not shop gossip. Not party gossip. But gossip behind a partner's back about the state of your relationship.
Marital gossip has to do with talking to friends or relatives about your partner's flaws and foibles. A wife may, for example, confidentially spill the details of last night's fight to her friend who "promises" to keep it a secret. Or a husband might secretly tell his father about how his wife ran up a huge credit card bill. Although such disclosures may seem harmless at the time, they can hurt a marriage.
Why do some couples leak secrets and blab private information without a second thought?
For one, they see gossip as a means to connect with others. Being able to give someone the inside scoop can bring two people closer together. The gossipers believe the person receiving the information will feel privileged. Another reason for their blabbing is more destructive: gossip can be used to get back at a mate. For example, if a husband has confessed a struggle with pornography to his wife, and the wife feels betrayed and wounded as a result, she may tell her friends about it as a way of getting back at her husband.
Whatever the reasons, gossip is evil. The apostle Paul warns about the destructive power of gossip and the condemnation that comes to "gossips and busybodies" who say "things they ought not to" (1 Tim. 5:13). But this doesn't stop gossipers. Often, they don't even realize the damage they are doing to themselves, their mate and their marriage.
The Anatomy of a Marital Gossip
Most people have a stereotypical idea about gossip and gossipers. Many probably envision housewives gabbing over the back fence about a neighbor's drinking problem. Or you may think of teenage girls exchanging malicious remarks about a classmate over the telephone. These perceptions, however, are not only sexist, they are wrong. Woman are no more likely to gossip then men. Both husbands and wives who are prone to gossip carry some of these common gossip traits.
Talkative.
Some spouses talk incessantly but do little else. During their nonstop chatter, they may cover the same ground again and again.
Originally published in: Marriage Partnership, 1999, Winter
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