I believe in being completely honest with your significant other. If they ask you something you should be truthful but if you are told something by your friends in confidence you shouldn't tell. If your significant other asks about it you should say it's a secret and you can't say. If your significant other keeps pushing it and it's going to hurt the relationship then I can understand you telling the secret. That being said, you make it sound like everything you hear comes out of your mouth to your wife. Which in my opinion makes you just a gossipy little teenager.
Or.... maybe my friends respect my relationship with my wife to not try and put me in the position of keeping secrets from her. I mean, sure, maybe we're all just teenagers who don't know any better, but somehow informing my friends that I don't keep secrets from my wife hasn't resulted in some sort of dramatic meltdown. Mostly because I don't have friends who tell me something and then try and catch me in some sort of weird conflict of interest snare by then demanding I keep it from my wife. Instead, naively perhaps given our youth, they mention they'd like to tell me something in confidence first and then decide (doing their best imitation of a grownup I guess) whether or not they're comfortable with my wife knowing or if they'd prefer not to share at this particular moment. So yes, in short, exactly like a gossipy teenager.
I've got to agree with Silway here. It's not a matter of being "gossipy." It's a matter of being very close and being the lifelong partner of your significant other. If there is something that I ask about that he can't talk about, he just says, "I can't talk about it." This is usually the response if I accidentally ask about something at work, because he has clearance and is not supposed to talk about ANYTHING at work. I rarely ask about his friends because they are his friends and I really don't care about their lives, so long as they are alive and doing reasonably well. I would ask if I knew something bad was happening in their life (usually based off something he mentioned in the first place) because I am concerned and I know when his friends are doing poorly, it can upset him. Example: one of his best buds married a CRAZY PSYCHO after knowing her for a couple months and after getting out of an engagement with another girl. This girl is not allowed on base because of false rape allegations, got el husband and I to take her to the emergency room for a "dent in her head from falling" at 2 in the morning (pretty sure she was lying about that because despite how "bad it was" they let her walk out of there), and plenty more. So sometimes I'll ask el husband how his friend is doing or if he's talked to him recently. El husband is the one I trust completely. Whatever happens, we're in the same boat, together. I know it sounds cheesy or whatever but it is the truth. You know in Meet the Fockers? He is my inner circle. There are no secrets.
My dealbreakers: Violence. If it's not cool for me to ever hit or physically threaten you with violence (and it's fucking not), then it's not cool for you. No slaps, no indignant horseshit, no destroying my stuff, nothing. I'm a bigger dude, and I can be intense, so when I set that limit for my temper, you can't cross it for me. I've never physically confronted a woman before, and I've never given a shit about anyone who threatens me with violence. Respect my space. This means that in the heat of the moment, I am going to GTFO and you should recognize that as an anger-control mechanism. Disrupting that practice ensures I'm not coming back. It also means that you should be able to take vacations or spend your free time without me. Addiction, or hiding substance use. I can't lie about anything, and I don't hide anything. So, I don't understand dishonest people well and there's nothing about hiding substance abuse that I can comprehend. It destroys my ability to trust you and your decisions. Priorities. You are below my job and my education and my family. These first two are not permanent features in my life, but they are more important. I am not skipping class or work to go on a date, or even have sex with you. Respect my ambition and have your own and we'll make shit work. Support my family and I will do the same for yours. Talk shit and find yourself single. You have not earned the right to criticize anyone in my family, so don't do it.
Alt Focus: A buddy of mine is in deep shit at the moment because his wife found his online sex-chat records which were apparently not insignificant, she kicked him out of the house. Is that cheating? I think it kinda crosses some sort of blurry line but I’m not sure by how far. Is spending months wanking off to shit strangers type at you worse than kissing some random at a nightclub, or is it in blowjob country?
I'd kick someone to the curb for that. Number one for having the conversations in the first place. Number two for being an idiot and leaving those conversations readily available for me to find. My girlfriends have always been warned that if they cheat on me, it's over. Boom! Like the relationship never happened. Emotional cheating is damn close to physical cheating especially if she"s finger diddling herself while replying to his messages. The whole situation would mean to me she's a jello shot away from fucking a stranger in a parking lot. Nope, ain't going to happen. If your buddy is lucky his wife is forgiving. He's also going to spend the rest of his days having this thrown in his face every time she's mad at him. He fucked himself and the relationship for his own reasons. Bummer for him.
I'm hearing you man and what I pretty much said to him was "how the fuck did you get caught?" because hypothetically were I to accidently stumble upon "Japanese nympho anal sluts" for 2.5 to 3 minutes I'm deleting the shit out of my browsing history.
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I caught my ex-husband sexting with another woman. And the reason why I found out is because the crazy bitch whore started stalking him. Considering I couldn't get the man to look at me in a sexual way for years, to find out he was doing that was the ultimate betrayal. I filed for divorce shortly after. So, yeah, I thought that was cheating. If it was a stranger he was sexting I don't think my reaction would've been any different.