Everything Is Content - Everything In Conversation: Should You Tell Your Partner Everything?

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

Ciao EIChin-waggers, This week we're asking a tough question: should we shut the f up when it comes to telling partners our friends' info? Editor and writer Hannah Ewens argued for this very thing in a Vogue piece titled 'Please, Stop Telling Your Partner My Secrets'. Thank you for listening and please do argue, agree or discourse us in the Spotify comments. We love to keep the conversations going...Love O,R,B xxx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I'm Rocherra and I'm Anoni and this is everything in conversation. The Chaser for your Friday main episode shot. Beautiful Beth is currently bedbound by illness but she will hopefully be back with us on Friday. In the meantime, Anoni and I will be manning the ship for you. We'd love for you to take part in these conversations and we love it when you agree and disagree with us. And you can give us those by following us on Instagram at Everything is ContentPod. and that's where we decide on topics and open the floor for all of your opinions. Early this month, writing editor Hannah Ewens wrote a piece for Vogue titled,

Please stop telling your partner my secrets. In it, she discusses the often widely accepted practice people have of telling their partners all of their friends shit, a kind of gossip carte blanche we have. She starts off describing a situation where a friend of hers, who's now ex, would talk to Hannah about problems she'd never told him. She says it was extremely disorientating to realize she'd been discussed between the two of them without her consent. Eventually, her friend and the guy broke up and she was left thinking about all of the intimate details this guy knew about her, her inner workings and life, and now he was just out there in the wild. She also wonders why on earth this is a widely accepted practice.

Hannah writes, quote, I think it's a peculiar extension of the contemporary romantic expectation that a partner ought to be a lover, best friend, business partner, sounding board and 24-7 our SS feed. Under these conditions, the constant disclosure of every interaction a person has in a day becomes not only expected, but a given. To me, the moral clincher, quote, I tell my partner everything, sounds less like a declaration of closeness and more like a compulsive habit. For the record, I don't think we should be compromising too much of our partner's privacy either. We know when we've crossed the line, just as surely as we know when we're not saying enough. She went on to say, quote, recently the idea of decentering romance has wedged into our collective psyche. I like that. A meaningful life shouldn't automatically revolve around pleasing men or our relationship status.

But the subtle, pervasive infringements, the ones that go unnamed, the times this happens and you don't say to a friend, hey, I meant for that to stay between us. Uphold the dominant culture regardless. When romantic relationships are positioned as the primary or only space of intimacy, we insulate emotional loyalty within that unit at the expense of friendships. This isolates single people who are left with no true confidant and potentially traps people in relationships because they're overly dependent on this closed system.

This dynamic isn't exclusive to heterosexual relationships it plays out in queer ones too. So we had so many messages for this one which I'm so excited to read out but firstly we ran a poll on Everything is Content Instagram and I asked should you be able to tell your partner everything everything being your friend's gossip news and life events And 57% of you voted no, 43% of you voted yes, which I think is really interesting. Firstly, Anoni, do you tell your partner everything?

And I mean everything when it comes to your friend's stuff? Or are you more boundaryed? And what was your take on this piece? I thought it had a really clear take, which my initial take was, I don't think I care if someone tells her boyfriend. And then I realized we had a message from Sia, which really made me laugh. And I was like, oh, that's what it is. They said, it's okay if I like the boyfriend. If I don't, it boils my blood.

And I was like, I think that is how I feel. I think I operate on the assumption that my friends are probably going to have told their partner's stuff to the point where, especially with my sister, to the point where I was really shocked once when I was telling a story and her husband was like, what? And I was like, why do you not know this? Like I just had assumed she would have informed him. I don't tell my partner everything as in everything that's ever happened to everyone. And I would try to not gossip in a gossipy way about my friends, especially if it's something that's like really personal. But if it was something that happened between us, like an interaction with a friend that I wanted a sounding board on where I

was included, then I obviously would tell them that. But I actually not that long ago relayed a friend's dating story to my partner about what a guy had done because I kind of wanted his opinion on it. And then I relayed that back to her. And then I suddenly thought, oh shit, I was like, should I actually have told him that? She was texting me and we were walking somewhere. So I was like, oh, my God, this guy's just done this. And he was like, oh, my God, that's awful. And the reason I told her, because I wanted her to feel reassured that other people also thought that was bad. So I was like, my partner was like, that's really bad, blah, blah. And then as I was saying that, I did think, oh, actually have I crossed the boundary? She didn't say I had and maybe I should ask her. But I think I know

when something feels like this isn't appropriate to share, but I also do kind of expect my friends to tell their partners things. So I feel like I may be less precious about it. And I think if it was something I really didn't want someone to tell their partner, because I operate on the assumption that they will, I would probably say, would you mind just not mention this to anyone including whatever your man's name is? What about you? See, his message made me laugh so much. I know what you mean. I really love this piece because I think exactly like Hannah writes in it, there's just this part of culture which I've never even been conscious of. We do have a carte blanche when it comes to people telling their partner's stuff to the point that I forgot that that doesn't have to be the way.

It doesn't have to be what we do. But I've just widely accepted it to the point that I don't even know if I'm okay with it or what I actually think about it. So I had to, I had to untangle it. And I still don't know. I think I don't like how it's a given. But saying that because other people do it, I do it and just use the rule myself and use the card. And I know what you mean. There is definitely a very clear boundary or a very clear obvious, oh, you definitely shouldn't talk about this thing. And, you know, maybe this thing doesn't matter so much. But maybe I'm just saying that to be comfortable. Maybe I'm just using that as a rule in my head because it's convenient for me to be able to sometimes gossip with my partner about things that have lower stakes and I know when the stakes are higher. But maybe it's also better not to just like do. that all the time. I feel like quite conflicted, basically, reading this and a bit calls out in a good way. So I'm ready to be decided by the end with the help of all of our listeners. Yeah, I feel the same as you. That's how I kind of felt. It's like, I love getting

newly enraged by something that I've just accepted my whole life. I think part of it for me, and this is really like generalising, but the men that I've dated aren't like gossip. So if I've told them something, half the time they're probably not even listening, but I feel pretty certain that they're never going to mention it to anyone else. So maybe part of the like safety telling your partner is this assumption that that is just going to stay between you two. Like you can mention it to your partner. They maybe don't hang out with your friends. It's not like that's then going to get spread around in the same way that if you did mention

it to another friend, there is the risk that they might, you know, mention it to another friend saying don't tell anyone else who then mentions it to one other friend. And before you know it, you've kind of told like 80 people by accident. So I do wonder if that is part of it that we have this general idea that men are just kind of not clumsier with information, but it's almost like a. safe dumping ground to tell your partner things because it's unlikely. And I've never been in the situation that she mentioned in the piece where like their partners brought something up. I have been in situations where like you can tell your friends' partners pretending that they don't know what

you're talking about, but absolutely clearly has already had the story before. And I genuinely have never really cared. Maybe because I'm very open and an oversharer, I guess it would have to be something really specific and intimate that I would find extremely humiliating and that I'd be really upset by. But by that metric, I would assume that my friends wouldn't have told their partners that that is something I would never tell mine. Yeah, and we had quite few messages about this where it was like, just be smart, just everyone has that internal temperature check

of what is right to share and what is wrong to share. So Amy said, I think it's actually much simpler, be a good friend. Sometimes I'll tell my partner something about a friend and immediately get that feeling in the pit of my stomach telling me I've done a bad thing, I shouldn't have shared that. We all know when we're gossiping

rather than sharing and talking, whether that's with friends or romantic partners. also I don't think I'm telling my partner as a quote-unquote sacrifice. It's because I miss the intimacy of friendships from my childhood or early 20s when we all lived at the same place and had infinite time for sharing what was going on in our lives. Now I live with my partner and share a lot of my life with him so it makes sense to talk about the people I care about. And he cares about too.

It'd be weird if he had no interest in my life or friends, as said by one BF in the article. Yes, we had this message from Sarah that was like, without being too harsh, one point my married single friends often mention is that nine times out of ten, the boyfriend or husband does not care, and thus will probably forget the gossip. I could externally process something major in my friend shared, and while my husband loves me, it's in one ear and out the other. On the flip side, I find that somewhat comforting that in my friends, husbands or boyfriends, they may know something about me, but they probably just don't care. So I do think that is an element of it, but then I also can understand like the intrusion or

the feeling as a friend, especially if you're single, of being like, my information is out there with someone that I don't really know or don't really like, and that that could feel really uncomfortable. And I do think it's really interesting, this hierarchy of like whose information we feel is allowed to be spread and who isn't. And we had a message from Lara saying the problem lies in this general hierarchy of relationships. Sexual and romantic attraction doesn't qualify someone to be the person you need to share the most to. No relationship should be put into this position and have this much power over you. And I think it's a really good point. But I think it does relate back to the message you just read out, which is like if you are with your partner 24-7, if you live together,

and you're not seeing your friends as much anymore, it does by nature, you do end up sharing quite a lot with your partner. But we did also, to contrast on that, I had a message from Surat who said, I always say my husband is not my best friend, he is my husband, my friends, my friends. I do think people see that differently. I do think that your partner, when you're with them for a long time, does start to feel like your friend very much through just like proximity. It is a complicated one, isn't it? It is. And I think basically it's a good thing that we're kind of butting heads against these issues, whereas before, or it would be like your romantic partner would be your unit and everyone else is lesser than.

And I think it's good that we're re-framing relationships and kind of taking a little bit of relationship anarchy into mind with the fact that you can have a fulfilling life of different kinds of relationships that are not romantic, but they need not be any lesser than they can be more important. They can be the same. And, you know, putting all your emotional eggs into one basket of one person can be a recipe for disaster and also not fulfill a lot of people. So I think it's good. I really like this piece. I really think it's like touching on something that we need to be talking about now. And that doesn't mean that I have an answer for it either at the same time. I feel really confused. I think what she's saying is right. It's what I said at the beginning. I think because I benefit from being a little bit of a gossip and just having somebody to sound bored and kind of work out what I think about things and process, it benefits me to not challenge this rule. And at the same time, I know that's not a good thing. So I think I need to accept part.

part of me sees myself in this in a bad way. I've been tagged in this picture. And in theory, I do think it's not great to tell your partner everything under the assumption that that's just a rule that your friends would be comfortable with. I don't think that is great. What I keep coming back to is that thing that you said, which I just genuinely never thought about how much of a given it was. And it was really funny. The other day, my dad was talking to my brother-in-law, and he was like, I want to tell you this, but only if you don't tell Emily, because Emily will get really annoyed at me. And I overheard this because it made me laugh because my dad had already told me and I'd already told my sister. And Joe was like, well, I tell my wife everything. And we were all

laughing then, me, Emily, Joe, I hope my dad doesn't listen to this. We were all laughing because we're like, does he not know that we all like tell each other kind of everything? And I think in a family that is quite normal, maybe. And so it really stuck out to me because Joe was like, obviously I tell Emily, my sister, everything. And it's like, actually that doesn't have to be obvious. Like that isn't actually like law. It's just funny that we all see it to be like this. is the way that it is. And actually, maybe it is healthy to have boundaries. And I'm actually, and have become, as I've gotten older, quite boundaries in the way I talk about relationships, because I realize you can fall into the trap of always talking about the negative, the small little

things in a relationship that might annoy you to the point where your friends, and I've had it with my own friends, where you start to hate their partner because all they're telling you is bad stuff. And then they're like, oh, I love my boyfriend, but they're just moaning. And I do think you have to be careful about how and what you talk about people in your life to other people because it can really colour their view, especially if they're not hanging out with them. So I think when you talk about your friends, I think that that's an important thing not to do is not to moan too much because you can actually turn, even if it's just kind of venting, you don't actually mean anything by it. If those two people that you're talking to aren't connected to each other at all, you can

completely colour someone's view of them. So I do think we have to be boundaryed around and protective of the way that we present the people in our lives to each other. So as to avoid inadvertently actually painting the wrong picture just because we're venting. Yeah, I think especially with relationships and moaning, I think a lot of people have fallen to that trap and 100% I've seen it as well, where you can feel somebody's vibe towards somebody in the friendship group being like, well, why do you stay with him? And they think it's so bad because all they hear is the negatives.

As we're having this conversation, I realised something. I've been on the other side where it wasn't a relationship, but I told somebody something that had nothing to do with me. It was a friend's gossip. and it got back to that friend and it was really bad. And I remember like the color draining from my face when I realized the person I told had like gone back to that person and shared it.

And it was not information I should have been sharing. So even though I definitely do tell my partner some things, I have a fear-based response about certain things and I would never cross into the territory of things that friends tell me that have stakes to them because I went through that and it was really bad and I felt so ashamed of myself for crossing that boundary in a really obvious way and really fucking.

up and having to own that. And it was so horrible. It was so grim. So yeah, I have a balance between what I tell my partner and I make sure not to dive into things that are things that my friends feel shame about or are inner workings or, you know, like really deep chats we have. I never go into that territory like the writer talks about feeling like her friend did with her ex. But at the same time, I don't have a blanket rule with it. It would it be really difficult to have a relationship and have a blanket rule where you don't talk about your friends say, oh, you know, they're dating this new guy and they're really excited. It's really sweet. She seems like she's doing really well right now. Like does that constitute still telling your

friend, your partner's business? Or in the piece, it seems like it's the more kind of inner workings, the like real deep chats, the meaningful chats they have, then getting passed over to the partner that feels like the problem. Do you think there is a distinction or do you think she's also talking about the smaller stuff? I don't know. It's tricky, isn't it? Because there is a world in which someone might feel really betrayed if you told your partner that you were struggling with depression because maybe that felt like a really private thing, but the context could have been you saying to your partner, I'm really worried about so and so because I think that mental health, you know, not great at the minute and I want to know how to support them better. And so in a way, you're

divulging information about your friend, which maybe is private, but the context of it is from a place of like care. And we did have a mess from Chloe that was like, I think it's widely understood that this is the case that if you tell someone something their partner knows, I'm married and speaking about things for my partner, it's often how I process them, get different perspectives, and actually often it helps me to support my friends. If someone told me not to tell him, I'd have issues as I wouldn't want to hide things from him. He also knows that he can't just tell anyone things

that I tell him and that would violate our trust. I agree with the first part of that. I don't necessarily agree with I don't want to hide things from him because I think if it's your friend's information, you're not hiding anything. It should obviously be very forthcoming about your own emotions and your own feelings when it's appropriate. But I don't think not telling your partner

something that your friend is experiencing because they've explicitly asked you not to would be hiding something from your partner. But I do think that perhaps the translation of information to partners isn't, I think that's the difference. It's like, are you gossiping about a friend? Is it like from a sort of salacious, oh, my God, did you hear what she did last weekend point of view? Or is it from a sort of like, oh, I caught up with thingy and they said this thing and I'm wondering. And I think that that's maybe where the boundary is crossed is kind of like your intention. Are you information sharing

for the sake of sharing information or are you actually using a partner? as a sounding board, which I think a lot of people do when you're in a relationship, if you live together, if you're older and you're not seeing your friends as much, your partner probably is the person that you work things through. I mean, the person I tell everything to is my mom. I'm always ringing her and just like telling her stuff. So, yeah. We had a message from Casey. I really wanted to share this because she's been on the other side of it. She said, I've had this happen to me before and I felt betrayed. Now I'm either very clear discussing with anyone, but the majority of my friends are respectful, the one that wasn't proved herself disloyal

in other ways, so it was easy to keep distance going forwards. A tough lesson learned, though. Obviously, I understand friends will talk about some things, but it's good to know if they have, so you're not blindsided when their partner brings it up. Yeah. I mean, I might have been a victim to this without having realised, but I think the thing that really does keep it going, and you said this at the beginning, is most of the partners of my friends who have probably been told stuff about my life a discreet so it never feels obvious. That doesn't make it better, but that feeds into this idea that it's doing no harm, whether that's right or wrong. And I think the minute somebody's partner came back to me, they were like, oh, I heard that you, I don't know, did some crazy shit last weekend

and like the police were involved. I don't know. And they just like repeated that back to me and I'd said it in confidence to that friend. That would make me spiral. I would freak out and I would just think this is a horrible rule that we've normalized in society. But I think something about the fact that it goes unnoticed, it goes unchecked. For most of us, it seems like in the messages, nothing bad has really come from it. It feels like it's not that bad. It's not a big deal. It's, you know, okay, we can just keep it going. We can be hush, hush and discreet about it. But I do think there is something with the writer saying that we have normalized that romantic relationships are your kind of everything. And that includes the kind of, there's no rules

when it comes to what your friends have as their private lives. All the kind of boundaries are all gone and it's assumed that a romantic relationship also gets access to all those other parts of your lives and the information that comes with it. And I think we're kind of moving away from those ideas. So I do think this is a good point that maybe that isn't the case. Maybe it's not really normal for my partner and my boyfriend to know the inner workings of my friends. They're not his friends directly. Those are separate entities in my life. And with that, we have these private spaces that we've curated and created together. Maybe he shouldn't get access to all of those. Yeah, it's really tricky.

We had a message from Zoe that was like, I personally don't care at all if someone tells my private stuff to their partner, as long as the partner doesn't bring it up at any given time, which is basically what you just said. And I do wonder if, but this is difficult because obviously then single people don't have this. But I do wonder if there is a part of it. Like, it kind of is, I'd much rather a friend, if I told them something that was like, please don't tell anyone else.

I would rather they tell their partner because I would assume that their partner won't talk about it with anyone else. We'll probably like store that information and maybe not process it. then maybe tell another friend that then I'd be worried it would get out, whatever the thing is. I would feel better if they had to talk about it with someone for it to be their partner, because I do just have this feeling that it's just not always the same. But I guess it's because I can't quite work out what information. And I'm trying to think about my friend's boyfriends.

I'm trying to think of what information I'd be really hurt with them knowing. And at this point in time, I can't think of a specific thing that say I was at my friend's house that I wouldn't also say in front of their partner. So I think it does really depend on your relationship with the couple as a whole and obviously the context of the thing. I think it definitely is something to be interrogated as to why I'm finding this really hard because it's like, you know, and they're like imagine a world without capitalism. I'm trying to imagine a world where I haven't assumed that someone's not going to tell their partner. I've just, it's never, I have to say it's never really phased me. I think it would have

been something when I was younger. I would have been more phased by. But I feel like I'm quite open about things anyway. God, I really don't. know. And like we said, 57% voted no and 43% voted yes, which isn't drastically different. Obviously, teeters into most people who listen to this podcast are saying that, no, you should not tell your boyfriend, everything or your partner. But it's not an extreme yes or no. So I do think most people are kind of on the fence and maybe as a society we're maybe leaning into, or maybe just our listeners, obviously not societally. I can't extrapolate our listeners to the whole world. But it does seem like people are slightly leaning that way, but it's not extreme.

Just to read out some of the anti-sharers, Ayesha message and said, I think it's one thing to tell your partner everything about you and yourself and quite another to tell your partner everything about anyone and everyone. And Vivian message and said, feels like it varies a lot depending on the relationship between your friend and your S.O., which is what you said. My best friend tells me things knowing I'll probably tell my BF

because they're very close in their own right. In the past, if I've asked if I can tell him something, she said. she already assumed I would. However, if she asked me not to tell anyone, including him, I'd of course keep it to myself and he wouldn't feel entitled to any other information. And Anand said, Snitches get stitches, them's be prison rules. I think that's it, isn't it? I think it's interesting that when you say, don't tell anyone, you have to say, and that means your partner. And maybe it should be when someone says, please don't tell anyone, we should take that to mean, including a partner. But I would add that. If that was something like I didn't want my brother-in-law to know,

I would explicitly say to my sister, don't tell Joe. I don't want him to know. Otherwise, I will assume that she's told him. I'm just not a very secretive point in my life. I'm trying to think. The phase I'm in is everyone down the road knows my business. Yeah, I'm just trying to think what I would be, I'm sure there's things. I probably just buried them.

My secrets are too dark, even I don't know what they are. Oh, they're in the mine palace. That's the thing. They're not secrets at this point. They're like burning right at the back of my mind. I think a massive thrust of this is and I think actually maybe Dolly Alderton commented on the post but I think it's like when you're single

this is when it really hurts because it's like maybe at that point especially when you're single and dating and your friends are partnered up maybe it's those stories that feel a bit like they're being sold for entertainment to your coupled up friends and I can understand that in the sense where it's like I'm trying to confide in my friend about their dating life they've got a boyfriend of them there just telling them like

everything that I'm up to and obviously some of those stories can be really intimate and very exposing and it might not be something that it's not even that you necessarily, you don't want their partner to know those things, it's that you don't want to feel like they're being told those things. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I'm framing it wrong. I keep thinking like, what piece of information would I be annoyed about them knowing?

And maybe that isn't the point at all. It's just, I don't like the idea that you're talking about these things about me behind my back with your partner. Yeah, I really, really can get that. That feels like a really obvious betrayal and very unpleasant. And just part of this dominant couple culture, whereas everyone who's single, is just like a fun story and just like a silly thing to discuss and to laugh at it's their source of humour. And I remember that episode in Sex and City where Miranda basically starts just almost like turning herself into a punchline constantly to make coupled up people laugh.

And then Carrie's like, why are you doing that? And she's just like, well, they're going to do it anyway. I'll just get there first. And it's so uncomfortable. And I've really, I've felt that on both sides. I've definitely done that the last time that I was single is I would. But that's because I like performing. I would send really long voice notes about like my dating live to my.

coupled up friends. But I very much was like a willing and joyful participant in that sort of let me entertain you. You were dancing around being like, look how good I am. I also thought it's really interesting. The piece talks about partners, but we had a message from Kelly who said, I live in a country with a very big collectivist culture and people do this with their mums, which is what you said more than their partners. I've often heard people say that quote unquote, my mum doesn't count or been in front when they told their mum massive secrets of mutual friends of ours and I find it wild. I thought this was so fascinating because apart from the way you described your relationship with your mum, which is so sweet and so funny, I've not seen or witnessed this version of the telling one person all of your secrets. And for some reason, I don't know why.

Maybe it's because I love women so much, but this one doesn't seem like it bothers me. I once again, the reason I would tell my mum stuff is she never knows what I'm talking about. So I'll ring her. She fricking loves it and I'll be like, oh my God, so this thing happened with someone. And it's often actually like gossip that's not even related to me. And she will just enjoy it for what it is, even though she doesn't know any of the characters, she doesn't know who anyone is. And again, who is she going to tell?

Like, she talks to me and she talks to my sister and like sometimes talks to my dad. So it's like, it's that safe space. I think there's something about moms and boyfriends where the assumption is they are outside of the circle. And not to say that women are gossipy, but it's like you do have to be careful with information because it can get passed on and it can get shared. But there's something about telling your mom who I feel like is unlikely. Like my mom is so loyal.

She's not going to be telling anyone in anyone's business. And again, it would never be from like a salacious point of view, but I would tell my mum things that I would be really conscious to not pass on within a friendship group because to me that information is not for anyone else to hear, but my mum kind of doesn't count. So we had a message and I think this kind of sums it up from ICE, which said, I voted no, but actually I think my answer is that yes, you should be able to, it should be expected by anyone who tells you something. However, there are some things that should be kept private if a close friend asks for that

or if you're just telling your partner to gossip and they really don't need to know, a good friend should be able to identify and respect the difference when it comes to passing on details about their friends personal lives to their partner. And I think that's the thing. It's just using common sense. And I have to say, I would also side-eye someone's partner that when you're all in the same room, divulges the fact that they've been told something. I think that says more about maybe the partner not being the best choice than the friend for telling them. Thank you so much for listening and for all of your opinions and takes on this topic. We genuinely read all of them and they guide our discussions. And if we can

could read them all out we would so please do keep sending them please also give us a follow at everything is content pod on instagram and tic-tok and please please give us a review wherever you listen if you haven't already we'll see you as always on friday bye