One of the first jobs in life is to learn how to trust. Babies have to learn early on that the world is not a safe place, otherwise they can't get on with the job of growing and developing as they should. There are certain things in life we all have to be able to take for granted and the chief of these is safety. Safety isn't just physical, either. We entrust ourselves to others emotionally and psychologically all the time. Establishing relationships is an act of trust – it's opening yourself up to allow someone to get close, but it's also opening yourself up to let someone get close enough to hurt you. We balance those two things all the time, deciding how close we want to be to the people in our lives.
This is a skill which we really develop best in adolescence, when friends become very important to us. That's when we're finding out who we are and one of the ways to do this is to work out what kind of people we prefer to have around us. So adolescents depend on friends for much more than younger children do, especially as they get involved in more independent interests and activities. Developing your own circle of friends is an entirely necessary part of growing up. It's also a very satisfying exercise, because it means you get to test out your own judgement. Of course, the 'down' side is that sometimes your judgement will be wrong, and that hurts.Friends can let you down in so many ways – being undependable, lying to or about you, staying away when you need them, ganging up with other people against you – the list is endless. But perhaps the hardest thing to deal with when you and a friend part company is thinking about all the private things s/he now knows about you and can tell others. Because the closest friendships are built on shared confidences: the gorier the secrets, the closer the friendship.
Unfortunately, not all friends can handle all secrets. Sometimes, your friend isn't mature enough to know how to keep something particularly juicy to him/herself and just has to pass on the real story of where you were Thursday afternoon fifth and sixth periods. Sometimes, the secret is such a big one that your friend doesn't feel that s/he can handle it without sharing it. You may have got used to carrying that burden around, but sometimes it's too much for someone else. Sometimes, your friend just isn't someone who's any good at keeping any secrets at all. And sometimes, sadly, it's all about spite and getting back at you for real or imagined wrongs.If your friend has let out your secret(s), what to do? Well, it depends on why s/he let it out. If it's malice, then this isn't a person you should trust in future.
If it's immaturity, then you have to put limits on how much you trust that person. You need to think very specifically about how you can depend on them, if at all. If it's because the secret was a big one, then you might want to try telling an adult rather than your friend next time. Or you might want to tell two friends at once so they can talk to each other about it. If you think about how hard it was for you to walk around alone with that burden, you'll understand how hard it was for your friend.But the first step is to talk to your friend. If it was a friendship at all, then you should be able to at least discuss it. And what you find out will help you know how to handle your secrets in the future.
