after telling my best friend I was gay she seemed to understand it was in confidence well today someone asked me if I was gay when I laughed it off she said she was serious that she had heard it from ***** the girl I tolds friend
Did you explicitly tell her not to say anything? You can either deny it or admit it but I would also go to her and tell her not to say another word of it. Explain how she is in the wrong for outing you and hopefully she won't tell anyone else but you have to be quick and get to her fast before she can tell anyone else.
If you didn't tell her (your friend) to not tell anyone then she might have thought that it was ok to tell people. When I told my best friend I made sure to explicitly mention that I didn't want her to tell people.
with some people you need to be very clear or they may not realise how important to you the confidence is so in this case, you maybe just have to talk to her again and say it is NOT OK to blab about it
I had the same experience with a couple of my friends as well. You need to be very explicit with some people that it's not something for them to share. It's your story to tell and you want to be the one to tell it. I have learned that some people think it's not a big deal at all to them, so they don't think it's a big deal telling other people. Just explain to them why it is.
I'm guessing you're still in school. Unfortunately, from what I've seen here on EC, it is almost impossible to tell someone, even a best friend, that you're gay and have it not leak out, particularly in middle school and high school. It's simply too "juicy" a piece of gossip for the average person of that age to be able to keep completely to themselves. What usually happens is they tell one or two people, qualified with a "I'll tell you this, but you have to promise not to tell anyone"... which, of course, means those two go and tell a couple of others... and at some point the "keep it a secret" part of it gets lost. Usually within a week, the entire school knows. I know this isn't what you want to hear at all, but most of the time, it's how it ends up working, and once it's out there, usually the best thing you can do is simply embrace and own it. That's amazingly scary and vulnerable, but it is usually better, because otherwise, people are going to whisper about it behind your back, and be looking for "evidence" that the rumor is true. In most of the cases I've seen, it sucks for about 2 or 3 weeks, and then everybody gets used to it, and the next big gossipy thing comes along, and your being gay is old news.
Something like that happened to me a few moths ago, after which I told that person to not tell anyone at all. I've actually ignored it until now and now there are just rumours of my gayness floating around school, nothing more. If you feel ready you might want to embrace it, if you consider it safe as I'm sure people will get over it. Then again, it's your decision. If I were you, I would go back to my friend and explain to him clearly that it's confidential: the rest is up to you and if you deem it safe and comfortable with you.
