"But that does leave you open to the risk of them repeating your secret to other people, for a whole host of reasons: It could be an accident, because they didn’t know it was personal. But it could also be intentional, and there’s two reasons that could be. One is: Girls and women are quite competitive about who knows what and who knows first, because that is a marker of how close you are, and we like to be able to show off how close we are to other women. In some cases, it’s just the women in your circle. But in others, it could be someone with high status and you want to show that you know them; showing that you know their secrets could be a good way to show that you’re close to them, and your status goes up, which can sometimes be why somebody might repeat a secret. Second: There’s always the risk that they get mad at you, which was especially the case in stories I heard from middle school and high school, where intentionally girls decide to turn on someone and then start spreading rumors about her, some of which may be true, and some of which are not."