There’s an old phrase that I do NOT agree with:

If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all

Often there are hard things that need to be said that are not “nice”. Yes we need to be careful to say them as nicely as possible but certainly they will not be perceived as us being nice.

In looking for a phrase that guides us on what is appropriate to say… I like this one better.

Don’t say anything about someone that you wouldn’t say directly to them.

Or flipped around to the positive: “only say things about other people that you would be willing to say directly to them”.

I’m hard pressed to think of a time when this rule should ever be broken. We need to be able to have difficult conversations directly with the people involved. Talking to others about the situation might be fine* in order to get another’s perspective (or perhaps just to vent)… but the moment we say things that we are unwilling to divulge to the absent person… we are diving into toxic waters that poison relationships.

At 49 years old… I’m still working on this.

* so many factors can make this not fine. The type of information being shared, the relationship between the people you are talking to/about, whether the absent person would be upset if this other person knew the information, etc…. there’s a lot here and likely worth it’s own post.