Please give a realistic answer, and don't deny having any such secret or past misdeed.
We are all human, we've all made mistakes, and we harbour things we don't want anyone to know about, sometimes even ourselves.
It depends on lot of things, like if the person who is exposing such things is trustworthy and someone who can be believed, or people to whom such things are told have belief in you that you can't do any such thing. Some times you're also left with no option but to accept it..
Do as any good person would do, confront them and then make up a better one about THEM.
Handle? There is nothing to do unless I allow myself to be put on the defensive. I highly doubt I would need to make a comment about it at all.
It would certainly depend on a variety of factors as to how I'd handle it. I can draw on a real-life instance that took place almost 15 years ago. There was something that I had done in jest and later confided in a buddy of mine what it was, he agreed to keep it under his hat. He ended up blabbing it to a lot of people, and it caused me no small amount of embarrassment. Luckily for me, it was such an outrageous act, so out of character for my public persona that few of them believed it was true. The way I handled it was to never trust him (and a whole lot of other people, too) again, and to let the story circulate without commenting on it myself, allowing it to die down and eventually it faded into oblivion.
P.S. I like your disclaimer. I have scads of things that fit that bill.
~
~
Too true.
~
I would be hurt and then I would be angry. At the end I'd probably leave.
Admit it.
It actually happened. When I was seven I stole a rose from a garden. Mrs Smith rang around every household in the whole of Whale Beach to find out what had happened to her rose. When Mum asked me I told her it was me and showed her the rose in a vase in my bedroom. It was a huge sunset coloured rose, full of flames of yellow, orange, and bright pink, and it had a smell that made you never want to stop smelling.
Mum rang Mrs Smith and I was sent down the road to return the rose and listen to the lecture on not stealing. I felt about as big as an ant.
What a nice answer, hartfire! :)
