So sit your friends down and say, “Hey, guys, we’ve been gossiping and we’ve got to stop. I don’t feel safe with you. I don’t think you all feel safe with me. So here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to assume the best about each other, and we’re never ever, ever going to speak ill of other people or of each other.”
You know why this is, as she says, an awkward conversation? Because it comes across so holier-than-thou. You have to not be a gossip in the first place. Otherwise, your friends, whom you have heretofore gossiped with about someone/someones will be rightly taken aback like, “Wait a second! *Where* does she get off? She has suddenly formed a conscience against talking trash about ‘Susan’, so *now* she’s going to abruptly make us all stop?”
Also, I have found there’s a fine line sometimes between talking to Person A about absent Person B, to understand something about Person B vs straight gossip where you just want to trash the person behind their back. I used to avoid *ANY* talking about someone absent but I have learned that this is unwise. If you don’t have the conversation, Person A will not understand what’s going on and *YOU* will be the one who looks like a crappy person, because observers think you dumped Person B for “no reason”.
