It was bound to happen sooner or later...

[rivka]

...someone I care about discovered my LJ, found himself unflatteringly referenced in this post, and is now quite hurt and upset.



So now I'm not sure where to take this. I'm sorry he's feeling bad. I'm sorry I didn't warn him that I had posted when I was upset with him, but it was a month ago and I'd honestly forgotten.

I'm not sorry that I wrote it. I don't think it was unfair. And it was certainly an honest depiction of my feelings at the time. I'm not willing to promise that I won't write unflattering things about him, or about other people I know, in the future. I have no use for a journal that can only be used for the measured expression of tactful opinions. Since I read his e-mail, I've been saying to myself, Oh, great. Another place where I'm going to have to self-censor. I can't talk candidly about relationship problems in alt.poly, because two of my partners and one partner's wife read everything I post. alt.callahans is pretty much lost to me as a net.home for other reasons, but before it was the same basic problems applied.

I could've made the post friends-only. But then what would I do, not list him as a friend? Would I set access to a specific list of friends, excluding him? Ick. At the time I wrote the original post, I didn't have any friends listed. I wasn't even sure I was going to let anyone know I'd started a Live Journal. Maybe my first impulse was the best one.

He's out for the evening (I should be too, because it's English Country Dance night, but we had to take a houseguest to the airport), and I'm struggling to figure out what to say to him when he returns my call. At the moment, the best I can come up with - for him, for anyone who knows me, is:

"In most of my life I speak very carefully - I spend a lot of time searching for the fairest, most tactful, least emotionally escalating way to express my feelings about a problem. Or I may decide that there isn't a fair, tactful, calm way of saying something, and I might choose to let it go. I do have strong feelings and reactions, though, and sometimes I want to express them without worrying about doing it in the calmest possible way, the way least likely to cause hurt feelings or misinterpretation. This is my place to do that. That means that reading my Live Journal is probably going to be a mixed experience for you. I'm not going to encourage you to read it or stop reading it - but I'm not going to hold back from saying things that might hurt your feelings, either."

I don't know. *sigh* Is that too harsh? How do y'all handle talking about other people who might be - or definitely are - reading your LJ? How much do you self-censor? Do you ever tell someone not to read? How would you want your partners and friends to handle talking about you in a semi-public journal?

Comments

Not sure what's best....

[johnpalmer.livejournal.com]

Really, this kind of situation depends on your own choices to a large degree. You see, what essentially happened was you talked about this person too loudly, and he overheard through no fault of his own.

Now, some people do, and some people don't, realize that they aren't talked about the same behind their back, and it's perfectly natural. It's even relatively honest. For example, I don't tell Angaar, the seven foot tall celery stalk who walked like a man, that I'm really upset about the time he attacked me with a sledgehammer. It was all a misunderstanding, after all. However, I do sometimes call up Mr. Potatohead, and grouse about how shortsighted celery stalks can be. (Potatos are never short sighted. (Obvious pun deleted at the request of the EPA))

It's not that I HATE Angaar, it's just that I *DO* need to blow off some steam about it. By talking about it, I can let it go more easily. It actually strengthens our friendship. However, Angaar might be upset to know that I'm carrying around what could be seen as a grudge.

Now, if someone overhears something I'm saying about them, the two things I try to do are

1) be brutally honest, or at least as much as I can be. Try to make it clear I'm not holding anything back right now. The point here, obviously, it to get the person to the "okay, that really is *EVERYTHING*.

and,

2) reaffirm my positive feelings, and why these negative feelings are *NOT* major deals. (If they are major deals, of course, this is now officially Really Ugly, and I'm not touching it.)

So, basically, "Yes, Angaar, I know you didn't mean to attack me with that sledgehammer, but, listen, you have to understand that kind of thing is scary! I haven't been able to look at a tuna fish sandwich for over a year for fear that there was celery in the tuna salad. I really *DO* understand it was an accident, and that's why I talk about it away from you. I don't want to hit you with guilt over it... but I do still need to talk about it. And don't ever forget that I respect the way you use your powers for the good of all mankind, as well as the protection of all sentient celery."

Now, as for what you do about the future, I don't know. You are talking 'out loud', and someone could 'overhear', so there's some duty to speak quietly about people when they might be listening, but there's also some duty for people not to specifically eavesdrop.

Maybe a set of 'keywords' at the top of the post, "speaks about: Angaar, Mr. Potatohead", and a person understands that, if they read about that, they are asking for your private thoughts which might not be to their liking.

But making the post "friends only - except(whomever)" or "private" is what a person normally does when talking about someone else... they try to make sure the other person can't hear. You might, however, want to make sure that the person *CAN* see that journal entry if they specfically ask you about it. Knowing exactly what was said can be better than knowing that "something less-than-perfectly-kind" was posted. (Of course, I'd also make it one way or the other... either always provide a copy, or never do.)

So far, I haven't done any self-censoring. I'm not sure if I should or shouldn't. But, so far I haven't really said much about other people that's not public knowledge already.

I hope it works out.

Re: Not sure what's best....

[rivka.livejournal.com]

It's not that I HATE Angaar, it's just that I *DO* need to blow off some steam about it. By talking about it, I can let it go more easily.

*nod* Really, I think this kind of thing is most likely to come up for me in situations in which I am blowing off steam - because the issue isn't important enough to be worth causing a rift over, or because it's something that's not really appropriate to confront the person about.

In this particular incident, I was upset with the way that one friend treated another. I made initial efforts to help them see each other's point of view, but when that didn't work I really believed that I should back off and leave them to work it out between them. There's just a limit to how appropriate I think it is to police a friend's behavior.

Several people have pointed out that they wouldn't want to find out that a problem existed by reading about it in a journal. I agree that if I have an issue with a partner or friend, I ought to discuss it with them in person. But there are two possible situations in which I might not do that:

1) The issue isn't important enough to address between us - I just need to blow off steam about it, and then things will be fine. Or alternatively, I know that I'm being unfair or irrational or selfish in my frustration, and it would be inappropriate to task the other person with my reactions - given that I expect those reactions to pass.

2) It's not going to do any good to try to address the issue. This one, I admit, is a tricky judgment call. But for example: I have issues with the other primary of one of my partners. My partner knows that we don't get along, and that I'm frustrated by some of the ways she has an impact on our relationship. But their relationship is not going to change. It's not going to do any good for me to let him know about each additional instance of me being frustrated - it's just going to stress us both out.

So in those situations, I might vent here instead of having it out with the person in question. In which case, I've decided to (a) use the lj-cut tag to necessitate deliberate effort if one is going to read the post, and (b) a heads-up to the person involved, letting them know they've been vented about but also making it clear that I don't expect them to read or respond.

I made the problematic post when I was thinking about this journal as a private venue. When other people started reading it, I failed to think over all the things I'd posted before and the potential consequences of having them read. That was a mistake, and it hurt someone I care about. Although I'm not sorry for having written the post, I'm sorry for the circumstances under which it was discovered.

Re: Not sure what's best....

[sashajwolf.livejournal.com]

1) The issue isn't important enough to address between us - I just need to blow off steam about it, and then things will be fine. Or alternatively, I know that I'm being unfair or irrational or selfish in my frustration, and it would be inappropriate to task the other person with my reactions - given that I expect those reactions to pass.

2) It's not going to do any good to try to address the issue. This one, I admit, is a tricky judgment call. But for example: I have issues with the other primary of one of my partners. My partner knows that we don't get along, and that I'm frustrated by some of the ways she has an impact on our relationship. But their relationship is not going to change. It's not going to do any good for me to let him know about each additional instance of me being frustrated - it's just going to stress us both out.

Datapoint: In both those situations, if I'm the person that someone is frustrated by, I *very very much* want to know about it, regardless of whether or not they're going to vent about it on LJ or anywhere else. Those are exactly the sorts of situations where I find *not* knowing makes things worse, because I'm liable to say something that sounds insensitive because I think everything's hunkydory when actually it isn't. And sometimes I also have an intuition that something's not quite right, but because no-one's told me, I get paranoid that either I'm imagining it and being horribly insecure, or that I've done something that seems so terrible to the other person that they can't talk to me about it.

If it's not something that needs to be fixed or that can be fixed, better to tell me that than not to tell me about the frustration at all.

I don't need to know about every single incident, but I feel a need to know that the frustration exists, and to be told if it escalates.