Avoiding Drama VS Passive-Aggressiveness

[shadowravyn]

EDIT: Just to be perfectly clear, while I do have reasons for this post, the odds that this reason involves you are INCREDIBLY SMALL. Please do not think think this entry is about to presage some kind of 'OMG YOU ARE PISSING ME OFF' talk and/or post. Otherwise I would have used less-hypothetical scenarios.So, LJ--at least the way I use it--is a

Comments

[teddywolf]

I have not answered the polls yet.

My personal take is, if I want to vent I am fully allowed to vent - but I must be ready to accept the consequences of my venting. I make it a point to not vent much if at all about my wife because not only does it not really help the situation, it can lead to inaccurate portraits in the heads of various LJers and I do not want that. This has been my policy from the get-go. On rare occasions I will ask for advice without her being able to read it but I haven't done so in a couple of years despite some desire to do so.

My wife, by comparison, has in the past (and occasionally still) regularly posted to filters I am not on regarding things I have or have not done; whenever she posts to those filters I am portrayed in at best a neutral light. Several years ago, after doing rather a lot of this, I asked her to go over the posts she made to those filters and see what kind of impression those posts gave of me. She was, not to put too fine a point on it, somewhat horrified.

If I feel the need to vent about other people on LJ whom I know, which is not common, it is usually in response to somebody else's comment as opposed to me making a post on my own journal. I still try to keep it offline as much as possible, but if I can't I tend to anonymize somewhat while still being as accurate as possible.

If I were to vent about a specific LJers where they could see it, it would be a direct challenge to their self-image and character. I try to avoid this.

Fairness in venting can go a long ways to mitigating damage otherwise done. "X habit that Y has really bugs the shit out of me, but I really appreciate how good they are at Z and how helpful they are with me about it," reads a lot better than, "X habit that Y has really bugs the shit out of me. How does it bug me? Let me count the ways..."

[buddhagrrl]

Pretty good summary of how I think of and treat this topic, as well.

[teddywolf]

Oh good - makes my world a bit less lonely having other people understand how I think :-)