Censorship to Preserve Relationships?

[mcfnord]

untilcorruption writes:

While replying to a post, I realized that I censor my journal very heavily by either omitting complete thoughts and ideas or by using carefully constructed friends groups. My friends groups are set up according to who may see them. Example: Although I would not care if a friend A saw a specific entry, I do not want friend B to see it,

Comments

[aeliakirith]

I do find myself censoring some things based on who's reading my journal. For example, if I'm annoyed at my boyfriend, I'll block him from reading the entry, since it's much better to actually *talk* to him about the problem than to let him read about it secondhand. It does bug me sometimes that I can't completely express everything I think or feel on LJ, but I think I'd rather be considerate than completely open. I do have a private journal, but I haven't felt the need to use it in a long time. I started it when I was in the middle of an unpleasant situation with two close friends and really couldn't talk about it with either of them, so I used that as an outlet to keep myself sane. Now, though, the things that I feel the need to vent about tend to be less likely to hurt people's feelings (such as job-related stress, etc.), so I can accomplish the same thing with an LJ that people see.

It's also a trade-off. If you do private posts, you don't have to censor anything, but you lose any chance of a reply from someone who has advice, or just empathy, to offer.