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

[warmhardjello]

For a while i had two journals, one for "real" friends (people i knew in person) to see, and the other one i didnt tell any of those friends about. sometimes i would write the same things in each and sometimes not. I had alot of internet friends on my second journal but eventually i stopped using it, im not sure why.

[gringageek]

Oh, I definately do a lot of censoring. With 3 ex's on my friends' list, it's hard to say everything. Plus there's just friends I can't really say everything around. But at the same time, I want to expose these things, just not to these specific people.

I like that "sense of openness" and wish I could be more open. At the same time, I don't want to cause hurt feelings or spark comment/post fights over it.

[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