Thoughts on publicness

[lnr]

I've seen quite a few people around the place who have all or nearly all of their entries for friends only. Personally I prefer to be public with a lot of what I say, but I have been a bit cautious about some things. Not being out about bi-ness or polyness to my parents I don't tend to talk about that in the public half of my diary at all, and that was actually a fairly concious decision. I don't know that they read it, but it's perfectly possible that they might.

I talked about it in comments on cryx's journal though since there was something I wanted to say on the subject, and that interested someone else (lovebugkisses) who not being on my friends list of course asked about it in a comment on one of my public posts. That's kind of made me think hard about just what I want to do about that sort of thing. I'm umming and ahhing between deleting that comment to make it hard to tell anything like that from the public view of my journal again, or just thinking sod it and being more open about the whole thing. For now I think I'll leave the comment there but continue to talk about such stuff privately instead.

If my parents were to find out by reading it here it wouldn't be the end of the world. It is something I'd *like* to be open about with them, in the long run, even if I don't find I can talk about it now, so in some ways it would just be an easy way of telling them. I guess I still think they'll disapprove and I don't like them feeling that way about me. I think at some point I am just going to have to tell them that that's the way it is and let them just get over it though. And no doubt I'll find out I'm being more paranoid than necessary and that they'd be fine with it really, but they've been pretty scathing of polyness in the past, and I just don't fancy trying to talk about it at the moment. Especially when it's still pretty new to me too in this form.

[No longer friends-only]

Comments

[angua.livejournal.com]

I expect your parents would be fine but when and how you tell them is up to you. I had a long chat with my folks when I got together with N and they were basically of the opinion that as long as I was happy and not getting hurt they were fine. I've spoken to them a reasonable amount since about various things (especially when it was going pear shaped) and they've always been supportive. I haven't brought a girlfriend home yet so I don't know how they'd react to that :)

As for things being public.. my basic rule of thumb is 'do I want any of my ex's or anyone that doesn't like me to read this' It means if it's something that could open me up to getting abuse or letting people know more about me than they should then I post it as friends only. I'm quite paranoid about this because of the stalker and whatnot. I dunno, it works for me mostly. I don't hold back in the stuff I write friends only though.

Anyway, that's my 2p.