My blogging life is my secret identity. No one in my real life has the location even though I’ve been asked a lot. I want the freedom to write whatever is on my mind without falling prey to self-censorship. I already muffle things that I might want to say in real life but am too polite to say out loud.
I explained this to the SO when we met. He seemed mildly alarmed about what I might write. He asked many questions. I assured him that he wasn’t all that interesting to talk about all the time so not to worry his pretty little head about it. When I signed up for Facebook I did show him the bookmark to my account and told him he could read it any time since it was my real-life persona and therefore fair game. (I believe that I was this gracious since his eyes were bugging out every time I announced gleefully that I had found another ex-boyfriend.) The blog was still off limits.
It isn’t like it was super hidden. There is a link on my browser’s toolbar. But them’s the rules.
A few weeks ago something weird started happening with regularity. Out of the blue and appropos of nothing he’d ever so casually ask, “Have you ever considered (insert totally random conversational detour that would not occur to anyone unless you had READ MY BLOG LATELY SINCE I JUST POSTED ABOUT IT)?” Bless him. Subtlety is not his strong suit.
But being a nice person I did not immediately tear his head off with my bare hands gave him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps I had been thinking about it so hard that it leaked from my brain into the air where he picked up on it. Yeah, maybe that was it.
Yesterday he tried subtlety again. I finally just asked why he didn’t just admit that he’d been reading my blog. He asked how I knew. I said that he couldn’t pull off the subtle. I asked how long he’d been reading. I don’t know when he started reading but he read back to the beginning. That is entirely too much insight into my brain for my significant other to have.
That means that he read everything I’ve written about him. He’s learned all about my dating spree between the ex and him. Serves him right for being a low down dirty sneaky poo poo head Boy, I hope it didn’t cause him undue anxiety.
He tried to cover by telling that he got caught up in it and just had to read the whole thing. Uh huh. Tried telling me that I was funny and had a “unique way of processing information.” Are you saying I’m an intellectual freak?
I asked him what part of, “Don’t read my blog” he had difficulty with. He said, “Well, all of it.”
Then he did a neat end run around me and thus prevented his grizzly death for the time being. “I was thinking of starting a blog and you’d be the perfect person to help me.” I do so love to pull people kicking and screaming into the 20th century! I have him thinking about desired address ideas. Now if I can just convince him to sign up for Facebook and digitize all his music my evil plan will be complete it will be satisfying.
This doesn’t mean that he is forgiven and can start sleeping with both eyes closed again.
Wow. Well now it’s his turn to tell you what’s inside his head. My husband knows about my blog, but no one else in real life (I hope) does. I totally understand about the self-censorship bit, I’m not really limited by knowing that hubs reads it (if I have something on my mind, he’ll know it anyway), but I would be if I knew family was reading it.
Oh no! I know the first time one of the barn people found my blog through goggle search about Isabell Werth I thought I would never be able to write a real post again. I hope that your SO knows that blogging is not like anything else on earth and therefor cannot be spoken about ever again. I will say that at least he admitted to reading it so that is one plus.