processing a break-up
Jan. 1st, 2008 18:25![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhasparked by a link in somebody else's LJ, which was too old to add a comment there. the question was about how to handle posting to LJ if one is breaking up with somebody who's also on LJ.
no, i am not planning a break-up. in fact i have an extremely hard time imagining breaking up with either of my partners (though on really dark days i wonder when they're gonna dump my useless ass). i just ponder whether any of my old habits might change, since it's been so very long that i've had any break-up at all (more than 12 years).
i don't have writing filters. oh, ok, i have two -- one includes my entire flist, and i use it only for sharing direct download links for stuff i am pimping, and one includes my partners and nobody else. i don't foresee using any filters if either of them break up with me, because i don't process ongoing relationship stuff online. or even with anyone offline but possibly a shrink if needed, these days. i'll write stuff years later, when i am all done with it, when it's become a "learning experience", and then i file the serial numbers off and talk about it publicly. any ex might read it, and i am fine with that.
i think that some things won't have changed -- i will want to remain friends with the ex, but i'll also need a break. not because i want to vent my spleen (i commit nastiness by myself in a private journal or out in the woods), but because we will have formed comfortable habits together that i'll need to unlearn or the pain will rub me raw. my r'ships with exes become quite ... shallow for a while, for a few months. i'd expect that i'll stop having an IM window open all our waking hours, but i don't think i'd create an LJ filter. if i were to talk about anything related to it, i'd probably cut it, so the ex has a choice as to whether zie wants to read it or not. i don't think i'd remove zir from my flist either, not even for a short time. i'm generally disciplined enough that i can stay away from zir LJ and usenet posts if reading those were to really hurt me.
i don't think i'd make a filter where i talk about zir if zie remains on my flist. that just feels ... *urk*. if it's stuff that might hurt, i feel it's up to zir to choose to read it, not up to me to pre-filter it. and i've always wanted the reality check that talking about a person close to me with that person in the know provides.
not sure what about it i would write in my LJ at all. i didn't have an LJ when i last broke up with somebody, and usenet seemed like totally the wrong place to say anything at all about it. it was sort of an ... interesting experience though, very different from the norm for me (and in fact this is an ex with whom i did not remain friends, or even in contact). maybe some time i should write about that thing, or rather, about my attraction to the darkness in it.
if i'd write about a breakup right after it's happened i would want to make very sure that people reading it know they're not required to either take sides or even just to help me process. i think i would want to create a filter for it -- though not to make it ex-free, but to put only people on it whom i judge as clued enough to grok why i am writing at all. oh man, that would be hard.
no, i am not planning a break-up. in fact i have an extremely hard time imagining breaking up with either of my partners (though on really dark days i wonder when they're gonna dump my useless ass). i just ponder whether any of my old habits might change, since it's been so very long that i've had any break-up at all (more than 12 years).
i don't have writing filters. oh, ok, i have two -- one includes my entire flist, and i use it only for sharing direct download links for stuff i am pimping, and one includes my partners and nobody else. i don't foresee using any filters if either of them break up with me, because i don't process ongoing relationship stuff online. or even with anyone offline but possibly a shrink if needed, these days. i'll write stuff years later, when i am all done with it, when it's become a "learning experience", and then i file the serial numbers off and talk about it publicly. any ex might read it, and i am fine with that.
i think that some things won't have changed -- i will want to remain friends with the ex, but i'll also need a break. not because i want to vent my spleen (i commit nastiness by myself in a private journal or out in the woods), but because we will have formed comfortable habits together that i'll need to unlearn or the pain will rub me raw. my r'ships with exes become quite ... shallow for a while, for a few months. i'd expect that i'll stop having an IM window open all our waking hours, but i don't think i'd create an LJ filter. if i were to talk about anything related to it, i'd probably cut it, so the ex has a choice as to whether zie wants to read it or not. i don't think i'd remove zir from my flist either, not even for a short time. i'm generally disciplined enough that i can stay away from zir LJ and usenet posts if reading those were to really hurt me.
i don't think i'd make a filter where i talk about zir if zie remains on my flist. that just feels ... *urk*. if it's stuff that might hurt, i feel it's up to zir to choose to read it, not up to me to pre-filter it. and i've always wanted the reality check that talking about a person close to me with that person in the know provides.
not sure what about it i would write in my LJ at all. i didn't have an LJ when i last broke up with somebody, and usenet seemed like totally the wrong place to say anything at all about it. it was sort of an ... interesting experience though, very different from the norm for me (and in fact this is an ex with whom i did not remain friends, or even in contact). maybe some time i should write about that thing, or rather, about my attraction to the darkness in it.
if i'd write about a breakup right after it's happened i would want to make very sure that people reading it know they're not required to either take sides or even just to help me process. i think i would want to create a filter for it -- though not to make it ex-free, but to put only people on it whom i judge as clued enough to grok why i am writing at all. oh man, that would be hard.
no subject
on 2008-01-02 04:18 (UTC)Re: processing a break-up
on 2008-01-02 08:01 (UTC)no subject
on 2008-01-02 05:22 (UTC)I did create a small filter for that one, when I was trying to save the friendship and needed people to talk to about it; that filter included a handful of people entirely removed from the situation and who I thought would have the sort of responses to my venting that I was wanting. (And the "entirely removed from the situation" was exactly so as to avoid the taking-sides issue.) But that was pre-breakup; the only thing I used it for post-breakup was to let the people on it know what happened.
As for my actual-relationship ex, I've never created a filter that didn't include her (except for a one-use one that was for a private message to someone). It was the sort of breakup where we'd mostly made it through the rubbed-raw state by the time we actually broke up, so I didn't really stop being in contact afterwards. It took both of us a while to get to a point of feeling really comfortable talking about things semi-publicly, so we didn't really have that issue, but we still usually send each other a heads-up if we post something referencing it.
Re: processing a break-up
on 2008-01-02 07:57 (UTC)you're right, they don't. but, umm... i haven't had one of those in so long that i have to think hard to remember the last one. some can't rightly be called "break-ups" -- there were a couple of attempts to make a friendship closer which were rejected / didn't work out, and that was painful, but we remained at the pre-attempt level of friendship afterwards.
oh, yeah, there was one, we were becoming closer and closer (friends only, no sex; zie was in a mono marriage). zir spouse demanded that we stop being so chummy. and so we did, and that hurt, and the friendship was reduced to a level that felt unnatural and not-enough, and it drifted apart after that. that's the closest i've come to a break-up of a friendship in more than 25 years.
mostly friendships end by drifting apart for me, they don't end with the sort of finality and redefinition a life partner break-up brings. i don't know what i'd do if one did, with a person who's also on LJ. probably not write about it on LJ either. in that case i would also have both of my partners to talk with, and that would be plenty.
no subject
on 2008-01-03 13:51 (UTC)With Jay, I did made a bunch more changes: both our lives were heavily intertwined with other people on LJ at the time, and I did a bit of making sure people were okay with my talking about various bits of it, when they were mutual friends.
While there's a certain amount of relationship processing in the filtered stuff (and some of that's turned out to be really useful to share with his since-then-ex-girlfriend), a lot of my changes were because I no longer felt comfortable having him have access to other parts of my life (religious discussion, etc.) which he'd both been mostly ignoring *anyway* for a while, and because I was also feeling a general amount of betrayal-of-trust.
Which, really, comes down to the core: breaking up with Scott didn't include things that damaged our ongoing friendship. Breaking up with Jay did.
Re: processing a break-up
on 2008-01-13 06:33 (UTC)but that's mainly because i don't already use writing filters, while you do. if i normally used filters i would probably take a person with whom i broke up like jay off a number of them as well. but i don't think i would start using filters just because of a damaging breakup; that'd feel like i were giving the person too much power over my life post-breakup.
Re: processing a break-up
on 2008-01-13 15:18 (UTC)And if I no longer trust someone, I don't want to expose other people I like and trust and such to that, y'know? If I were just talking about only me and ever me with very few mentions of other people (like you mostly do: you mention the paramour and such, but not in ways that involve more trusted info), I think I'd have felt differently.
(Which, incidentally, is part of why my LJ is friends-locked in the first place.)