the reveal

Question for all of you out there - do any of you have spouses, or significant others, or family, or close friends who know about the existance of your blog but haven't read it? Are any of those people curious as to what you write about? Do they pester you for access? How do you deal with it?

I've been dealing with that for a while.

Some time back - I think it may have been in January - my X learned that I had a blog. She asked me what I wrote about, and I told her what was on it. She asked if I ever wrote about her. Not very often, I said (which was pretty true at the time - I had only just started blogging about dating then). She asked if she could see it, and I kind of gave her the run-around, told her I'd send her the address, changed the topic...didn't send it. Since then she's asked several times, and I'd always manage to change the subject.

Until Friday.

The X and I (she really needs a better "handle") have been hanging out for the last month or so, trying to see if there's still a "there" there, if you know what I mean. The reasons that I haven't blogged about this are for another post, but for the most part things have been going well. Anyway, on Friday night, she kind of pinned me down, told me that she wanted to see it. I tap-danced for a while, but then she said something that kind of stopped me. "I want to know all of you," she said, "and if you're writing things in a public journal, I'd like to know that too. Even if I don't like all of it."

So I did what I generally do in these situations. I compromised. I agreed that I would show her a Word document version of my blog. (I've actually been meaning to do this - copy everything I've got - because I'm investigating moving off of Blogger onto another site, and I'd like to keep around the old posts.) I'm editing some of the identifying features - not referring to Cowtown or Steak City, or K Lance or The Rover - and taking out the links; all of the content, however, will remain intact. I told her that I didn't want to give her the web address because I was afraid that I might not feel as free to write if I knew she was looking at it. She agreed.

Actually, as I've been cutting and pasting all of these old entries, I've realized that I'm not ashamed of anything I've written. Why should I be? I think that I'm a pretty truthful person, and what I've put up here is the truth. At least, it's my truth. I mean, I don't think I would want Awkward Dude or the bratty kid from Steak City to see what I've written about them, but I think that pretty much everything else is fit for public consumption.

I'm curious to see what other people think about this decision (not that it's going to change my mind), as well as seeing if anybody else has dealt with this. Fire away...