Blog Standards & Why I Don't Delete Posts

I have always considered my blog to be a record of my personal history.  Since I was a little girl I was taught that a journal was important, and I have been reminded of that fact by the journals of past ancestors and the published journals of inspiring people.  I have old journals going all the way back to first grade, and I still have a paper journal at home to this day-even though I mostly use my blog.  To that effect, I believe my blog is just as important as my journal.

Sometimes I go back and read old posts and wonder what I was thinking when I wrote the post.  There are even times when I wish I hadn't written a post-but I never delete them.  The reason I dislike those posts is because I am not that person any more.  What right does the person I am now have to delete the history of that person I used to be?  Someday that history will be very important to me.  That record of how I was feeling, who I was, and what I was going through.  I do not delete posts.

The reason I am writing this now is because I was recently contacted by someone from a long way back (or at least it feels like a long way) in my past; an ex to be specific.  Looking back now, I can't say I was ever actually in love with this person, but I did like him very much and at the time that felt like love.  We dated for a while, and I finally ended it because he stood me up all the time and I felt I deserved better.  Which I did. 

After we broke up I found out he had cheated on my with multiple women.  Not just sex, but to the extent that all of these women thought they were having the same serious relationship with him.  Among the women his ex-wife who thought they were working on getting their marriage back together even.  I found this out because I wrote about finally ending things with him, and another woman he had been seeing commented and together we blew his whole story out of the water.

I was angry, and rightly so.  I wrote a huge post ranting and raving about what a terrible person he was.  It was not pretty.  I even called him a limp noodle-referring to his manhood.

I had completely forgotten about this post until I received an email from him the Monday before last.  It is a complete shock to open your email like you do every day and find a letter from someone you haven't thought of in a long time, especially when that bridge burned down long ago.  Wanna read it?  Here you go:

Color me floored.  I went back and read the post-and I have to say I was highly impressed that he could read through such a scathing review of his personal moral character and still send me such a well put together and kind apology.  Impressed as I am, I remember who he is-or was-but still is to me.  It sounds sincere, but chances are he isn't actually sorry and only wants me to take down the post because it just so happens to be the number one search result if you put his name into Google.

At that moment in time I was torn.  On the one hand, I have long since gotten over the anger I felt and this blog post no longer represents what he is to me-even though it's completely true.  

Part of me felt like it wasn't fair to him that this came up every time someone searched his name.

Part of me felt like it was my duty to women everywhere to leave this post active and whole.

As I mentioned above, I do not delete posts.  I wasn't about to take this post down simply because he'd requested I change my mind about our history.  However, I was ready to be done with the whole thing and sort of "let it go" without deleting the post.  I went through and deleted every trace of his name in any post I've ever written on my blog and replaced it with "[womanizer]" instead.  An accurate and fair representation of what he was to me, and now his name will no longer be listed in my posts. 

Google hasn't let go of pulling that post as the first thing that comes up if you search his name, but that's not my problem.  His name is forever stricken from this blog.  From here on out he is only [womanizer] to me and this blog.

My friend thought that was too nice of me, and that I was caving into him by allowing his name to be publicly removed from my history.  However, I don't feel like that is the case.  I feel like I'm just letting go now, free to move on from all the drama he caused-because I really don't care any more.

Moral of the Story: Use nicknames for guys I date from now on! :P

Updated: He asked my friend out, check out her post on Adventures in Dating.

How do you feel about using real names on blogs?

Do you think more anonymity should be kept in situations like these?