Readers Respond
The previous question was from a reader whose journal got her into hot water. She wrote:
For a long time, I’ve processed negative emotions by writing in a journal. … After getting married, I started to keep a journal of the fights I had with my husband in a Google Doc on my phone. … During our couples counseling sessions, I started referring to my journal. … I did this because my husband had different memories of our experiences during my first pregnancy. … I told him it was private, but he stole my phone and read through it while I was sleeping. He was devastated by what he read. … It has been over a year of fighting about this, and he’s still not over it. … Was I wrong to keep a journal of only negative things about my partner, to keep it private and to bring it up during counseling sessions? — Name Withheld
In his response, the Ethicist noted:
Breaking into your phone and reading this document was a very serious violation of your privacy. … You don’t say that he ever apologized for that invasion, while you have clearly explained to him that keeping a journal has long been how you process negative feelings. Was keeping this document itself a betrayal, given the purposes it served? Surely not. … Nor was it wrong to keep the journal from your spouse. … You don’t lose your right to an interior life when you get married. What about bringing up the journal during counseling? There was nothing wrong with drawing on contemporaneous notes about how you felt at the time. … Perhaps what has upset your husband is not so much that you recorded these thoughts as that you had them. … Encountering a long record of concentrated resentment may have shaken his understanding of your relationship. … A further reason he keeps returning to it could be that he sees it as an instance in which you are plainly in the wrong. But insisting on winning arguments is a recipe for losing a marriage.
(Reread the full question and answer here.)
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I have been keeping private journals since I was a teenager. I started writing quotes and affirmations in them. Then once I began counseling at 28, my first therapist suggested I write daily. Write whatever you want, whatever comes to mind. Your feelings, intentions. I expressed my emotions, and I stopped ruminating about them. My journal is confidential, private, for no one else but me. I am 62 now and have had many therapists, and they all agree that journaling is one of the best tools one can use to clear your mind. What the husband did was an unforgivable betrayal of trust. He absolutely needs to go to counseling on his own to figure out why he felt he had the right to look at his wife’s phone and to still be fighting with her about it. He was 100 percent wrong, and this is his problem. — Sydney
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Telling your husband that you keep a list of only negative things about him, and that you will only allow him to know the details in the presence of a third party without letting him look at it beforehand, is cruel and unusual punishment. If the writer kept it to herself, that would be one thing, but instead she uses it as a cudgel. Who wouldn’t want to see such a list about himself or herself, especially when the person keeping it is one’s spouse? I wouldn’t want to be with someone who did that and can’t imagine anyone who would. — Mark
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The journal serves as a therapeutic avenue for your thoughts and for keeping track of incidents. Sometimes it is important to have a record of what transpired. Our minds have learned to deal with aspects of trauma by remembering only parts or not the entire story. I’m glad you have a way to document what really occurred. Keep at it, as you may want to refer to this record in the future. — Laura
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The letter writer’s husband got exactly what he deserved for such a breach of trust — the worst of himself writ large. Once he found it, he chose to keep reading. Now, rather than process the hurt and (hopefully) guilt like an emotionally mature adult, he is using it as leverage to harm the letter writer. He does not get to treat the angry thoughts you processed in a healthy way against you just because you are contradicting him in an argument. Hopefully the husband is in individual therapy to work on healthy boundaries and accountability. If not, pause couples therapy until he catches up with you. — Stacey