The buzz heard round the blogosphere last week when the New York Times did a story called When the Ex Blogs, the Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired wasn’t so much a start of surprise as a nod of recognition.

Steeped in the experiences of Dooce, who got dooced when her employer found her blog, and the dozens of women we know whose husbands and boyfriends and lovers found their blogs, BlogHer readers and writers recognize that bloggers do spill feelings about their exes when relationships went sour. Nevertheless, the Times story delivered a couple of extra frissions, both because two of the writers highlighted are part of the community (NakedJen and Penelope Trunk), and because pain and suffering were involved.

As both a Sex & Relationships contributing editor, and a divorced blogger, I volunteered to cover this story. I know how shaky the line between inadvertently smearing vitriol over someone you once loved, protecting his or her privacy while writing about yourself, and just going too far in the heat of the moment can be. I’ve had my own struggles with sharing too much and respecting privacy, and yet also know how much I have gotten from others’ honest (if one-sided) accounts of their struggles.

So what was your take on this?

For some readers, so much intimate information just felt like TMI (too much information). The writer at Geeksugar reflected this viewpoint when she said:
"I'm all for catharsis, and these women may get some needed support, but I think they're revealing too much and putting themselves up for close scrutiny.”

Other commentators, not surprisingly, could not read this story, or the bloggers’ posts, without imagining how attached the ex-spouses would feel. Ted Hopton, From Yaicha, spoke about how sharing information can feel like a personal attack: "I was not a blogger when I went through my divorce, and my ex barely knows how to turn on a computer. I think I have enough sense not to blog about my dirty laundry, but it’s a truly scary thought to imagine my ex using a blog to attack me."

However, not everyone reacted in a completely negative way. SV Mom, a BlogHer voice, focused her feedback on imagining what the kids in these families might think as they read these blog posts years from now. She posted the following after the Times story ran:
“Yesterday my husband handed me the front page of the New York Times and said you have to read this article: "When the Ex Writes a Blog, The Dirtiest Laundry Is Aired". The article was about bloggers who post about their divorce details, and two of my favorites Naked Jen and Penelope Trunk bravely spoke up on the subject. I had a chance to meet both of these bloggers live and they as engaging and interesting in person.

What really moved me about the article is that I am a child of a divorced family, so the discussion of the effect of children reading their parent's divorce blog posts is an interesting one. I thought about Penelope Trunk's quote from the article when asked if it is good for children to get information about their parent's divorce in a blog: "It is a generational issue"...we think it will be a big deal, but it won't be for them..”

Can you be a part of my life, an anonymous blogger, commented on this situation when she came across the Time story: "Apparently I was not alone in starting my blog to help me digest the dissolution of my relationship with DTM. Mine was NOT a marriage...not even close, but the experience of the "relationship" was so traumatic to me that I had to find a way to express my thoughts, feelings, anger, disappointment etc. and I turned to blogging.”

For me, this Times piece, and the feedback and comments around it, hit home in a very real way. There just doesn’t seem to be an easy and appropriate way for bloggers to write about their relationship conflicts and not drive their partners crazy. The times I’ve blogged about my Ex, or past relationships, have made no one happy. My desire to share my own feelings has always run head on into other people’s sensitivities, or their wish to not be mentioned at all.

And yet, as a blogger, the temptation to lay it all out there is somehow irresistable. It’s as though, once you make the decision to share, turning your thought processes off becomes almost impossible. And yes, there’s that knowledge that writing your truth may hurt someone or totally piss them off.

So, where do you draw the line?

For Blogher readers—and writers—how do you make a decision about what to share?

Whether to let the person you’re writing about know you’re doing so?

And how you think about the choices you’ve made?

Post in the comments here, please, to share your views as a blogger about writing personal narratives, particularly of the break up persuasion and your tips for your peers on doing it, as much as possible, in a scrupulous way.

Related blog posts:
Naked Jen, Front Page News

"I have received nearly a thousand emails (they just keep coming) and quite a few people have written to ask me what I thought of the article or to tell me what they thought of the article or just to say that they discovered me because of the article and wish they had had something similar when they were going through their own divorce."
and

"When David left last October, he not only left me, he left the dogs, as well. He not only broke my heart, he broke their hearts, too. And while I was a human with a brain that could somehow, someway wrap itself around the fact that he no longer wanted to be a part of my life, Buddha and Stella still have no idea what on earth happened to him?

He just left. Packed everything that he believed was his and disappeared."

What happens when your ex blogs

"The ex that I had written about stumbled across this blog, was very upset about the views that I had expressed and demanded that I removed all content which had any reference to our past relationship. Since my intention with this blog wasn't to upset anyone, I agreed to remove this content which must've taken me all of five minutes to do, seeing as there was so little of it.

It was difficult for me to remove it though, as I felt that the personal content was good for the blog and allowed some insight into what was going through my head at the time."

Someday Soon: Always that girls’ weblog

“I do imagine that if my H saw this blog, that would give him plenty of reason to not be wishy washy anymore about what he wants. Nobody likes to have his or her dirty laundry aired, but that being said what about what I want or need? I am telling him basic things, so we don’t make matters worse, but he is blatantly ignoring anything he can do to help me transition and make me feel more comfortable.”

Casey in Tacoma: On blogging, a Preface
“And as I saw the numbers on my stat counter climb ("four hundred unique hits today?... FIVE hundred??? Who's that in London????"), I realized that it was now a matter of time before someone I knew found it. My parents don't spend much time on the internet, and to my knowledge they still haven't heard about blogging (eBay and email, that's about it), but I have friends, siblings, and cousins... high school friends, coworkers, etc. I was being linked to by at least 40 other blogs (some of them quite popular). I had a following. So, there was only one thing to do:

Shut it down.”