Ok so got a facebook friend request from a very tbm relative and i'm not sure what to do. Facebook is the one place I don't have to censor myself and I really don't want to friend this person. I'd have to, for example, remove all my pictures of me in skimpy attire or have this person think i'm a slut. If I say no to the friend request, then I end up hurting feelings and feeling like a jerk. Anyone have suggestions?

Just ignore it. Don't reject or accept. Just let it sit there. If they ever ask you about it, say you can't find anything on Facebook anymore because they fucked up the format.

I actually CAN'T find anything anymore. Facebook sucks now.

Just sayin'...

Ron

As a side note, add me as a friend so I can see all your slutty picture. :)

ron

That crossed my mind as well.

Lol, nothing really bad, just some pics of me in sleeveless shirts that would be considered perfectly normal to non mormons. I think the real problem is I need to grow a spine and not care what other people think. Easy to say, but hard to put into practice.

You can choose to hurt their feelings or you can choose to censure yourself, your choice.

Accept the friend - they are the ones who asked.

Be yourself and don't change anything.

Care not what people that 'don't matter' think of you - you are who you are. If that makes them uncomfortable then maybe they'll remove themselves.

Why would you want to have to be someone you aren't to be "friends" with anyone??

I thought there were a bunch of new settings so you can have groups of people like family that can see one set, friends for another set of stuff? People have talked about this but I still haven't done it. Totally need to.

There are, but it's clunky and doesn't work all that well.

I think the recent changes were to help them better compete with Google+, which has a nice, clean interface (less is more).

Friend and don't censor. Let them drop you if they want. Their attitudes or perspectives shouldn't hinder you from your authenticity. You shouldn't ever refuse to reach out because someone might not like your (legal) pictures.

I had to drop a high school friend from my facebook list not long ago, because she's a porn star now and was putting some racy pictures on her profile. She really is nice, but I didn't want my TBM wife seeing those pictures on my account all the time. It was sad, but it was on me to drop her, not the other way around.

I recently accepted a friend request by a relative who really hurt me some years ago. Don't know at all why and have no interest in asking.

I just thought OK, I don't care if you in reality don't like me and what I put on my fb page, why should I care, and keep posting whatever I think is interesting. So I accepted, and he hasn't dropped me - yet anyway. I don't care AT ALL, either way.

I recently declined a friend request, but I politely explained in a personal message why. Maybe you could just explain that FB is your "personal space" away from family (or whatever logical reason you could give). Maybe remind them that if they want to communicate you'd be happy to through email.

I have high privacy settings, so if someone is not my "friend" they can't see anything on my FB except my profile pic. I share a little more with "friends of friends", but not much more. Just basics like my "info" but no one can see the pages that I "like". I hide most of my "friendly activity" because I don't want my TBM friends to see what I comment on President Paternoster's page. If they are on his page, I'm pretty sure they'd be okay with what I have to say.

It's an interesting question... When Facebook got started, my brothers and sister started to actually connect with one another (large mormon family, everyone moved as far away from home as they could as soon as they could, so we were never all that close). It was actually kind of nice...

Then my parents discovered it, and being good children we accepted their friend invites. My brother had a post of himself with a beer in one hand an a cigar in another, he was at a party and looked like he was actually having fun, which, in my opinion was a good thing with everything he'd been though in his life.

My Dad, quite publicly, posted on his wall that he should remove the photo, that it was upsetting his mother and he needed to basically repent. My brother was mortified.

That ended it. Almost overnight, my siblings and I pretty much stopped posting anything but the most non-controversial posts.. Not that we were all that controversial to start with, but we weren't "free" anymore. "It's raining here", "working in the garden", etc. It felt like the chance for us to start getting together was ruined.

I realize that my situation is different than yours. I'm in the camp that *believes* that if you friend them you shouldn't change, but really, that's not what we've ended up doing. Maybe if it weren't my parents, and just a distant relative, it would be different. Perhaps, "not finding" the request is the best options, but that depends on your situation.

Yes this is a parent so that makes it very hard to say no. Maybe I should move to google.

You would only end up being angry and frustrated if you accepted the friend request when you don't want to.

And that's the difference between being a TBM and being an exmo. As a TBM, we usually felt obligated to do what other Mormons pushed us to do. As exmos, we begin to realize that OUR feelings count, and we begin to honor those feelings by making choices which align with them!

Good luck.