As far as I'm concerned, a person who would read another person's journal without their permission, ESPECIALLY one who'd throw what they read in the journaler's face later, is not a nice person. He or she is a nasty, icky individual.
I've probably told this story before... if I have, forgive the repetition. Anyway, many years ago, I was engaged to marry a fellow who was totally into control. He was not religious at all, but he was one of those people I like to call One-Verse Charlies, who latch on with the tenacity of a pit bull to a single Bible verse, ideation, or passage (totally ignoring all the rest of it) and live by it, and try to force everyone else to live by it in a totally ham-fisted way! His verse? The one(s) about Wives submitting to husbands as unto the Lord.
One day he told me in a very matter of fact, this-is-just-the-way-it-is manner that once we were married everything of mine would be his, so that meant he was going to be entitled to read all my journals old and new. I don't think so, was my reply. He kept pushing and became more and more adamant, and the more I refused (finally declaring that I would burn the *%$# things rather than have him read them!) the madder he got, finally playing the secrets card and accusing me of "having something to hide."
I did not have a thing to hide, I truthfully replied; it was just the principle of privacy and respect for a person as an individual. I would never read HIS journals if he had any. He didn't get it; he went off on a tear about how a wife was "not a person, not an individual, but property of her husband and was to submit to him as unto the Lord. "As unto THE LORD!" he declared, voice rising.
He hated it when I rolled my eyes like a recalcitrant teenager!
Well, that was the first of many red flags in THAT relationship! Once again my journal had been a helpful friend to me, albeit indirectly this time. How glad I am that I did not marry that guy!
