Facebook Merging

I have had two Facebook profiles for these past several years. I also have a Facebook “page” for my photography business, but two actual personal profiles. My reasoning is simple. I wanted to be completely honest and uncensored on Facebook, but I wasn't sure that I wanted clients, colleagues, and potential clients and colleagues to see the uncensored side of me. It’s not that I was in any way untruthful on one or the other profile, but just that there were sides of my personality that I wanted to remain guarded from certain groups of acquaintances. 

So I created two profiles instead of one. One of them, my main one, was for family and friends whom I knew from childhood and in the Navy. The other profile included mainly those people whom I've met since getting out of the Navy, and/or people with whom I've interacted here in the Atlanta area. 

Having more than one personal profile is against the Facebook Terms & Conditions, and I have read that if they find out that you have two they will either delete both of them or will warn you to deactivate one (and then delete them both if you fail to comply).

I conducted an online search about the benefits and pitfalls of having two profiles to separate your personal life from your business life. Most of the search results referred to the Terms & Conditions mentioned above. The more I thought about it though, the more I wanted to combine my two profiles. Most people I know have just one profile where they are friends with family, friends, clients, colleagues, co-workers, etc. and that was beginning to finally seem desirable to me. It is annoying having to log on to two different profiles. Since you can only have one instance of the Facebook app on your cell phone, I would have to go to the internet browser to check my “other” profile. Likewise, the Facebook Messenger app only works with one profile, so I'd have to check messages on the browser for the other one. 

I have been working on simplifying my life and my home these past couple years, so combining profiles just makes sense now. So I put out a message on my “other” profile (the one where clients and colleagues are friends) telling them that I would like for them to friend me on my other profile which will soon become my only profile. I am pleased and grateful that many of the people accepted this almost immediately, and many more over the next couple days. I still have some pending friend requests out there, which I'm sure they will get to eventually. 

I must say that there was an immediate feeling of relief inside when I started getting the friend notifications. I don't know if I can pinpoint why, but for some reason I just feel so much better having invited the rest of my friends over to my main profile. It’s a nervous and exciting feeling inviting people with whom you've only had a professional relationship into your real world and letting them see your true self. In the end I will be happy to have everyone in my life all on the same profile. This is a feeling that most of you probably took for granted, or possibly it’s not the same for you; maybe you long for having two profiles so that you can keep yourself guarded from certain people and groups. To you I say if you do not feel like using the existing enigma of privacy settings in Facebook, you may need to pare down your friend list so that you can be yourself and express your true feelings without fear.