I've been noticing a trend with my friends and other individuals around me who are in relationships. It's this apparent lack of privacy. It seems that my friends have unrestricted access to their boyfriend's email and their cell phones i.e. to check text messages. I've noticed this mostly in the younger 20 something couples.
Do you think this is symptomatic of immaturity, this need to check up on a SO? Even though I never felt like I was ever doing anything behind any of my BF's backs, I still felt the need to have some boundaries. I don't know that I would be 100% comfortable with the idea of my BF being able to look at my e-mail or text messages whenever.
I even had a guy at school tell me to "watch" the text messages I sent him because of his GF. I assumed he meant that she read his text messages. I dunno, I think that's pushing it. Shouldn't couples be able to trust each other? Or is this a common thing among younger relationships?
I think this is common among people that are controlling and untrusting, period. Regardless of age. I think it is disrespectful and wrong to engage in this behavior. If you have any reason to doubt the person you are with, maybe you should not be in a relationship with that person. Trust is a very huge factor in a successful relationship. If you start to feel that you have reason to suspect a significant other, the best approach would be to discuss outright what is it you're feeling.
This is directed at people in general, not specifically you Water Lily. You make a very valid point.
I can see how mistrust can happen at any age and any stage in a relationship. I guess it's been this unrestricted access to my friends' BF's email and text messages that seems to be somewhat startling.
I do agree that this behavior stems from mistrust. I never had a reason to mistrust my ex-fiance. I never looked at his phone messages or his e-mail. I will confess that towards the end of our relationship when he was separating himself from me emotionally, I was tempted to want to look at his phone and see if there were any messages. But by that point, I was so disgusted and realized that the relationship was falling apart, that I didn't even bother.
But the guy in my class that I was referring to is in a new relationship. I believe that him and his GF have only been dating about 4 months. While I do talk to him on occasion, I have never texted him and decided against it all all after he told me that. If his GF is insecure, any female texting him might cause her to freak out.
And my friend (who recently got engaged) had found out that her fiance's ex GF was trying to come see him while she was in the area a month ago. I found out that she sent pictures of herself to him. My friend freaked out and logged into his email to look at them. She discovered that he deleted all of them. I don't know, I would love to know if my friend feels that she can trust him 100% and if not, is it making for a good start to their commitment?
Perhaps it is more noticable with the younger generation since so many of them have their own cell phones with text and computers, email accounts, online journals, and other electronic communications.
With so much online (facebook, forums, fact checking -and other stuff that doesn't start with F), much isn't private. Plus with most online situations, people don't censor themselves.
Water Lily, as for your friend who got engaged, to the fiance's defense. Perhaps he deleted the pictures of the x-gf because he wasn't interested in her.
I suppose reading emails or checking cell phone numbers would have save me a whole world of hurt with my first long-time boyfriend.
As it stands now, DH and I have one email account together. I think he has one or two others from signing up for google. I just have my work account that is mine, but not private by any means. I'm just lazy in that way. We only have the one cell phone, because it isn't used much and I am just too cheap for more than cell when we have our landline.
I noticed this too! Especially when I was in my early 20's, which was ten years ago. The trend I noticed was driving each other's cars. I noticed they seem to sort of "Take over" each others house, possessions, etc. It annoyed me to no end - I thought is that what a relationship is? You totally lose your identity and everything you own to the other person?
And what really bothered me was how quickly they let it happen. They'd date someone for like 3 weeks and they'd be spending 24/7 together and all up in each other's shit. I also noticed that most of the people had low self esteem and settled for anything that came along as well. But I don't think using each other's car is a matter of trust - I've noticed that this trend was rampant in my hometown where people tend to have no life and decide they are in love after 2 weeks of dating and insist on being a part every aspect of each other's life (Of course it never lasts!)
DH doesn't have access to my email, etc. I don't have access to his WoW account. Why would we want to do that? I don't play World of Warcraft and my DH doesn't care to sit and read countless emails from my sister. I don't understand why couples do that.
I don't really understand this trend either. I think maybe it's more insecurity on the part of the person doing the snooping.
That being said, my husband found out his first wife was cheating on him because he looked at her chat history on their computer and found conversations she'd had with a guy making plans to meet, etc. But he already had his suspicions before he went looking for proof, so maybe that's a little different.
I don't think he looks at any of my accounts. We have separate computers at home, but both of them are on all the time, and I rarely log out of anything, so it would be very easy for him to snoop. Same goes for me with him.
Things are so different now because people have so many more ways to "sneak around" if they want to. When I was in high school, a lot of people had cell phones, but texting wasn't popular yet. A lot of people had e-mail, but there was no facebook, MySpace, etc. and e-mail wasn't used in quite the capacity it is now. The most you could do was check a person's pager to see if anyone had paged them. (I still never understood why so many people in my generation decided to get pagers. I thought they were useless.)
I agree with the OP though...if you feel the need to be checking up on your SO, then maybe there's a problem.
Vanessa
I guess DH and I are in the minority. We are in our 40s and don't really have barriers in our relationship. We have each other's email passwords (home and work), computer passwords, and cell phone passwords. I have no problem with his looking in my purse for something, and he has no problem with my going through his wallet if I need something there. All our financial accounts are joint other than the ones connected with our 403b plans, and we are each other's beneficiaries for those as well as all our life insurance. We have each other's medical and financial POA. About the only thing we don't share is user ids for message boards, but that's because our interests are different.
I don't feel as though I've lost my identity because of this closeness. I like that feeling of trust and intimacy. We've been together 21 years. It works for us, so that's all that matters to me.
I'm in dune's situation, though I don't know ALL of DH's passwords or have access to his accounts, I don't need it. In the off chance I do need it or happen to see it- it's not a big deal.
Other than that we have full access to each other's everything and it's not an issue. I don't particularly like when he's on my computer and starts reading my e-mail, but again he knows everything anyway so it doesn't matter.
He's my best friend 1st and THEN my SO, so maybe that is part of it, or maybe it's because we have been together for 10 years and got together young, or maybe because we fall into the age group you mentioned. In any case I'll take our situation over my parents ' any day. My dad and mom both had "secret" accounts, bills, and whatever that I knew about but they supposedly didn't know about each others. WTF is that? They had some serious issues (obviously) and still do, so even though I understand this isn't always the ,to me having all access = trust, having secrets/limited access = distrust and poor behavior (if you have to hide it you shouldn't be doing it) and that's how I grew up so I don't have much else to go on.
So for now this works for us.
I do think excessive snooping is a sign of insecurity (and I've been guilty and that is exactly where it's coming from), but I guess it just depends on the people involved and what their situation is.
It must be a generational issue. Cause I demand Privacy in my life.
Bob and I share WinXP
He has his side, and I have mine.
He has several E mail accounts and I have a couple.
We both CAN, if we wanted to, have access to our accounts.
but we TRUST each other not to spy on each other.
And YES I use the word SPY cause that is what it IS. IMHO it is an invasion of privacy when one person snoopes in on another persons private e-mails, thoughts, and or feelings.
EVERYONE deserves some privacy in their lives.
But in the this country of ours were people would sooner record
the actions of someone hanging off a cliff for their dear life,as opposed to dropping the fucking camera and going to help them.
Why miss the opportunity of a life time to get that shot on You Tube!
(groan)
So, In this age of laptops and I Phones, I don't doubt for one minute that the youth of today knows nothing else but to share their lives with Every Tom Dick Or Harry that comes along.
As for me, I demand my privacy, and I totally respect anyone else that demands the same for themselves.
As for incorporating said privacy into any new relationship? The key to that as is with everything else is
communication.
Talk with your S.O & always let them know how you feel on the topic of Privacy.
That is what DH & I did from the very get go of our relationship.
And 23 years later we are still going strong!
It's funny you mentioned XP. When we first got it, we tried having separate ids. I thought it would be useful because I'm a leftie and he's a rightie, so we use the mouse differently. DH was the one who, after three months, said that having separate IDs was a PITA. We merged them together and have used a joint identity on all our computers ever since. He just takes the mouse and turns it so he can use it.
I think Kirby is on to something about the friendship thing. I also think of DH as my very best friend (though I have a "regular" best friend too). I just can't imagine not sharing everything with him. I have private thoughts I keep to myself, but otherwise I'm pretty much an open book and feel he is as well. We also married young (at least by today's standards).
I also had the "snooping" problem the first several years we were married. In my case, like Kirby again, I come by it honestly due to my circumstances growing up. I know I've told y'all my mom is an active drug addict. Her first drugs of choice are always prescription, so I spent a good portion of my childhood spying on her at the behest of my father and grandparents. I learned to do things that no child should have to do. I could (and still can) identify most controlled substances by sight. I know how to eavesdrop on phone conversations on an extension without getting caught and how to listen in from another room without a phone extension. I routinely went through her purse looking for whatever she was taking and had to report back. Once I realized that DH was not going anywhere and I had no reason to be insecure, I stopped spying. (FTR, I always told him after I did it and was terribly ashamed.)
I think a little privacy is a good thing. People should be able to have confidential conversations with a friend. Just because you don't want your SO to hear what you want to say doesn't make it shady. If I want to lament to a friend that I wish my wife's tits were bigger, I wouldn't want her reading that and having her feelings hurt or something. (this is just a hypothetical example...her tits are plenty big)
Wow, that's weird. I don't look at DH's cellphone, I don't have his passwords on any of his accounts, and vice versa. I trust him. It just would not occur to me to entrust someone with that type of information, nor would I expect someone to entrust me with passwords, private text messages, etc.
Maybe it's because in the past I've had so many wonderful relationships turn into ugly, bad breakups. If you gave up all your privacy, it would be so easy for an angry ex to go into your email account and email all your contacts with nasty crap, call all your friends on the cellphone and talk shit, log into all your checking and savings accounts and steal all your money, etc. No way in hell would I give someone access to do all that!
BTW, I used to run a herpes support group/social group. We had an email list and I would send out emails about meetings, events, clinical trials, etc. On at least 3 occasions I had people complain to me not to send them stuff like that on email because they shared an email account with their children! One lady shared an email account with her teenaged son. Another lady shared an account with her daughter who was away at college! And one guy shared an email account with his pre-teen daughter. That just blew my mind!
I told all of them that they should consider getting separate email addresses. It was just too weird! And I can't imagine being that teen or college student, knowing your mom was reading all your emails about sex and drugs and whatever!
Speaking of sharing passwords etc...today I left a message for my co-worker. He was getting a death certificate signed at a doctor's office and needed the decedent's time and date of death. I called him and left a voice message. He called back and told me that he couldn't check the message because his GF got mad at him and changed his voice mail password. Hmmmm, maybe if she didn't have it to begin with...
A number of people I know have had spouses and ex girlfriend or ex boyfriend chose to cause disruptions to chaos with their S.O.'s passwords to email, finances, voice mail, etc.
Wow, I can't imagine being so petty as to change passwords and stuff! That's fucked up!
I guess if I had experience with that I'd be less trusting in giving the info out, but I don't- luckily!
My husband and I have separate email accounts, with private passwords. It's just how things are with us--we brought our separate accounts with us when we married, and it seems very strange to try and merge them. He's free to rummage in my purse, and I feel free to rummage in his wallet, so it's not like we have anything to hide.
This goes back to something I've always thought about couples vs. singles. Coupley people think in the "WE" not in the "I". They talk about "our" likes and dislikes as if those things are not individualistic things. "Our" passwords, I guess. I'll never understand it. For those who live it, it makes sense to them, but to those of us who don't, it never will. There is one woman I can no longer email, because her husband checks the "family" email account and I am not talking to him, I'm trying to talk to her, so I give up. You wouldn't talk to Person A on the phone if you really wanted to talk to Person B.
As for the best friend arguement, most best friends I know don't share email adresses or passwords. MHO of course.
Cell phones are "mine" and "his," too. If his phone rings and he's outside, I may grab it and sprint out to him, but it wouldn't even occur to me to answer it. If we had a landline, whoever was closest would answer it, I guess. That would be "ours."
I can't imagine ever sharing passwords, accounts, PINs, SSN, or any other personal information with ANYONE.
I've heard waaaay too many horror stories(similar to that posted above: a friend from undergrad's fiance changed her debit password when he was pissed, and left her for a week with no way to access any money!) In a divorce, breakup, or just a fight it would be too easy for the other person to seek revenge and ruin your life.
Could be the way I was raised or the fact that I've been 100% on my own for almost 15 years. The thought of sharing what I've worked so hard for makes me physically ill. That could be why I'm still single...