Phone and Email

[EasterJoy]

Hubby and I know each other’s passwords and use each other’s stuff and it’s no big deal at all.

We trust the other one isn’t doing anything inappropriate.

We trust no one is snooping.

**We trust that neither of us married an idiot and that if we were going to be inappropriate, we would use secret throwaway accounts anyway, so what’s the point of snooping?
**
That said, if my husband ever for any reason suspected me, I wouldn’t really have a problem with him “snooping” through my phone or email. I’m confident it would quickly put his mind at ease and prevent an awkward confrontation, hurt feelings, drawn out suspicion, marital strife, etc. I also don’t believe I’m necessarily entitled to private interactions with non family members of the opposite sex. Not that either of us has ever gone looking, but we aren’t opposed to it on some greater principle. And I certainly didn’t get married with an expectation of privacy or that anything would be mine and mine alone.

7 years of shared access and so far no issues of abusing access, so we must be doing something right.

Nothing makes a person an idiot faster than slipping into an emotional affair that you’re trying to deny to yourself is happening even as you’re engaging in it.

As I said once elsewhere: The spouse is not always the last to know. Sometimes the spouses know, everyone at the office knows, and all sorts of other people know before the two fools having the affair know. Yet even then, the two fools will resent that everyone “assumed” they were getting inappropriate.

*Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be! * --Puck

 

[chevalier]

Theoretical right and entitlement still doesn’t whitewash problematic whys and wherefores of spying on a spouse.

If we restrict our conversation to theoretical right, I would have theoretical right to use my wife’s credit card account to pay for my stuff — beer I have at the bar, repairs for my car, replacement parts for my computer etc. — even though I also had my own card and account and we each made a similar salary.

But the problem is that community property doesn’t mean that whatever’s mine is mine and whatever’s hers is also mine. Nor can she legitimately do that sort of thing to me. From a lot of arguments made in this thread and not only in this one it seems that to many of our posters this sort of situation wouldn’t be morally problematic. And I frankly don’t believe anybody who claims that. It can’t be a serious claim. It’s just an attempt at defending an indefensible position.

It’s the same with information, not just money. There are tons of legitimate reasons to check correspondence etc. and tons of reasons to be open and not care. Still doesn’t justify actual snooping. Or snooping rights for lack of a better word.

Again, it’s faulty logic. If we were to agree with and follow on that logic, having one’s spouse followed or installing cameras around the house or using tracking devices etc. — all of that would be legit. And it isn’t. One can’t whitewash that sort of curiosity.

It surprises, stresses and disappoints me to no end that people are stubborn about refusing to realize and acknowledge this simple common-sense truth just to make a point in the debate.

Nobody can seriously believe that snooping (whether for curiosity or control) is morally acceptable. Or that going through the spouse’s correspondence out of curiosity is not snooping*.

(* For additional safety, let’s further quality curiosity as checking for incriminatory material with no good basis to do so and not just trying to get a better understanding of the spouse’s personality, history, family relationships etc.)

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Theoretical right and entitlement still doesn’t whitewash problematic whys and wherefores of spying on a spouse.

If we restrict our conversation to theoretical right, I would have theoretical right to use my wife’s credit card account to pay for my stuff — beer I have at the bar, repairs for my car, replacement parts for my computer etc. — even though I also had my own card and account and we each made a similar salary.

But the problem is that community property doesn’t mean that whatever’s mine is mine and whatever’s hers is also mine. Nor can she legitimately do that sort of thing to me. From a lot of arguments made in this thread and not only in this one it seems that to many of our posters this sort of situation wouldn’t be morally problematic. And I frankly don’t believe anybody who claims that. It can’t be a serious claim. It’s just an attempt at defending an indefensible position.

It’s the same with information, not just money. There are tons of legitimate reasons to check correspondence etc. and tons of reasons to be open and not care. Still doesn’t justify actual snooping. Or snooping rights for lack of a better word.

Again, it’s faulty logic. If we were to agree with and follow on that logic, having one’s spouse followed or installing cameras around the house or using tracking devices etc. — all of that would be legit. And it isn’t. One can’t whitewash that sort of curiosity.

It surprises, stresses and disappoints me to no end that people are stubborn about refusing to realize and acknowledge this simple common-sense truth just to make a point in the debate.

Nobody can seriously believe that snooping (whether for curiosity or control) is morally acceptable. Or that going through the spouse’s correspondence out of curiosity is not snooping*.

(* For additional safety, let’s further quality curiosity as checking for incriminatory material with no good basis to do so and not just trying to get a better understanding of the spouse’s personality, history, family relationships etc.)

You don’t plan on sharing finances? That’s a boundary for you? All hubby and I have are joint accounts and credit cards. And no, I never mind when he grabs mine to make a quick coffee run. The idea of private funds for my car or my computer is very foreign. I never saw my parents treat money or things like that in marriage.

I would really encourage you to consider a closer, more entwined marriage than you’re imagining.

 

[twf]

I receive both work and personal emails on my phone - dozens a day. I could actually be in serious legal trouble if I let my wife read work emails. Marriage does not equate “one person” under the law.

 

[chevalier]

You don’t plan on sharing finances?

Where did I say that? You’re putting words in my mouth and thoughts in my head, and not the first time in our numerous exchanges.

That’s a boundary for you?

It makes sense to have separate accounts for expenses such as fuel, coffee, lunch at work, computers, clothes etc. It’s actually better to have separate accounts for that and manage those expenses on one’s own separately than to keep making sure with the spouse that we aren’t crossing the limits. There’s no need for me to be involved in my wife’s shoes budget and no need for her to be involved in my ties budget, and each one of us getting veto rights over the other’s coffee budget. It’s more practical to set an aggregate discretional limit and live and let live, and since we would naturally not always see eye to eye on the expediency of certain particular expenses it makes more sense if working spouses each spend the fruit of their own labours rather than having to persuade, negotiate, argue etc. This would be different if only one spouse worked, in which case there would need to be two discretional budgets from one income.

All hubby and I have are joint accounts and credit cards. And no, I never mind when he grabs mine to make a quick coffee run. The idea of private funds for my car or my computer is very foreign. I never saw my parents treat money or things like that in marriage.

You either really don’t understand my example, which would totally baffle me, or are pretending just to be consistent and try to ‘win’. I certainly don’t see anything wrong in grabbing whichever wallet or card is closer at hand when just going to grab a coffee or beer or something else trivial like that.

But my example was about something different. If you go back to it, you can see it refers to a situation in which you have two cards and choose to pay from your spouse’s rather than yours, just because you can and it’s convenient to you. This is the same as going ahead and just snooping on the basis that there should be no separate secrets in a marriage.

By the way, you’re inconsistent:

**

All hubby and I have are joint

accounts and credit cards. And no, I never mind when he grabs mine**

In my opinion this shows that you don’t disagree with me internally as strongly as you do externally.

I would really encourage you to consider a closer, more entwined marriage than you’re imagining.

I would encourage you to focus more when reading and contain your imagination a bit as well as your urge to debate points.

 

[pianistclare]

Hubby and I know each other’s passwords and use each other’s stuff and it’s no big deal at all.

We trust the other one isn’t doing anything inappropriate.

We trust no one is snooping.

We trust that neither of us married an idiot and that if we were going to be inappropriate, we would use secret throwaway accounts anyway, so what’s the point of snooping?

That said, if my husband ever for any reason suspected me, I wouldn’t really have a problem with him “snooping” through my phone or email. I’m confident it would quickly put his mind at ease and prevent an awkward confrontation, hurt feelings, drawn out suspicion, marital strife, etc. I also don’t believe I’m necessarily entitled to private interactions with non family members of the opposite sex. Not that either of us has ever gone looking, but we aren’t opposed to it on some greater principle. And I certainly didn’t get married with an expectation of privacy or that anything would be mine and mine alone.

7 years of shared access and so far no issues of abusing access, so we must be doing something right.

Exactly.
Trust is simply that.
Trust. Full stop.
Making such a huge deal of protected passwords is itself a cause for concern in my book.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

In my opinion this shows that you don’t disagree with me internally as strongly as you do externally.

Well your opinion is quite a stretch. It’s my card in that it has my name on it and obligates me to report fradulant charges. But the money all comes from the same place.

Do what you want, it’s your marriage. It just seems so laughable that a man who rails against women who keep their last names as overly concerned with individualism and personal rights would be so vehemently defensive of his right to privacy, private correspondence with other women, his own, unquestioned bank account, his own phone and computer, etc. It’s just very telling.

 

[AClaire11]

My husband and I actually disagree on this. He deals with very classified stuff at work and so is obsessed with opsec even on his completely unrelated devices. I got annoyed about it at first, but now I just see it as a funny quirk. I’ve told him my passwords, but he always forgets.

 

[Xantippe]

Nothing makes a person an idiot faster than slipping into an emotional affair that you’re trying to deny to yourself is happening even as you’re engaging in it.

As I said once elsewhere: The spouse is not always the last to know. Sometimes the spouses know, everyone at the office knows, and all sorts of other people know before the two fools having the affair know. Yet even then, the two fools will resent that everyone “assumed” they were getting inappropriate.

*Shall we their fond pageant see?
Lord, what fools these mortals be! * --Puck

We had one of those in our social circle.

In fact, lots of people told them “YOU ARE BEING INAPPROPRIATE” because they were being inappropriate. I think (or hope) that the whole thing fizzled out, but it was really horrifying to be around.

 

[Xantippe]

You don’t plan on sharing finances? That’s a boundary for you? All hubby and I have are joint accounts and credit cards. And no, I never mind when he grabs mine to make a quick coffee run. The idea of private funds for my car or my computer is very foreign. I never saw my parents treat money or things like that in marriage.

I would really encourage you to consider a closer, more entwined marriage than you’re imagining.

Right.

–For one thing, at least in the US, it really does matter what one’s spouse is doing financially. Whatever the one does affects the other–sometimes** very** substantially.
–Joint budgeting is a good marital exercise. (Listen to a few episodes of the Dave Ramsey show to get a feel for how this works.)
–Having to negotiate every single expenditure and divvy it up 50/50 or agree who is covering it is not great. There’s a scene from the Joy Luck Club where a couple does that, and it’s a terrible way to run a marriage:

youtube.com/watch?v=oTmg4bfhBsk

It’s especially terrible when there are children.

–Furthermore, most couples just do not have enough money to run things like that, especially once there are children in the picture. Normally, all funds need to be pooled to cover family needs–in moderate income families, there just isn’t enough money for either husband or wife to have substantial personal funds. I would say that in our family, easily 80% of family funds are spent on kid expenses, and my husband and I each get about $40 a month every month in “fun money”. My husband makes a very good income, but that’s what life looks like when you have big kids.
–It just isn’t going to work if there’s a stay-at-home spouse or if one spouse is unemployed or makes substantially less. It’s gross, demeaning and possibly even abusive for the stay-at-home or poorer spouse to have to ask for money all the time.

 

[Xantippe]

Where did I say that? You’re putting words in my mouth and thoughts in my head, and not the first time in our numerous exchanges.

It makes sense to have separate accounts for expenses such as fuel, coffee, lunch at work, computers, clothes etc. It’s actually better to have separate accounts for that and manage those expenses on one’s own separately than to keep making sure with the spouse that we aren’t crossing the limits. There’s no need for me to be involved in my wife’s shoes budget and no need for her to be involved in my ties budget, and each one of us getting veto rights over the other’s coffee budget. It’s more practical to set an aggregate discretional limit and live and let live, and since we would naturally not always see eye to eye on the expediency of certain particular expenses it makes more sense if working spouses each spend the fruit of their own labours rather than having to persuade, negotiate, argue etc. This would be different if only one spouse worked, in which case there would need to be two discretional budgets from one income.

Chevalier,

I don’t think you understand how tight the margins are on family budgets. I can imagine your system working pretty well either with a DINK family (double income no kids) or a very wealthy family with children, but for the bottom 95% of families with children, there simply would not be enough money to do it that way. Normal couples need a lot more mutual accountability and communication to stay financially afloat.

To give you an example of how this works, back when my husband and I were low-earning DINKs, I often spent the same amount on clothes on myself every month that now covers our entire family of five, despite the fact that our household income is much larger than it was then. Even when the pie of family resources gets bigger, there are invariably more and more slices to be cut out of it, and each slice gets progressively thinner.

Bringing this back to the phone and computer issue, in a family environment, a lot of stuff has to be shared. There can’t be one of each for everybody (and with kids, there often shoudn’t be). So, my teenage daughter winds up borrowing my phone a lot to play PokemonGo, and there’s a laptop that is shared between my husband, teenage daughter and tween son that’s parked out in the living room. (I’m not sure if that’s my husband’s work laptop, but it might be–I’m a little hazy on our exact count of electronics in this household.)

 

[CradleJourney]

My husband is in a line of work where the communications are ethically and sometimes even legally protected, with many things he is forbidden from sharing with me. (We do use the old “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you” joke.) I have siblings who think they can go ahead and tell their spouses anything, but that is not the correct way of acting when you’re in a position of trust.

Okay - I can see what you’re talking about - to me that’s a different issue / terminology. Privacy is referring to personal stuff that’s “mine” - and the topic would be to keep part of “me” separate and inaccessible to my spouse. We’ve always had an understanding that something one of us knows told to us by a friend could be kept from the other because that would not be “mine” - but rather my friends info. (Or his friends info). So I might say - yeah, I was talking to someone at work today who’s having a rough time and it made me sad. But I wouldn’t say, “Hey, Jamie at work found out her son’s addicted to meth.”

This is what I was referring to when I mentioned we might be using the same word with slightly different understood meaning to each of us.

 

[EasterJoy]

Okay - I can see what you’re talking about - to me that’s a different issue / terminology. Privacy is referring to personal stuff that’s “mine” - and the topic would be to keep part of “me” separate and inaccessible to my spouse. We’ve always had an understanding that something one of us knows told to us by a friend could be kept from the other because that would not be “mine” - but rather my friends info. (Or his friends info). So I might say - yeah, I was talking to someone at work today who’s having a rough time and it made me sad. But I wouldn’t say, “Hey, Jamie at work found out her son’s addicted to meth.”

This is what I was referring to when I mentioned we might be using the same word with slightly different understood meaning to each of us.

Yes. Provided that you are discrete with things you should not disclose about others, if you want to make everything you do an open book, there is nothing forbidding it.

Having said that, there will always be a part of you that is inaccessible to your spouse.

The truth is, thanks to our self-flatteries and self-deceits, there is more than we imagine that is inaccessible to everyone *but *ourselves, but that is another topic!

Still, I’m reminded of this quote from Screwtape Letters

Keep his mind on the inner life. He thinks his conversion is something inside him and his attention is therefore chiefly turned at present to the states of his own mind—or rather to that very expurgated version of them which is all you should allow him to see. Encourage this. Keep his mind off the most elementary duties by directing it to the most advanced and spiritual ones. Aggravate that most useful human characteristic, the horror and neglect of the obvious. You must bring him to a condition in which he can practise self-examination for an hour without discovering any of those facts about himself ,which are perfectly clear to anyone who has over lived in the same house with him or worked the same office.
–The Screwtape Letters

It is one of the great mercies of marriage to refrain from supplying all the enlightenment our spouses would need for a really good examination of conscience on the premise that Heaven overlooks the kinds of faults that we willingly overlook in others.

And no: the spouse is not the last one to know. Your spouse usually knows. When you willingly admit to faults about yourself that (as it turns out) your spouse is not as ignorant as you imagined, that not only builds trust. It is also rather charming.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Right.

–For one thing, at least in the US, it really does matter what one’s spouse is doing financially. Whatever the one does affects the other–sometimes** very** substantially.
–Joint budgeting is a good marital exercise. (Listen to a few episodes of the Dave Ramsey show to get a feel for how this works.)
–Having to negotiate every single expenditure and divvy it up 50/50 or agree who is covering it is not great. There’s a scene from the Joy Luck Club where a couple does that, and it’s a terrible way to run a marriage:

youtube.com/watch?v=oTmg4bfhBsk

It’s especially terrible when there are children.

–Furthermore, most couples just do not have enough money to run things like that, especially once there are children in the picture. Normally, all funds need to be pooled to cover family needs–in moderate income families, there just isn’t enough money for either husband or wife to have substantial personal funds. I would say that in our family, easily 80% of family funds are spent on kid expenses, and my husband and I each get about $40 a month every month in “fun money”. My husband makes a very good income, but that’s what life looks like when you have big kids.
–It just isn’t going to work if there’s a stay-at-home spouse or if one spouse is unemployed or makes substantially less. It’s gross, demeaning and possibly even abusive for the stay-at-home or poorer spouse to have to ask for money all the time.

Oh, it’s so impractical. But after thinking about it a bit, I can understand how a single person might trust that arrangement more. In getting married, you give up a lot of control over your own life. This is x1000 when you combine something as personal and important as money. I think the desire to have your “own” fund for clothes, car repairs, nights out, computer parts, etc stems from a mistrust that your spouse will think your wants and needs are worth the financial sacrifice. I understand where this fear and urge for control is coming from, but it still doesn’t make it right or healthy to implement in marriage.

The answer to that isn’t separate accounts, it’s trust and communication.

And like you said, it’s so impractical. My parents never could have done that because they really had to prioritize needs each paycheck/month. I couldn’t do it, even as a DINK, because between student loans, bills, saving for kids, and planning for elderly parents, we have a lot of financial obligations and goals. It is absolutely his business what I spend on shoes, and it is my business if he spends $15 on lunch every day, even if the money is technically available. We have shared goals and we both have to be on the same page if we are to meet them.

Marriage means unity. It’s not a roommate setup with condoned sexual activity.

 

[Xantippe]

Oh, it’s so impractical. But after thinking about it a bit, I can understand how a single person might trust that arrangement more. In getting married, you give up a lot of control over your own life. This is x1000 when you combine something as personal and important as money. I think the desire to have your “own” fund for clothes, car repairs, nights out, computer parts, etc stems from a mistrust that your spouse will think your wants and needs are worth the financial sacrifice. I understand where this fear and urge for control is coming from, but it still doesn’t make it right or healthy to implement in marriage.

The answer to that isn’t separate accounts, it’s trust and communication.

And like you said, it’s so impractical. My parents never could have done that because they really had to prioritize needs each paycheck/month. I couldn’t do it, even as a DINK, because between student loans, bills, saving for kids, and planning for elderly parents, we have a lot of financial obligations and goals. It is absolutely his business what I spend on shoes, and it is my business if he spends $15 on lunch every day, even if the money is technically available. We have shared goals and we both have to be on the same page if we are to meet them.

Marriage means unity. It’s not a roommate setup with condoned sexual activity.

Yeah.

We are a top 20% income household, but the realities of having a household of five is that personal spending by the adults is highly constrained–for example, my husband and I give each other gifts for Christmas or birthdays generally in the $20-$30 range–total. That’s what it takes to give our children what we want to give our children while at the same time avoiding going into the red.