agonyaunt | Ask Amy: Privacy Between Partners

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Ask Amy: Privacy Between Partners

Dear Amy: My partner of eight years, “Joe,” feels that partners should not have any secrets between them, including allowing each other to view all communications.

I told him that I would never read his email or snail mail addressed only to him unless he asked me to read something specific.

He feels that partners should have absolutely nothing to hide from each other and therefore we should each be allowed to check out each other’s email whenever we want.

I totally disagree. On occasion, I receive emails sent in confidence that I prefer he not see. I would like to know your opinion, as well as input from your readership. — Respect My Privacy

Dear Privacy: I’m with you. There is a difference between secrecy and privacy, and I think it is completely legitimate to expect that email and U.S. mail addressed to you should not be read by your partner without your permission. Having privacy is not the same as proactively hiding something specific.

When couples go through a trauma like adultery, which leaves them with a serious legacy of mistrust, one way to deal with it is to completely open up all communication for scrutiny on demand. Unless the trust has been breached, there should be no need for such total transparency.

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As you may have guessed, privacy is a strong issue for me. Like, I suspect, a lot of people on this comm, I use writing (both private and to an audience) as a way of working things out. I vent, I ponder, I argue, you name it. I also write fiction, and until or unless I specifically release it to an audience, I don't want anyone, not even my partner, reading it. Email privacy is important to me not just for my privacy, but for that of people writing to me.

With all that said, snail mail I have some conflicts on. A personal letter or card, absolutely should not be opened by anyone but the person it's addressed to. OTOH, if the couple has mingled finances at all, I'd be nervous about a partner who wanted to keep things like credit card statements completely private. I don't mean, "well, we just open our own." I mean, "no, you absolutely may not open my Visa statement." If they haven't mingled finances, I suppose it's less of a red flag, but if they have, that would worry me.

Apart from time, my husband's stated big reason for never doing LJ or DW is that he wants to leave me space that's, well, not precisely private, but where he isn't. I've told him I wouldn't mind if he signed up, though, so I think it's more that he doesn't want to.

Our policy on mail is that either of us can open anything that's obviously a bill or that's addressed to the family as a whole or that has our daughter's name on it but comes from her pediatrician or school (other stuff with her name on it is hers. Both pediatrician and school will address stuff to the child even when it's meant for the parents because it's easier for them). Junk mail... It's a grey area because some things that look kind of like junk mail actually matter.

I may need to use Scott's laptop for some things in upcoming weeks, and I'm very uncomfortable with the idea because it's, you know, his. It's got his email and his web browser and all of that. I wouldn't look, but I don't feel right getting even that close to looking. If he doesn't mind, I suppose I shouldn't, but...

Calm down, Joe.

Yeah, that's pretty creepy. tbh I find it creepy even when couples willingly have no privacy (like a shared email address for anyone who's not like ninety), much less when one party is trying to force it.

I know so many couples who have only a shared email address, which just puzzles me. I can't even maintain a separate one for the whole family. And then, many years ago, I had someone tell me that there was no reason for people in a relationship to have separate email accounts unless they were hiding something. They specifically said they "weren't buying" my whole, "um, we're separate people?" argument. I was so boggled that I really couldn't muster a counterargument.

It's so weird! Like, it just seems like a shared email account would be difficult to use. I find shared email accounts at work difficult to use, because then it gets mixed up who has read which emails, or whatever. And I like to clean out my inbox ASAP so I wouldn't want to have to leave unread messages/unreplied messages for my partner to get around to in their own time.

That's why I can understand it for elderly people who basically never use the computer except for very limited instances, to talk to grandchildren/children, etc. But if you are an average computer user it's just weird.

I knew a couple who did this (who were very conservative evangelicals, which is the kind of association shared accounts has for me; they also did not let their kids have their own email addresses until they turned 18) and it was such a hassle for the wife to plan a birthday surprise for her husband because she had to make sure to use a specific subject line she'd told him not to use, etc. Like if that isn't proof that there are times when it would be just handier to have separate emails, I don't know what is.

Also the suspicious attitude that goes along with it grosses me out. Sorry if you can't trust your partner to have any privacy. That's on you and your weird issues.

Would it be practical to set up separate logins on it, so you'd have your own login that would not be all up in his user space?

I don't see why we couldn't. That idea hadn't occurred to me, but I think it would work and deal with the root of my discomfort. I probably couldn't get him to log out his account, but I'd feel less uncomfortable logging him out and myself in than I would just straight up using his space.

Thanks!

Yes! The people writing to me do not have the same trust level with whatever partner that I may have than they have with me, and automatically entrusting everything that my friend says to me to my partner would be a betrayal of my friend's trust.

Even *if* I decided my partner was entitled to all my secrets, this kind of rule would mean they were also let in on any secrets others confided in me. That's weird.

You're probably using email very differently than they do?

The people I know who have joint email accounts use them basically the way they'd use voicemail on the family phone, just with stuff you can't do there - like sending family Christmas cards, or whatever. Their lives tend not to be very online oriented, email is either for sending documents, for facilitating the kind of conversations that one would have on the phone except that (for reasons of timing or otherwise) it's not convenient, or for arranging face-to-face gatherings, meetups, etc.

As such they do tend to feel like having "your own" separate email account - especially one your spouse isn't ALLOWED in - isn't even just like having your own phone (cf cellphone revolution) but like having a SECRET cell-phone that you're hiding from your partner.

Most of them went " . . . ohhhhhhh" when I explained that for me (and, like, a lot of people) online communication doesn't WORK like that, that we use it for other things, and that we no more want someone peering over our shoulders in our email than they would want to drag their spouse along for girls' night/boys' night or coffee with their bff every single time. Some of them suffered a failure of imagination and just CANNOT GRASP that other people relate to things differently than they do.

And then of course like everything there are cases where it's pathological codependence and/or over-controlling spouse etc. But, well. What can't be.

I tend to in turn relate to shared emails like I would relate to leaving a voice-message on the home landline.

(eta: generally speaking the couples I know also tend to have one person who uses the computer more than the other, and as such does most though not necessarily all of the physical answering.)

Edited 2015-09-20 18:23 (UTC)

It was the saving grace of my teenage years. It wasn't that I was looking at/writing/reading anything that my parents specifically shouldn't see (my journal was in a password-locked WordPerfect document) it was that my mother objected on both aesthetic and accessibility grounds to the color settings that I had chosen.

Therefore I set up separate user accounts and taught Mama how to log in to her own.

If nothing else, I don't want my husband to see the emails confirming that the orders have gone through for his Christmas and birthday presents.

Also, I use a single inbox and delete or archive everything pretty much as soon as I've dealt with it. If I still have something in my main inbox, there's something I was intending to do with it. He sorts his incoming mail into a bunch of different inboxes and then ignores some of them completely. He also doesn't ever delete anything. Each of us would drive the other to distraction with trying to organize everything according to our own habits.

My in-laws have both a shared address and individual addresses. They're in their 70s. They started with the shared address, but I think they found that there were a lot of things turning up that only one of them was interested in.

My father supposedly knows how to use email, but he has never once responded to a message I've sent him, so I suspect it's something he set up and has forgotten how to access. I'd have expected him to need to use email while he was still working as he worked for the state, but... ::shrugs::

My mother and step-father made a shared account. In practice, it's my mother's account, and my step-father uses his work address for everything.

My aunt and uncle have a shared account, and I have the impression that my aunt is the only one who checks it. She manages it the way she would their Christmas card list or address book or social calendar, just as something that the wife is supposed to do that the husband shouldn't have to worry about.

FWIW, the people I was discussing this with WERE conservative evangelical, several of the most radical, no-kissing-before-marriage, wives-don't-work-outside-the-home sort.

When I'm in an open and trusting relationship with a partner, the vast majority of stuff sent to me in paper or email are things that I'm fine with them seeing. My best local buddy and I will pass each other our phones if it's more convenient (I will text back the person who texted him if he's driving, he will read the wikipedia article on my phone himself). I think I would be okay with someone appropriately close needing a specific piece of neutral, important information (flight time, what groceries to pick up) and going into my mail or email on a mission for that, as long as they told me afterwards. (For something not time-sensitive, I'd prefer they ask me; I could give them permission if that was the most convenient.) I have given my password to close friends in pre-smartphone days, so they could look up the destination address and then get me un-lost, via cellphone.

Rummaging around just because they could has resulted in two breakups. M. was watching my roommate's kid and noticed that I was logged in to LJ. He looked through my locked entries, saw that I'd chatted with his other girlfriend and that there was a locked entry on her account that he was filtered out of, then he broke into her journal, granted himself access to the entry for long enough to leave a hurt comment, and then logged out. THIS IS WHY NEITHER OF US ARE TALKING TO M ANYMORE.

There are very few topics that are that sensitive, but *which ones they are* are unpredictable enough that I'd prefer my partners not be all up in my email, just to be safe.

Edited 2015-09-20 18:35 (UTC)

I can see couples approaching it that way. The people I was arguing with? Absolutely could not see the other side of things. But they had very different views of just about everything than I did.

Well, color me not at all surprised.

The friends I knew who had a shared account were both heavy internet users, though. But as I mentioned above, they were crazy evangelicals, so.

I found that the people who couldn't grasp the other side tended not to be able to grasp the fundamental idea that I had real genuine social contact and interaction via the internet - ie the kind of people for whom, unless you have actually been in the same physical space as another person, they aren't quite "real" yet and the relationship certainly isn't.

Or, as otherwhere discussed, they had some other ideological difference.

Just, the flipside is, I know more than a handful of people with shared addresses who just . . . totally do not use the internet the way I do, and had a lightbulb moment when I likened it to not wanting someone to go into your personal letters, or to have all your conversations happen on speakerphone or with a recording being patched directly to your partner's ear. It just had never occurred to them that people really could have interactions of THAT kind of emotional significance via email, especially not by choice/in an innocuous way.

(ie they could see someone conducting an affair like that because they have no other choice, but not this being how you daily keep in contact with your closest friends, or whatever.)

Edited 2015-09-20 18:47 (UTC)

Yeah that gets into stuff I consider more than mildly pathological. *cough!*

I just felt it behooved me to point out I do know people who have shared addresses that DON'T have that factor, where the reasoning is rooted in that very different internet use and relationship than what (presumably) is probably going on with people chatting to each other about reading advice columns on a journal site. >.> :3

Yeah this is pretty much how I operate, with some additional random twitches and anxiety born from having always worked more or less like that and then having situations like you describe happening except MUCH MUCH UGLIER and damaging.

I mean I am pretty sure I don't have any more people like that in my life, and also am much older and less likely to be devastated by the explosion of relationships that arise from people doing that kind of thing because ffs, but.

This is why I basically have a guest account set up on all computers and prefer to use a guest account on other people's: I am just so uncomfortable with the risk of ACCIDENTALLY stumbling into things that weren't for me to know.

Oh god, I'm so sorry that that happened to you.

My second engagement was to a guy who didn't seem able to comprehend the idea of people having told me things in confidence which I shouldn't pass along to him. That was a bad relationship and I'm glad I'm shut of it.

(Yes, he was part of one of those Evangelical cults.)

One of the "and we're in a Serious Relationship now" signals is, when I automatically set up a guest account with your name on it, on my computer, even if we're not in the same geographical area. Just so that when we are together, they'd already have their account ready.

It's not just that I don't do things that way: it's that I wonder how many women would be comfortable with "of course your stepfather should be reading your discussions with your mother about your gynecological difficulties." (Some of the other obvious examples about sharing personal stuff would get "they shouldn't be having those conversations" or "why are you doing that if you don't want your spouse to know about it?")

What worries me about this letter is it sounds like the letter writer's partner sprung this on her well into the relationship; I would suggest that she send an email to everyone she knows saying "Dear Friends and Family, Partner feels that he is entitled to read my emails. Please bear that in mind before using email to tell me anything you consider confidential." Because trust isn't always transitive (the key point Partner is missing), and people are entitled to know that their email is being read by someone who knows them and hasn't promised them any degree of confidentiality.

What can I add but, "this, exactly this?" But you knew that already. J and I have separate, well, just about everything except the bank account. I deal with most of the credit card stuff, bills, and such, but beyond that, we have our own personal spaces, virtual and otherwise, and I think we'd both be quite uncomfortable if the other tried to butt in, even innocuously.

I know people with shared addresses, I believe they forward to both of of them rather than requiring them to actually *check* them as a separate action. I guess it can be useful for stuff that you want to both receive and want to flag up to the sender that it is going to both of you. As your *only* e-contact? nope. nope. nope.

I'm on a ladies-only group on LJ, and it would be betraying the trust of *all of those other people* to let my male partners read their posts. Other people might write/email me about things they don't want my partners to know about, or don't want them to know about *yet* (surprise birthday party anyone?).

Not to mention that if an email is marked "read" or a piece of post is open then I'm liable to assume that *I* have read it! And that might lead to me failing to pay bills, or respond to correspondence.

This type is also prone to having shared Facebook accounts, in names like SandyandDave Smith or EvaMark Jones. I understand that an influential evangelical preacher suggested that if married people were using social media that this was the only way it was acceptable.

If I were petty I'd report all of these people under FB's garbage real names policy.

I had to come back to this because this leapt out at me on the re-read.

Unless the trust has been breached, there should be no need for such total transparency.

If your partner's past transgressions have left you feeling that you need to have access to the content of all of their communications with everyone, then trust is irrevocably broken and you should be moving on, not treating your partner like an inmate in the private prison of your relationship whose interaction with the outside world can only exist through your filter. Surveilling your partner's email and messages isn't healthy and it's not how adults treat people they allegedly love.

I was so weirded out by that bit, and you have coherently conveyed in wordds my weirded out feeling.

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