| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 8:23:48 AM | Ok, just out of curiousity I'd like to run a situation by you all.
Let's say you've been involved with someone for several months in a live-in relationship or more when one day you find out out that your partner has been reading your personal email without your knowledge.
How would you handle the situation? | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 8:29:59 AM | I would sit down with her, tell her that I had found she was reading my e-mail, and give her two options:
(1) Stop reading my e-mail, or
(2) Give me equal priviledges and allow me to read all her personal e-mail.
BTW: Does she open all your regular/snail mail after the postman delivers it - before you have a chance to read it? It's the same thing... | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 8:50:50 AM | It happened to me.
She fessed up and said she read some of my email from my ex-wife.
I emailed my ex because I was having problems with my oldest son. She read it because I left it open by mistake.
My take was, well what do you think I have been doing?
I gave her all my passwords and told her if she wanted to look fine, cause I have nothing to hide. I also told her it was a tad crazy to even want to do that.
Heck I don't even look at caller ID when someone calls her cell phone and I hand it to her.
Trust is the issue.
And I trust she will never do it again....because there really is no reason to. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:01:38 AM | If you live together there shouldn't be any secrets...
That is sooo idealistic it's not funny. Yes there should be no BIG secrets...but come on, I think a person should have the ability to maybe vent to a friend about something "xxxxx is being a little bi_tchy today" or "xxxx keeps leaving the damn toilet seat up" without having it thrown in their face because someone read an email they wrote to a friend or something.... | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:03:11 AM | Heck I don't even look at caller ID when someone calls her cell phone and I hand it to her.
I would never even think to hand someone their phone without identifying the caller first. Since they might not want to grab the phone depending on who is calling I always found it easier to just tell each other who was calling them. I'd even answer it for them if the call was about to go to voicemail and they would do the same for me. This has been in several relationships (I was an early adopter of cell phones) that we did this for each other.
I think a person should have the ability to maybe vent to a friend about something "xxxxx is being a little bi_tchy today" or "xxxx keeps leaving the damn toilet seat up" without having it thrown in their face because someone read an email they wrote to a friend or something....
In my relationships I expect both parties to understand that vents are just that. They are not something to bicker over and get upset over and should be viewed in a postive manner, they are healthy. To throw something like that in someones face is petty and to me, unimaginable. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:05:18 AM | I'd agree with Sherilyn. If I was in a relationship that had progressed that far, theres nothing in there I'd be concerned about her seeing. But I might wonder why she looked, .........forget that, I know why she looked, women can't help themselves. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:05:57 AM | I was on the other end of this once....was with a girl, thought things were cool between us. She spent most of a week at my place and used my computer all the time. Well she was checking her email one day while i was there and she had a special folder saved with a guys name on it. She said it was an old friend that she kept in touch with so I left it alone.
But something was bothering me about it. So i checked it out. Sure enough, she was having online sex with this guy, graphically written, no question about who or what was involved. I blew! First she started apologizing and denying, then when that wasn't cutting it, she got on about me invading her privacy. Up until then we had access to each others accounts, there were no secrets, or so I thought.
Yes, it can be argued I was wrong to look but I found out something I needed to know. Something terrible. Later, her friend told me she had always been hot for that guy and wasn't surprised she'd done this. That was 7 years ago, she's still single. Go figure. Funny thing...she has a dating profile on LL, in it she writes of finding someone honest and loyal. I laughed so hard I fell off my chair.
I find you simply cannot trust anyone. Its normal to want to know things about someone you're dating. Most people snoop. Sometimes it pays off and saves you serious heartbreak later. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:27:59 AM | I can so relate to this akaJoe. I'm not typically a snoop but when your gut is telling you something is going on and you come across something literally by accident, what do you do?
How I trust has forever been changed by this one event. | |
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mxk883
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Joined: 8/14/2007
Msg: 13 | |
| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:37:02 AM | I could have written msg 12 myself....lived that one too. Never snooped at all during 3 years of dating or 7 years of marriage. Then my gut told me something was up...a little snooping proved I was right.
Now I'm in a new relationship... and I am once again in the postition of being a very trusting person, which is nice. And I hope I never experience that same gut feeling again.... | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:43:54 AM | | Ya know what - my husband has NEVER hid anything from me since the day I met him! However one thing I would NEVER do is read his emails and I would expect that he wouldn not read mine! Not because we have anything to hide - but because somethings are just for your eyes only! There has to be some privacy between couples and to give you some sense of individuality! Not everything is your partners business! People who think that just because they have entered into a relationship gives them the right to pry into every aspect of their partners life - is in for some troubled waters! | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:48:00 AM | I'd be pissed off. I was with someone who had serious trust issues a while back. Not only did he insist on reading my e-mails, he also wanted to check my cell phone for calls missed or dialed to see if the names of any guys came up, and the password for my voicemail. Whenever I'd refuse, he'd rant and rave and accuse me of cheating on him with every guy on the planet.
I'm sorry, but you need to trust the person you're with. If it was me, I'd sit that person down and explain the concept of privacy. You don't need to know all of your partner's business. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:48:14 AM | It's a serious offense only if it's a serious offense to you.
How I'd react is dependent on whether we've discussed it prior and if they were violating something we'd agreed to, and why they decided to do so. Rarely are these type things about what they seem to be about on the surface...such a discussion will probably reveal what the real issue is about. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:50:28 AM | | I agree with Leeanne. I know guys, and women, who have their own secret email address for ultra-personal mail. I have hard enough time keeping up with Yahoo, Google and business email addresses to go to such lengths for privacy and I don't think we should have to. Private mail is private mail, for the eyes of the addressee only, just like snail mail, IMO. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 9:51:22 AM | My ex husband and I were lazy. Typically one or the other would HAVE to log out of the other's email to get to their own account. We were also jointly messaged much of the time.
My policy will be simply to allow access, to the point of inviting it. There's nothing juicy going on in my email, unless they want to go back a few years. But I won't answer for that any more than I would expect them to answer for cards, pictures and letters they've kept from their own exes.
As for being able to b1tch about someone privately... Why on earth would you put in text something that could be used against you down the road? If you must whine, do it via voice only.
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 10:02:45 AM | | My ex GF did this, and it bothered me. It honestly didn't bother me too much that she wrote it, but more than she started questioning me on things I had written to other people. The main one, was a friend, that was also female, that I would talk to once every other week or so... at BEST. Maybe see once every-other month. Just a friend that I have known since I was 5 years old. I would always just leave my email open, on my computer. I didn't worry, and I didn't mind if she would peek at it... but she went over the line. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 10:02:55 AM | privacy is important, it is not secrecy it is privacy, it is about maintaining one's own identity while being in the relationship. There is a fine line between the...but loyalty to your friends is just as important as loyalty to your partner, and I for one, want loyalty to be important to both of us.
It is the same as asking them what their best friend just confided in them..it is none of your business either. Someone who is loyal and respectful to me to me, is going to be loyal and respectful to their friends as well.
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 10:03:51 AM |
I can so relate to this akaJoe. I'm not typically a snoop but when your gut is telling you something is going on and you come across something literally by accident, what do you do?
I agree... my ex suddenly had a yahoo IM account on his computer one day. I had never seen him use an instant messenger so it made me stop and question it. I checked and saw he only had one friend on it and it was a woman. So I turned on the message history and a few days later went back and checked it. Sure enough, he had been considering cheating on me. That however is not the reason the relatonship ended. We discussed the problems and worked past that.
Just because I have full access to something doesn't mean I'm going to be constantly looking at it. I have no desire to read their email. But it is a big part of the trust I have and share with them. | |
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| Reading your partner's emails...how serious an offence?
Posted: 2/12/2008 10:21:07 AM | i would have to say..... she would be history. its not about trust or honesty or any other d*mned thing. its about personal space. i recently let someone go because he invaded my personal space, mostly through interrogation and a refusal to accept the truthful, yet snarky, answer i gave him. if anyone read my personal e-mail, snail mail, private musings, whatever, they would simply be part of my past and not a part of my future. personal thoughts are exactly that..... personal, and you have a right to those private parts of yourself. if you choose to share some part of yourself with someone outside your significant other, you have the right to do so. they do not have the right to invade that. they do have the right to request to see or share and you have the right to accept or refuse. they, likewise, have the right to their privacy and sanctity. if i wanted to know something my significant other said or did, then i would ask. if the answer did not ring true, i might ask again. past a point, however, i would have to either accept what he or she said and take it on faith, or leave and let the whole thing go. i think ive beaten this dead horse to mush. sorry.
nuff said.....
carola | |
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