Our Gender, Ourselves
The changing American family
How Much Do Partners Need to Share?
You could snoop. But should you?
Apple’s
newest iPhone features a fingerprint sensor that can recognize up to
five prints. Will your partner’s be one of them? It's a very modern
quandary to be sure, but the cellphone has become an undeniable symbol
of trust in relationships—or the lack of it.
Many people struggle with how much information they should share—or want to share—with their partner. Letting a boyfriend or girlfriend scroll through your phone or have access to your key passwords has become something of a relationship milestone. It implies trust and may symbolize intimacy and connection as well. Handing over control of your phone to allow your partner to look through your photos, text messages, and call history may show him or her that you have nothing to hide, that there are no secrets between you.
At the same time, though, if partners truly trust one another, is there any reason to want to look through each other’s personal correspondence?
Such smartphone and email privacy issues have given rise to wildly debated “do you or don’t you snoop?” questions on relationship websites. Many partners who haven’t given each free access to each other’s phones or email accounts apparently do snoop: A new study from the UK found that 34 percent of women in relationships, and 62 percent of men, admitted to snooping through a partner’s phone. Among those who snooped, 89 percent admitted that they did it to determine whether a partner was cheating—and in nearly half of those cases, their suspicions were correct.
Many people struggle with how much information they should share—or want to share—with their partner. Letting a boyfriend or girlfriend scroll through your phone or have access to your key passwords has become something of a relationship milestone. It implies trust and may symbolize intimacy and connection as well. Handing over control of your phone to allow your partner to look through your photos, text messages, and call history may show him or her that you have nothing to hide, that there are no secrets between you.
At the same time, though, if partners truly trust one another, is there any reason to want to look through each other’s personal correspondence?
Such smartphone and email privacy issues have given rise to wildly debated “do you or don’t you snoop?” questions on relationship websites. Many partners who haven’t given each free access to each other’s phones or email accounts apparently do snoop: A new study from the UK found that 34 percent of women in relationships, and 62 percent of men, admitted to snooping through a partner’s phone. Among those who snooped, 89 percent admitted that they did it to determine whether a partner was cheating—and in nearly half of those cases, their suspicions were correct.
In the end, the phone is just a symbol of something much larger.
The key is in not sacrificing openness for privacy. If your partner wants the password to your e-mail account, she should be able to have it, and vice versa. At the same time, you might have a conversation about why there’s no need to go poking around. One policy may be to decide to live your lives together offline—and vow never to exchange passwords, or fingerprints, or otherwise access one another’s emails, texts, or photos. In cases where either partner feels they need to have that access, agree to talk about the underlying issue instead. Feelings of jealousy is normal; so is feeling left out of the other person’s life. But reading through messages—authorized or not—won’t make you feel any more connected, just as having access won’t prevent infidelity.
What could? Trust and respect.
Peggy Drexler, Ph.D. is a research psychologist, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Weill Medical College, Cornell University, and author of two books about modern families and the children they produce. Follow Peggy on Twitter and Facebook and learn more about Peggy at www.peggydrexler.com
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please leave a comment-- or suggestions, particularly of topics and places you'd like to see covered