Boundaries with members of the opposite sex (when married)


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No offense, Brian, but I think your list is a little too legalistic. There's a place for caution, to be sure, but if two spouses exhibit that level of distrust, maybe they shouldn't be married in the first place.

All I know is that if I had demanded the password to all of my late wife's email accounts, she would have been royally ticked off with me, and accused me of being controlling, and I wouldn't have blamed her! I would have felt the same way had she asked me. We did have a joint email account for family communications, but we each had our own private accounts, too, and that was never a source of distrust between us. We just took a certain level of privacy for granted. I don't believe for a second she was sending love letters to other guys.

I knew some of her friends, and she knew some of mine, but neither of us knew all of the other's friends, or coworkers. And that was okay. I would've had no problem introducing her any or all of my friends and coworkers, but the occasion simply never arose.

Complete and total transparency and access sounds nice in theory, but in reality I think most people need a little privacy, a "room of their own," so to speak, and to feel that their spouse trusts them, and that it's okay to have a life outside of their spouse.

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But what if you're LARPing, Dravin? What If You Are LARPing?

Throws a wrench into the works, dunnit?

One thing about LARPing is that most games have a strict rule against physical contact while in character. At least, that's what I've experienced as a gamer geek, and plenty of players were married, but their spouse wasn't into gaming.

Personally, I think that trust is an important part of marriage, and that includes things like e-mail and Facebook passwords. I even consider someone asking for a password to be a red flag of potential abuse, and for me, it's a deal breaker in a relationship. It's one thing to have joint accounts for e-mail and Facebook, but it's also nice to have private accounts, especially if one uses e-mail for work.

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It's not about paranoia or lack of trust, though. We share a life and neither of us feels a need to keep anything private from the other. Once in awhile we need to access each others' email for contact information or time of an event or whatever. No big deal. It's also good that we both know how to get in to everything in the case that something happened to one of us. I've never even given a second thought to us sharing access with one another. Of course I don't have his work email login information. That would put his job at risk, and there's never any reason I'd need to. But I have logins for his other emails, and he has mine. No one is wringing their hands about needing space or privacy. We're married, for crying out loud.

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One thing about LARPing is that most games have a strict rule against physical contact while in character. At least, that's what I've experienced as a gamer geek, and plenty of players were married, but their spouse wasn't into gaming.

Personally, I think that trust is an important part of marriage, and that includes things like e-mail and Facebook passwords. I even consider someone asking for a password to be a red flag of potential abuse, and for me, it's a deal breaker in a relationship. It's one thing to have joint accounts for e-mail and Facebook, but it's also nice to have private accounts, especially if one uses e-mail for work.

I can't think of any particular reason why passwords need to be secret from each other. At the same time, I wouldn't feel good about sneaking into my spouse's private accounts out of suspicion. If I have a suspicion, I wouldn't bother with sneaking to investigate it. I would go directly to my husband and ask him what's going on.

I can ask my husband anytime what the password to his email is, including his work email. Heck, I don't even have to do that, I can just go open his email from his phone, scan his text messages, look at his browsing history, whatever. I mean, if I am not busy loving my husband, taking care of the children, keeping this house clean, keeping my job, visit teaching and doing my callings, and trying to find time to take a shower before I get too exhausted to bother. Man, I wish I had the time and the energy all these people have to police their husbands' comings and goings... or not. If I have that kind of time, I'd spend it going to the gym so I can finally lose this extra blubber... or wait, that European Disney Cruise would even be better..., no, no, an extended trip to visit the 'rents in the Philippines would be even more awesome... nah, a daily beach picnic... catching the sunrise or sunset or both daily... or, I don't know, finally get to finish book 3 of the Hunger Games. I don't know, there's waaaaay too many better things to do. Isn't that great not having to bother with all that cheating crap? One of my many blessings. :)

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