Snooping & Pooping
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Oh, yes, I did. I almost named this post Privacy & Partners, but that would have been boring. Alas, the stinking sass above. A little experiment if you will. Let’s see how many citizens of the blogosphere have the same sense of humor as my wee ones. And, anyway, the title, albeit potty-rific, accurately reflects the content of this here post; Yup, we are talking today about snooping and pooping. (I did it again! Toddler would be so impressed! Go Mommy!)
Privacy. What is it? Does it – and should it – exist within the confines of a marriage?
As many of you know, a Michigan man faces felony charges for hacking into his estranged wife’s emails. In dipping into her Inbox, this man learned that his then-spouse was having an affair. Fine. For the moment, I’m not interested in the facts of this particular legal case (though it certainly raises novel questions about privacy law in the digital age). I am not here to say whether I think it is appropriate or ludicrous that this man faces up to five years in jail for his snooping. I am curious though about a broader question: Should there be privacy in marriage? Should married couples share everything, including their emails?
I am biased on this one because I tell my poor Husband everything. He gets to hear the details of my dreams, the endless shreds of my neurosis, the questions that pop into my head at every given moment. Lucky guy. Would I ever contemplate checking his email or browsing his texts? No. I have never had a reason to contemplate these things. I trust him. But I know women who make a habit of sifting through their spouses’ communications. I also know of at least one marriage that combusted because of an ill-timed text. And so. We have us a real issue.
Where do we draw the line? Should there be a line at all?
Now for the potty bit. Thankfully, this part is more metaphorical in nature. But not entirely. Should there be closed doors within the walls of a marriage? Should we be able to keep certain things to ourselves – our souls and our smells, our sentiments and our suspicions? Or, again, is the very notion of closed doors antithetical to that of marital union? When we say I do do we abdicate our personal privacy, and with it our proverbial doors?
(This post? A bit of a ramble. A bit of a gamble. But it’s a free country and I’m a tired woman and it’s not a crime to say poop once in a while. Just ask Toddler and her stinky-diapered apprentice.)
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Do you feel that personal privacy and marriage coexist or should coexist? Have you ever checked your spouse’s email or do you know anyone who has? Are there things you keep from your partner? Do you shut the bathroom door when you, ahem, do your business? Are you offended, even marginally, by the title of this post?
Everyone struggles and...
My husband and I feel free to share everything with each other – and because of that freedom, there are also times when we keep some thoughts to ourselves, without fear or guilt. We don’t need privacy from each other, but sometimes it’s nice to experience just a little bit, every once in a while.
Interestingly enough, when we were first married we always shut the door to the bathroom. Now, it’s rare. (Although he shuts the door more than I do, but that’s mostly due to the two little girls we have wandering around all the time!) Connected? Quite possibly!
I’m laughing as I read this… (I would write LOL or ROFL but somehow I feel too old to do that.) Very interesting questions, Aidan. I think some separation is a good thing, but I am a blabbermouth with my husband, too, and tell him a lot. He indulges me and listens, good husband that he is. But I can’t imagine checking his texts, emails, or the like.
I do wonder how couples who are both on facebook handle this (my hubby is not, so it’s not an issue for us). What if hubby (or wife, for that matter) writes something a bit flirtatious? Who is that old high school “friend” that’s just gotten back in touch through FB? Unlike texts or emails, facebook messages are broadcast for all to see. But sometimes people seem to forget the public nature of FB, and post messages that are highly personal, messages that might be a bit inappropriate. The digital age complicates relationships by making once-intimate conversations open to potential public scrutiny.
Wow! I love this post because it got me thinking! And I love things that get me thinking outside of my comfort zone!
There are so many different directions you can look at this. Hmmmm….My husband and I have been married 5 1/2 years and together for 9. I would not care if he looked through my email, texts, etc…I have nothing to hide. Most of what I talk about with my friends in email I have already talked with him about anyway, so it probably wouldn’t be interesting anyway. Now with that being said, does he have my password to my account? I really don’t remember. I am sure I have given it to him at some point, he probably had to look something up for me when I didn’t have access to a computer. I don’t have the passwords to his email account either. And I don’t want it. I think that when you start snooping through someone’s email, there is probably a good chance that there are already bigger problems that need to be addressed.
I do believe that there is no need to share everything! Some things need to remain close to your soul and there needs to be a little mystery left in the relationship! Now, I don’t mean keeping secrets! I was just talking with my sister the other day and telling her how she doesn’t need to tell her boyfriend everything! She told him the other day she was proud of herself for not texting her boyfriend while he was in a meeting for the entire day. And she shared this with him Why? Things like that do not need to be shared.
Husband and I do still close the door when we go to the bathroom! Always have and probably always will!
I totally agree with the first paragraph in Louise’s comment. It also reminds me of an article I read in the NYTimes a week or so ago. Couples who experience things separately and then come back and share their experiences with each other have more enriching marriages.
In our house the bathroom door gets closed because being the only girl in the house it’s usually the only time I can get a private moment.
Where do you get those images? If closing the bathroom door while pooping is an example of marital secret keeping, I’m a secret keeper, at least for #2.
What a great post! (Oh, and the title? Not offensive at all. I mean, “Everybody Poops”!)
As for marriage and secret keeping? I think it’s not a good idea. But privacy? That’s something different. I trust my husband, so I won’t go into his personal business. In fact he can be honest to a fault, often telling me things that I really would rather not know, LOL. That being said, we have each other’s passwords to Facebook, etc. It’s not something that either of us ever uses, but nice to know that we have them, right? We share a bank account, two beautiful children, a home, and a life, I don’t see why I should be keeping things from him that he may want to know. Then again, I do keep the bathroom door closed, most of the time. I want some things to remain mysterious
It’s a tough one. I’d like to say that there is a difference beteween secret-keeping and privacy. And it’s all about trust, so I don’t it’s easy to answer. But it goes to the heart of a relationship doesn’t it? And if you don’t trust your partner enough to let them have private affairs, then I think there are larger issues to be addressed.
The title of this blog post made us giggle, because the female half of The Long Haul Project takes great delight in sharing, with the male half, very specifically and in *great* detail, every nuance of every instance of her bowel movements.
Do you have to share absolutely everything in a marriage? Not necessarily.
But, actually, oversharing is a great way to reinforce a sense that the two of you share a bond that neither of you could ever share with anyone else.
My poor lucky husband gets to hear everything from me as well:) . I don’t feel the need to snoop in his emails or texts and neither does he. But I do know of a couple that had a double life, they both had affairs that stretched ten years and no one knew about it. The wife started snooping around and she found out about the affair. She was upset and then her husband had her followed and found out about her affair as well. -complicated like a soap opera!
For practical reasons, my husband and I share a bank account (no separate accounts AT ALL), we know all each other’s passwords and we’ve definitely gone into each other’s email and/or facebook accounts because we needed to get a phone number or forward an email or what have you. We are extremely share-y about all of that stuff. It honestly kind of makes me laugh to even think of one of us writing things we wouldn’t want the other to know about, just because neither of us is very capable of being secretive! (On a related note, I have a friend who is married and keeps her bank account completely separate – so does her husband – and they don’t even know how much money is in the other’s account. I find that foreign, but I’d be interested in knowing whether others operate that way as well. To each his own!)
In terms of telling each other every last thing, I’ve noticed over the years that I’ve stopped telling my husband some of the really really random stuff that goes through my head, mostly because there just not enough minutes/hours in the day for me to tell him stuff like, “I was just watching Sex and the City for the 18th time, and don’t you think Carrie’s butterfly necklace is ugly?” We’re both busy, and that kind of stuff is better spread out across friends/family, etc. I definitely have girlfriends for whom I reserve some of that chatter, because I know they’ll appreciate it more! And he does the same with me. If he needs to talk tech, which is a lot of the time, he talks to his tech geek friends.
Nothing wrong with a gamble now and then! And if you live with small children (who am I kidding – most adults, too), some potty humor is bound to crop up eventually.
This post made my head explode just a little, considering all the ramifications…
Like you, I would never snoop in my husband’s email or texts. But also like you, I’ve never had one shred of cause, so it’s easy to sit in judgement. What would I do if things were different? I’d like to say I still wouldn’t snoop. I pray I never have an opportunity to find out what I would do.
As for some privacy at home, I do think we all deserve a little, especially in the bathroom. To my mind, secrets and privacy are two different things. I don’t keep secrets from my husband, but I do like to keep some of my personal, um, maintenance behind closed doors.
Privacy is ok in a marriage I think. There’s nothing I have to hide online, but I still don’t like it when hubby stands over my shoulder to see what I’m up to. It bugs him when I do it too, and he’s always on something harmless like eBay, so it’s not a trust thing, just a personal space issue. We’re both on the same page about it, so it’s not a problem for us. We spend so much time together it’s ok to have some online space to blog or shop or pay bills without the other. But there is a master list of logins & passwords for all our stuff in the drawer of the computer desk that we both have access to.
…and as for the bathroom, you have to shut the door to turn on the lights, so it’s just simpler to leave it shut. However, I don’t bother to make it latch, and my cat frequently busts in on me!
I always ask before I even go on my husband’s computer, usually when mine is down. He always says the same thing “babe, you don’t have to ask, what’s mine is yours.” I ask every time. Partly b/c I think it’s right, and partly b/c I love the response.
As for the bathroom stuff, I am very private about that. My husband has an open-door policy but knows I do not. A few people have mentioned I need to get over this when I start potty-training Wee ‘Burb because she needs to see mommy go potty, but I confess it still weirds me out to have her in there with me.
Here’s the thing… my husband knows all of my passwords, I know all of his. And we never use them. We trust each other enough to give our passwords, and we trust each other enough not to feel the need to use them. We are a very open sharing couple, certainly, but I think it is a matter of respect and trust and honesty as well. He would answer any question, open any door, share any information that I requested. I know that, and the knowledge that he WOULD gives me the security not to go digging into the things he calls his own.
I feel like you shouldn’t snoop and you shouldn’t force the issue. But, there shouldn’t be any secrets either.
My relationship with my husband is similar to yours in this regard. I tell him way more than he cares to know and have never had any reason to want to read his email. It would probably be very boring about sailboats anyway. That said, while I never have anything to hide from my husband, it would bother me if he read my email or texts. I think it would signal that he didn’t trust me and that would bother me. I also sometimes get kind of weird-o about someone looking over my shoulder reading what I am typing, it just bugs me. Anyway…I am an open person with little to nothing to hide so I prefer talking about topics to snooping…but I can see why people in different relationships might be compelled to snoop. I just don’t think I ever would.
I don’t know if this is really an answer or not, but Marcus (my fiance) doesn’t usually read my blog because he knows he’s living it firsthand, and freely admits this.
I guess what I want to say is that I think that we should be able to carve out private spaces for ourselves, but at the same time, the fewer barriers there are, the better.
I like how this conversation evolved. There seems to be a distinction between privacy and secrecy.
I’m private, but have no secrets. Closed bathroom door. Flirt openly in public.
Then, at appropriate moments, everything that should, gets flushed away.
This title & pic are great! But I’ve developed my brothers’ sense of humor and anything with the word poop in it makes me laugh.
I agree with the distinction between privacy and secrecy. What is the line that draws them apart? I guess in the end, it depends on the type of relationship in itself.
My husband and I are very close and we share everything as well. I have never felt the desire to snoop and I don’t believe that he has either (although he is a facebook “lurker” more than a facebook poster). Yet I do believe in the power of the feminine mystique and I prefer to poop in private!
Regarding the poop thing…my husband and I keep the door CLOSED when we use the bathroom. We use those parts for sex, thank you very much. However, we do share most details. I don’t read his emails, and he doesn’t read mine, but there have been times when he needs some info in there and he’s not close by, and he’ll ask me to open it up, and vice versa, and no problem. So we’re open.
And yet, while my husband and I are against open doors while we do our business in the bathroom, I have a friend who says that it’s a sign of trust. To have true trust in a relationship, you have to have open doors everywhere.
So everyone thinks about this issue differently.