Teenagers in Love, Sharing Passwords

[milanessa]

I guess whatever floats your boat, but no way in hell would I ever agree to such an arrangement. I'll steal Boyfriend's phone and leave him little love notes on the "notepad" function, but no way would I even consider looking through his texts, emails, etc. and he wouldn't look through mine either. Yeah, yeah, loving each other means no secrets and all that, but I want some level of personal privacy.

That's the point (at least in our relationship) - we don't invade each others privacy. The only time I remember looking at my husband's email was when he called me from a hotel and needed some info that he couldn't get because the hotel's internet was down. Because he would give me his passwords doesn't mean I want or need them and vice versa.

I don't get that at all. I never share my e-mail, FB, Twitter or any other password with my husband and vice versa. We have code locks on our phones which neither of us know. I did tell him the pin to my debit card once because I gave him my card to buy something for me but since I don't normally make it a habit to give him my debit card, that's not an issue either. It just doesn't seem healthy to me for a couple to have all that information about each other.

I think you're being smart but your marriage is very different than mine.

[Jenny]

Maybe it's generational, given that youngsters these days seem far less concerned about privacy than older folks.

The way I look at it, not demanding passwords is a bigger sign of trust than sharing them.

[Angelskates]

I have several friends' passwords and those friends have mine. I think we've used them a couple of times when asked, and that's it. Really no big deal for us, but all relationships are different and trust means different things to different people. My neighbour has a key to my house/work, as do three other people, but none of them have ever used it inappropriately. They all have my bike key too.

[soxxy]

I have several friends' passwords and those friends have mine. I think we've used them a couple of times when asked, and that's it. Really no big deal for us, but all relationships are different and trust means different things to different people.

Are the passwords related to financial accounts?

[Angelskates]

Are the passwords related to financial accounts?

Some, yes. It's also FSU (in case I die, I want it posted ), email, the combination and keys to my safe etc. At one stage or another, it's been used at my request, which is why I gave it. They also have copies of my passport, visa and other important documents (as do my parents).

[milanessa]

The way I look at it, not demanding passwords is a bigger sign of trust than sharing them.

Exactly.

[KikiSashaFan]

I have Mr. Kiki's passwords for his online banking, cell phone account and other bills, but that's only because he's a search and rescue tech for the Air Force and is often in very remote areas for unknown amounts of time without much notice and in those situations I have to make sure the bills get paid. I don't have access to his email or Facebook, nor do I want to.

[rjblue]

I think the issue for married/committed couple is that if you are together for friendship, love and support, until it isn't working anymore, then passwords, bank accounts, mail privacy etc are all things that people preserve for themselves.

If you are together with a "death do us part", then you have essentially made yourself one person, and why would you need to keep something private. This is the one person in the world that you have chosen to share yourself with. I open my husband's mail, we share all our finances in common accounts, own everything jointly, and share all our passwords- but not to keep a check on each other- but because why on earth would we need to keep it from each other.

The important thing is that both partners have the same expectation, which is why premarital counselling is so helpful to many couples.

[maatTheViking]

Me and my husband share paswords for financial accounts, that is mainly a practical issues, for instance for some reason our online banking only lets the main account holder see statements, and I am the one taking care of paying the credit card, so I need them. Likewise with his investment accounts, since I do the taxes it is easier for me to just get his passwords so I can import the info into turbotax.

Since we have joints account for everything monetary, it doesn't really matter.

we don't share email or facebook/twitter account - I would not want to go through his mail. Sometimes I have read an email he requested me to read on his account and vice versa, but I would never try to read through his old email, I trust him and respect his privacy.

I agree that sharing passwords is more controlling and a sign of lack of trust rather than trust.

[julieann]

Some, yes. It's also FSU (in case I die, I want it posted ), email, the combination and keys to my safe etc. At one stage or another, it's been used at my request, which is why I gave it. They also have copies of my passport, visa and other important documents (as do my parents).

My lawyer has my online persona (in case I die) he can close all my online accounts such as this one. Other than that no one knows anything except my husband knows our bank account. I have no idea why, I would have to die for him to pay a bill.

I don't think kids are careful enough with privacy, they are told they just don't listen.

[Jenny]

If you are together with a "death do us part", then you have essentially made yourself one person, and why would you need to keep something private.

I think many would differ from this view. My husband and I are very, very close and I feel quite certain we will be as long as we both shall live, but while we share a great deal, we remain individuals.

Maybe it depends on one's personal definition of privacy. I don't equate that with keeping secrets.

And after all, for the truly paranoid, reading email and checking bank accounts and credit card bills will only tell you so much. Unless you've got a GPS tracker on someone and a mike that allows you to listen to every conversation they have, then there's still plenty that you won't know about. The question is, do you need to?

[Badams]

My husband and I don't share passwords. I have been known to get on his facebook and post some pretty interesting statuses as him. And I also send interesting texts when he leaves his phone unattended. And I have gotten my fair share when he has retaliated. I am easily amused.

[PDilemma]

My husband and I don't share our passwords for anything. I do know my mother's email password and so does my father, but that is due to logging in for her to print her personal emails because she needs them in large print, with no glare and to use a magnifier due to visual impairment. I do not open her account at any time unless she asks me to and neither does my father. And her friends and family who email her are aware that one of us is printing them and seeing some of the contents.

But I think the "does your spouse know your passwords?" discussion is completely irrelevant as the original article is about teenagers who are typically not in relationships that are very long term. There's a reason teenage girls get excited about celebrating one month anniversaries! I also think that in the absence of a long term adult commitment--marriage or otherwise--sharing passwords is an issue of lacking personal boundaries.

[MacMadame]

If you are together with a "death do us part", then you have essentially made yourself one person, and why would you need to keep something private.

No, you haven't. Just because you are with someone until "death do us part" does not mean you have to be one person. I'm with my husband forever and I don't share my stuff. It's not that I don't trust him either. It's that I am not just a couple but also an individual. (Just like you can love your spouse and that doesn't mean you love your parents less, you can be a couple and also be an individual.)

It's also that the more people you tell something, the more people know. So you tell only one person and then that person tells someone else and suddenly 3 people know. You can stop that by not telling the first person.

[Anita18]

If you are together with a "death do us part", then you have essentially made yourself one person, and why would you need to keep something private. This is the one person in the world that you have chosen to share yourself with. I open my husband's mail, we share all our finances in common accounts, own everything jointly, and share all our passwords- but not to keep a check on each other- but because why on earth would we need to keep it from each other.

Completely disagree. I mean, if we had a joint bank account of course we'd share passwords for that , but I wouldn't let my partner have my email or Facebook password. Because if someone receives an email from that account, they completely expect it to be from me. When someone sends me an email to my account, they expect only me to read it.

My partner and I are not the same person. We're not even a hive mind and we like completely different things, and we don't expect each other to pretend to like the other's hobbies or preferences because that's just silly.

We're different people who choose to have one life together. I thought that was what marriage was about - two people whose lives are intertwined. Not two people literally turning into one. That's just creepy.

And possibly a good basis for a horror movie.

[ks777]

Don't people usually have a secret email address anyways?

[MacMadame]

I'm not sure what you mean. I have email addresses I rarely use but they can't really be secret or no one would know them and then they'd be useless.

[pilgrimsoul]

My husband and I don't share e-mail or facebook passwords, but we do almost all of our computing side by side on the couch & do almost everything together, so there's nothing to hide anyway.

We do share our banking passwords since we have a joint checking account. He pays the bills online, so even though we have separate credit card accounts, he knows what my account numbers & balances are, but does not have charging rights. We both open all the mail so we both see all the bills. This arrangement strikes a nice balance for us since we share info, but also maintain some independence.

[WindSpirit]

The whole reason this came up was because he had to warn me that anything I told him over gchat, his girlfriend would automatically know, not because he would verbally tell her but because she'd see it in one of her regular digs through his account.

I remember once a friend of mine gave me her email address and it had both her and her husband's names in it. When I asked about it, she said, "Oh we share everything." I said, you may be fine with your husband knowing everything about you, but what about your friends who don't want to share everything with your husband, too?

I seriously don't get it and I would stop communicating with a person if it turned out s/he's has ceased to be their own person and became a two-head hydra with their SO.

To me, it's important to be your own person even in a relationship and have some degree of privacy. It's not about keeping secrets, it's more about trust and not trying to control another person. I've always encouraged my boyfriend to have his own friends, interests and things I'm not necessarily involved in. I don't have to know every passing thought in his head. I think it's important to have other people in your life to bounce your ideas off and sometimes to even snark about your SO. If one has a healthy relationship those things would not pose any threat.

I'm really put off by nosy people. Alas probably most people are nosy, some more than others. Take my sister. If I let her access my computer, she will go through everything. My documents, my pictures, etc. She will even change my settings. She doesn't seem anything wrong with it either. She will do it with me there until I grab her hand and say, what the hell do you think you're doing? So when she comes to visit, I either supervise her or install a program that won't let her do anything she's not supposed to. I even wrote a fake diary once when I was a kid, just for her reading pleasure.

I have a friend who will willingly admit that she's very nosy. I remember when I told her about my ex whom I gave my old computer that I cleaned up and did a destructive system restore on... and he still combed through the remnants of the registry and found links from my Internet history and went to every single one and questioned me about it. "Why did you go there? What did you see there? What is this?" To me it spells a controlling PSYCHO (as he turned out to be), but she said that she would do it too if someone gave her their computer, if only she knew how. Because apparently it's so fascinating to get into other people's stuff.

I don't get it. I'm completely the opposite. Even if someone asks me to get something from their house/computer/email, I will go out of my way to not look/access what I wasn't asked to. I have access to my supervisor's computer and email. I'm pretty sure there's some juicy stuff in there but I wouldn't know. If she asks me to read/print a particular email, I don't even read the subjects from other senders.

There's a few people I would trust with my computer/email/etc. password, but only because I know they wouldn't abuse it. If a guy asked me to swap email/etc. passwords because we're supposed to be one person now, I would say hell no. If I catch someone snooping around anyone's stuff, I will never trust that person completely. And to me, trust is the basis of a relationship.

In my experience, those who would like to have access to your everything are those that are the most insecure.

[numbers123]

my husband and I will be married 39 years in August. We have some shared accounts, bank account to name one, which we have shared passwords for.

I don't think it is a matter of trust to share passwords - requiring someone to share them to show "love" indicates to me that someone is trying to control someone else.

Each couple is different. I know someone who is so closely attached to her spouse that I would find it stiffing - the checking account is under his name and she signs Mrs. ____ rather than her name. Just as she doesn't understand how we can take separate vacations and be happy together.

Personally, I have seen his outlook/gmail boxes open when we are talking about something in his office, and no way would I want to sort through all those emails to determine if there was anything to be worried about.

PD is correct the article refers to teenagers, but there are many adults who do the same things.

Angelskates - if anything ever happens to me, I imagine Princess Leppard could tell FSU.