Why I share my location and wish my husband would track it - here’s an example from just last week. I had a doctor’s appointment which unexpectedly took hours and involved seeing the NP and then waiting to see the doctor a couple of hours later ( which I preferred to returning on another day) . I turned my ringer off while I was seeing the doctor - and left the doctor’s office to find multiple missed calls and texts from my husband - if he had used the tracking, he would have known I was still at the doctor.
Why I’m going to set his phone to share his location with me - because for all that I get the psycho-calling because he’s worried , he has a habit of not calling me to say he will be late. I’m not talking about when he’s driving from six hours away and he’s twenty minutes late - I expect that. I’m talking about for example, he usually gets home from the bowling alley 15 minutes away at 9:30 and now it’s 11:30. He’s not answering the phone so maybe he’s still at the bowling alley and didn’t hear the phone or maybe he’s in a ditch somewhere. I wouldn’t care at all if I couldn’t track him if he would just reliably call me if he was going to be late. But he’s never been good at that - and it was much more annoying before cell phones, when I couldn’t call him.
Yeah - I’m happy neither my spouse nor I engage in such “psycho-calls.” If my spouse did that, I’d prefer tracking.
And the bowling alley is similar to what I described about golf. I preferred my method, but what you describe certainly seems to make sense for you and your spouse.
It never occurred to me to do this. I can’t see how it would improve my life at all. About 80% of the time my husband’s phone is on the kitchen table, anyway. I’m more apt to take it with me when I go out, but I cannot remember a time when he needed to find out where I was. Occasionally I’ll want to contact him while he’s out someplace but invariably he’s left his phone at home anyway. We use our phones for calling and texting, and I use mine to find places I’m going to, as I have a very poor sense of direction. I don’t know if my husband knows how to do anything on his phone besides call people and text. Nor does he want to. He likes his life how it is.
I have no idea why people want to know where other people are all the time. What happened to waiting to find out? If they’re in trouble, won’t they call you?
I can have privacy (and she can) whenever she wants it. It’s a choice for both of us to let the other see their location. Neither of us really gives a shit – we just find it convenient. Like I said, I had my tracking off for weeks by accident, and never once was I questioned about it, until I was wondering why she just didn’t check my location for when I would arrive home from a job as opposed to texting or calling me. I mean, I don’t much care what she’s up to. If either of us were up to no good, there’s nothing tracking the other would help or solve. We just both find it easier to coordinate with tracking on. I’m not in the least “creeped out” by it, nor do I particularly care all that much about “privacy.” Hell, I’ve mentioned my IRL name here several times in the past. BFD for me. Obviously, others feel differently, but I understand that, as well.
When my wife leaves the house, she doesn’t say, “I’m leaving, I’ll be back at 6:00.” That would be weird. She says “I’m going to the store and then take the grandson to lunch.” That doesn’t mean she can’t stop and do something else while she’s out, but we would have a general idea where each other was with or without phone tracking.
I guess the two of us (and our kids) don’t feel the need to keep our location private. I do understand that others feel differently. As I stated earlier, in other periods of my life I certainly would have. At this point in our lives, things are pretty quiet and routine. There is nowhere I can conceive of going that my wife wouldn’t know about before I went or after I got back. Her knowing while I’m there doesn’t really change anything. (if she even bothered to look).
My gf will go out for a horseback ride in the woods around our house. Sometimes she’s gone for 30 minutes, sometimes she’s gone for 3 hours. She doesn’t wear a helmet and although I suggest she take her phone, she usually forgets it.
If she gets thrown I guess the horse would return to the barn eventually.
When I nag her about carrying her phone she agrees she should, but she doesn’t. Then again I love solo kayaking (but I always have my phone).
I take my phone with me when I ride my horse. I’m almost always alone. I use it to track my mileage (forgot, that is another thing I do with my phone). I suppose it’s a safety thing, but my husband very rarely has his phone on him, and the coverage is so bad around here that chances are my phone would be useless even in an emergency. Mostly it’s just to keep a record of my miles.
Your girlfriend should very definitely wear a helmet. A helmet is far more important than a phone. And does she have stirrup cages or tapaderos? Nothing is as fun as getting dragged by a stirrup, your unhelmeted skull banging the ground at every step. Those are also more important than a phone.
Show her some of the many available pictures of paraplegics who were once happy helmet-free riders.
Of course she tracks me. It is, after all, a Husband Location Device.
I watched her coming home from work yesterday, she was hauling ass on the freeway. I meant to ask her about that.
She rides English and Australian saddles and the stirrups are just off the rack. The helmet thing is interesting. I ride once or twice a year and have never worn a helmet. She is the same. I’ll mention it but I am pretty sure she won’t want to change.
I’m a little uncomfortable with all this. I’ve spent all of my life occasionally frequenting locations that I don’t want to explain to someone else. Nobody needs to know my every vice.
Then, yeah, don’t use it, or turn it off when you are about to go somewhere to indulge your vices, or “forget” your phone at home or your hotel room or work, or whatever. I suppose you don’t have to worry about that if you never start using it in the first place. For me, the convenience outweighs any concerns I have about my privacy. Hell, when I was full-blown into my alcoholism a couple years ago, I never got any flak or questioning from my wife if/why I was at the liquor store. I didn’t even bother hiding my tracks. To be honest, I kinda wish she had noted that, but she’s clearly not watching my every move.
I use Apple’s “Find my Phone” with my mom. She doesn’t need looked after or anything, in fact I think she requested it of me first. I have no problem with her knowing where I am. Heck she has to pass my house to leave our neighborhood so she has the ability to “spy” on me with or without a phone.
Mom doesn’t always keep her phone near so if I text her and she doesn’t answer, I can find her phone to know where she is. If she’s at home, I’ll call the house phone to talk to her. If she’s out, I know to leave her alone. I think she does the same for me. If I don’t answer her texts, she can look to see where I am and knows if I’m out to leave me alone.
Mom’s phone got stolen last year, and I was heartbroken to learn that when she had gotten a new phone a few months prior, we forgot to turn “Find my Phone” back on. So we couldn’t do any tracking from my phone, or from Apple, to find it
Yeah, I am in this camp, as well. I can see some utility of tracking when someone is traveling away from their family. But otherwise, around town I see no need for this sort of surveillance. What did we do before this sort of feature emerged? If I was running late, I’d call. If something happened and I needed help, I’d call. If I were lying dead in a ditch on the side of the road somewhere, well, they’d eventually find me and call someone, but there wouldn’t be much anyone could do anyway.
My kids both grew-up in the 00’s and 10’s, so they were exposed to smart phones pretty much from the get-go. We very consciously decided we would not surveil their phone (and social media) activity, unless warranted. Our default position was trust, and if they gave us a reason not to trust, then something would have to change. They never gave us a reason not to trust, so we never felt the need to escalate monitoring them. YMMV
I don’t have tracking on, no one follows my location, and i don’t follow anyone else’s. Except that i often is Google map’s “share my trip”, which let’s someone track my location for the duration of a trip. I’ve used that with my husband, my son, and random friends. (Hey, there’s no parking outside your house, and i don’t want to carry the ladder I’m lending you from where i can park. Can you meet me as i arrive and pull the ladder out of my car, and then I’ll park and return to help you with it?)
But usually no one needs to know exactly where i am or when I’ll get home. And if my husband is holding dinner for me or something, I’ll text him an ETA when i start heading home.
Here in the Chicago area, there was just such a case. An older woman was walking home from her health club. At some corner she dropped dead of a stroke or heart attack or something, and fell off the sidewalk down into a patch of bushes/weeds. And IIRC she had her phone off or something. No one found her for over a week!
But I intentionally choose to not live my life assuming something that unusual will happen.
When I bike ride alone I try to remember to bring my phone. And just this morning, I decided to write my name and wife’s phone # on a piece of paper and put it in my bike bag. I used to think there would be a market for contact info tags that would affix to runners’ shoelaces.
If my wife leaves the house, I don’t expect her to be home by a certain time - or even to tell me. But if it is getting to a certain time and I’m feeling peckish, I might well text her and ask if she’s coming home soon. If she doesn’t get/respond to my text, not the end of the world. Whether I saw her phone was at a store or a friend’s house would not give me the info I wanted.
I put a label on the inside of my bicycle helmet with my name and emergency phone number. If I am in an accident and unconscious, it’s likely my own phone could be damaged as well. Sometimes old-school, printed stuff may be better than relying so heavily on our smart phones.