Sure. I do it all the time - just because I’m interested in what he’s up to, and what conversations he’s having with other people. He doesn’t care, he has nothing to hide. Now if he started getting all tetchy about me Not Getting In His Business, I would worry that he is up to something…
But, doesn’t your SO deserve some private space? If my wife wanted to blow off steam to her brother or mother that I’m bieng a douche, leaving the toilet seat up, or playing too much Skyrim (as if that’s possible), shouldn’t she be able to do so without worrying that I’m going to read it?
shrug He’s not the kind of person that would do that, let alone do it in a written medium. And I wouldn’t be offended to find out that he had one so - instead, I’d be worried that I had done something to anger him that much without knowing about it, and would seek to change my ways immediately.
I did, and yes, the relationship was already broken. I can’t swear I wouldn’t do it in a healthy relationship though. I’m nosey 
I would not read my SO’s mail without permission, but I also wouldn’t want to have an SO who wouldn’t give me said permission and trust my discretion. What the heck is he having mail on that I am not allowed to know about it? I wouldn’t go cheking his work email under normal circumstances or expect him to be checking mine, but in abnormal ones (such as the recipient being in the hospital unexpectedly) I would.
One of the issues with living a sort of nomadic life is that I can’t get my damned relatives to read my damned mail and let me know when something I need to respond to comes up. Bills don’t need a response (all of mine get paid automatically); doctor appointments do.
Around here, it’s pretty typical to give your SO your password. I don’t think privacy is considered a big deal in relationships.
And I am curious: what are you guys thinking of that would be private? About the only understandable thing I can think of is trying to get your SO a present. And I can think of a bunch of bad situations, like carrying on an affair, having told lies about who you are, spending money that you’ve agreed you wouldn’t spend, etc. But surely you have more legitimate things in mind.
I’m guessing even in healthy relationships, you might vent off steam to your friends by email about how he didn’t take out the bin again, or left the toilet seat up again, or how much you hate his mother. Presumably that’s the kind of thing, BigT?
That’s the great thing about privacy, you don’t have to define it prior to excercising it. I’m pretty sure my wife has my password and I think I have hers somewhere (if not, either of us could probably make a good guess). It wouldn’t be out of the norm for me to say that she could log in to my gmail and check something if I was away from my computer, but needed soem piece of information.
But even then, neither of us would just browse through each other’s mail. For one of us to snoop would be a serious breach, maybe not on the same scale of infidelity, but up there in the top 5 or so. It really wouldn’t occur to me to snoop, if there’s something she wants me to know, she’d tell me and if she wants to write Twilight-Muppet slash fic and send it out to publishers without my knowledge, I respect that. ETA: respect might be too strong a term for my hypothetical scenario, but you know what I mean.
(off-topic)Please tell me this is not a real thing in the real world?!(/off-topic)
You just know it is and that they have conventions.
I don’t know who to hate more, you for suggesting it exists, or me for googling it…
(link SFW, unless your bosses have taste and no sense of humour!)
Would that involve Count von Count teaching sparkly vampires how to count sparkles?
This.
I would think it bad to read my SO’s email without his permission. But I’d also have a LOT of questions if he told me that he absolutely didn’t want me reading his email. We’ve been together for 15 years; we don’t have secrets from each other, and to say “don’t read my email!” without a good reason (like, Christmas or Birthday coming up) would definitely raise some flags.
On the the other hand, I wouldn’t like it if he made a point to ALWAYS read my email, either. That would be creepy in a different way.
Like a lot of things in marriage, things aren’t always cut and dry. The closest to a real answer on this one for me is “You always have implicit permission to read each other’s email, unless there’s a solid reason why you shouldn’t. However, you shouldn’t make it a habit to read each other’s email.”
This. I value my privacy very highly and I would never apply different standards to my partner. If for some reason trust is broken, snooping around behind the other person’s back is not the way to restore the relationship.
Mark me down as a very emphatic no. (female, 29)
Yeah, I find the idea that only people with something to hide need privacy to be creepy. I’m lucky (in many ways) that my wife and I found each other and this thread is another reason.
Every thought that I don’t voluntarily share is private. A conversation with someone else doesn’t have to be somehow nefarious to still be none of my SO’s business. It’s not as though there’s no relationship middle ground between jealously-guarded secrecy and mind-meld.
This is our situation, too. We neither have nor want a lot of privacy from each other, and I don’t think I’d like being in a relationship where that felt necessary.
I also prefer not to bitch about my husband to other people. Mostly this is because there is very, very little to bitch about, but I also think it’s just rude. Bad-mouthing your spouse behind their back is a more egregious violation of trust than reading their e-mail, imho, and also puts the person you’re bitching too in an awkward position. This isn’t to say that couples who value their privacy is wrong, it’s just a different value system.
I’m not sure how I would answer that question, though. If I was with someone who absolutely did not want me to read their e-mail under any circumstances, I guess I wouldn’t, but I also probably wouldn’t be in that position in the first place.
I was once in the “absolutely not” camp. I was (what I now consider) naive and trusted my wife 100% for 14 years.
I eventually went against my “absolutely not” and snooped my wife’s email account. I had my reasons, and I confirmed my fears.
I will probably be judged negatively, and that’s fine, I’m just saying its hard to know where you stand on an issue like this, until you’re staring the situation in the face. The fear, shakes, sweats, sleepless nights, and denials really work wonders on what you think you stand for. I wished I would have snooped sooner. And yes, I would do it again.
It’s two years later, and I am still with my wife, and our relationship is better than ever (we both agree). I cannot honestly say where we’d be had I not snooped, but i doubt we would ever have made the difficult changes in our lives that were required. We’re still working on trust, but that’s reality. Relationships take work (that was an expensive/difficult lesson to learn). We’re happy, and its working for us…at least so far.
My wife and I leave all our email accounts open on all the computers in our house. It really wouldn’t occur to either of us not to read the other’s email and I’ll frequently get a skype saying something like, “Make sure you read that email my sister sent me,” or “I saw the email you got from <some client>. Make sure you bill him for <some job>.” (We run a business together too)
It honestly never occurred to me that there were married couples who wouldn’t want their spouses reading their email. To each his own.
My husband and I generally don’t read each other’s email (though I think I have his password somewhere), mostly just for general privacy reasons. If I thought there were severe problems (cheating, drug use, etc) I might look through his email for confirmation. But as others have said, if you get to that point the relationship is hosed already.