Social Constructs

Sheldon would never ask this question, he is well aware that when the data changes so does the answer. Just because you cannot see the subtle changes in the data as it is presented does not by proxy mean others don't.

If you want to understand what I am saying take that post and another that had an opposite result. Collect the data points from both of them and compare. You will see the main data point in each question is completely different.

I believe its always okay.

I also believe in transparency in marriage... So I'm never on the "Gasp! You found out your husband is selling arms to soviets by looking in HIS _____?!? How DARE you?!?"

Um.

Arms dealing totally ignored???
Wha?

Adultery.
Lying (telling others untrue things about your marriage or telling you untrue things and telling others the truth)
Gambling
Addictions
Illegal activity
Ad naseam

Vs.

Reading someone else's mail.

Yeah.

I just don't see the comparison.

I THINK it might be a byproduct of
- Longer dating/courting norms (because the trust is not implicit, yet... Nor does spousal privilege apply)
- Decline of literacy (letters were once upon an Artform, and were read out loud before being mailed / then to everyone in the house... Excepting live letters & business letters)
- Newness of electronic conversation means that we're INVENTING the social norms surrounding electronic conversation as we go along.

HOWEVER... Sometimes the "delve deeper" IS the insecurity, stalkerishmess of a particular post. There's a BIG difference between transparency & total lack of trust. The first is normal/healthy, the second is not. When someone is reading every email/ text/ bill/ letter, has VARs, GPS tracking, Spanish inquisitions...

... Its a big deal.

Pretty normal in rebuilding trust following total betrayal, but if no betrayal is present? That's paranoid, untrusting, hyper controlling, hot mess. That needs help

Sheldon does not understand tone very well.

There is a subtle whining tone to writing when it's by fearful women. It's a kind of "tell me I am wrong about my fears" tone. It's a broken radar from the start. It's a grasping at straws that ultimately gets old to a spouse and drives even faithful ones away.
Most on here try to discourage that damaging behavior.

There is also a tone of a confident woman who has an intuition that something is up. Her radar is not faulty. Her man is hers alone and she is ready to go to battle and needs to see the lay of the land first. It's realistic thinking.

Great Question.

There is the complete insecure person who is ALWAYS looking for something inappropriate and drives away their spouse. In this scenario, she had reason to suspect and thus investigated. It was behavior outside of his "norm". Now, if in a month, she's still posting the same thing and hasn't done anything to change the situation she'll get very different responses.

I had no reason to go through my ex's texts, emails or FB until I suspected something. I frankly was completely shocked when I actually did find something as were our closest friends. I was that trusting spouse until I had reason not to be. My bestie flat out said there is NO WAY he's cheating. He would NEVER do that. I had a feeling and went through and found out.
Changes in behavior can be an indication and that's what she went on. Now, going through emails and FB just for the sake of it - that's just paranoid and looking for problems. If you look hard enough, you can turn any message into something its not.

I do not read my husband's emails and text messages. I don't feel the need to do so. However, in the case of that post, she did not ask if she should snoop through his phone etc, she already admitted that she had done so and reported what she found when she viewed his emails and texts. I believe that no one said anything about her snooping because 1) that was not the question being asked and 2) she actually found deception when she looked.

Also, I have male friends and believe men and women can be friends. My husband knows the names of my male friends. I don't have them listed in my phone contact lists under alias female names. I do not hide them. I do not tell my male friends my husband's schedule so that they know to only communicate with me when my husband is not around.

The post did not describe a friendship between a man and a woman at all. She described deception. It is a completely different post than the insecure woman who gets upset when her husband even speaks to another woman.

I think you are comparing apples and oranges. Different situations deserve different responses.

Added:
B.D,
I am not on here constantly but do recall a number of posts where responders repeatedly told the poster that men and women can be friends etc. In those cases, I agreed with them because in the questions that I recall, I typically found the poster to be a bit insecure because they seemed to be extremely jealous of all women but for no actual reason and talked about how they wanted their husbands to only talk to them. Those are the types of posts that I thought of when responding to your question and compared them to the most recent question at hand. Very possible you saw a large number of posts on these topics that I did not :-)

I don't care if my wife looks beyond the surface. I don't care if she reads my e-mail (as long as she leaves them "unread" colorwise), or my snail mail or asks what this or that charge (on my credit card) was for. The only time I get upset with her when I charge something is when I order a gift for her that I wanted to be a surprise.

I look at her facebook and she looks at mine. When I comment about something on her facebook I always note "This is from dad".

Sometimes she gives me the impression she is checking up on me, but I'm 100% faithful and so I don't care. I've nothing to hide. My parents were married for over 50 years. Their parents and their parents were too except when death ended a marriage early. I have a family history of long and faithful marriages. I learned from their examples.

My wife wasn't so lucky. IMHO, it was because her mom and dad seemed to delight in antagonizing or demeaning and taking revenge toward one another. Because that's what her parents taught her, she and I had to struggle when we got married so she could find out my giving her flowers without a holiday or special occasion wasn't because I did something I shouldn't have.

So my wife can look all she wants if she either has time to waste or if her curiosity is driving her.

Good luck to you and yours.

I'm a no boundaries kind of person, so for me it's always ok to look. I have a difficult time grasping the concept that anyone not trying to hide something would have issue with their spouse seeing their texts/email/facebook. I couldn't care less if my husband were periodically checking my facebook/email/texts because I don't have anything to hide. (Now, in college when I was prone to cheating on boyfriends, I would have went on a tirade).

I think first of all, it's not always the same "group" of women on this site on any given day, so the answers can and will vary in their tone.
Secondly, the question you mention comes from a place where the husband has a history of cheating, not just some random wife not trusting her husband for no good reason.
I personally think reading your husband's (or wife's) texts and FB stuff is extremely pathetic and sad, in either case. I mean if you feel the need to do that then your marriage really isn't on solid ground, is it? Instead of spending your time looking for evidence your spouse is having an affair you should be spending time working on your marriage and being with your spouse.

It is always appropriate to look beyond the surface because that is what we do anyway. The problem arises when you invade someone else's space in order to relieve your own fears.

I believe that trusting someone else is giving your power away. Generally we are not trusting them to be who they are, but who we want them to be. I believe that instead of trusting others we need to trust in ourselves. We need to listen to our intuition, gather information, commmunicate openly, clearly, and directly, and make choices for ourselves based on healthy boundaries.

This does not mean we invade other people's space while we are gathering information. We must respect ourselves and others in the process. We need good boundaries and we need to allow others to have boundaries as well. If you have suspicions that someone isn't being honest with you then trust your gut. It is just important that you learn good communication tools and seek out good choices for taking care of yourself rather than focusing on the other person and what they might be or are doing.

It is important, also, to do this out of curiosity rather than fear. Fear is based on irrational stories we are telling ourselves. They are irrational because we have no way of knowing whether they are true or not. We need to learn to stop listening to the stories and really inquire as to what the truth really is. This inquiry is about us, not them. It is about questioning what we are expecting others to do and refocusing on what our choices are with what is instead.

My quick answer . . . I think the difference between some of the other questions of that nature and Leeanne's question is the seeming lack of "cause" - i.e., you shouldn't be snooping through texts and emails unless you have reason to do so. To me it sounded like Leanne had "cause" and as it turns out she was right.

That being said you could make the argument that there should be no "private" emails, texts or FB messages when it comes to spouses (not saying I totally agree, but I can understand the thought).

JMO.

To look beyond what surface? Are you talking about snooping between husband and wife?

I think that it's okay at any time but should be investigated if it's happening all the time. My husband looks at nothing. Even though he's welcome to it, I would be asking what's going on if he felt that he needed to. I am one to look at stuff because I'm nosy, so it would bel less surprising if I told him that I had looked. We have the same passwords for certain things. Otherwise, we have access to each other's passwords. We do not share bank passwords, except for our shared account. We also have password-protected phones, for different reasons. If there is ever a need/wish to look behind THAT curtain, we just say, "Hey, open your phone for me." I don't remember the last time that that happened.

I have no problem with the concept of looking and then questioning what I find.

i didn't read the OQ so must go find it now!
it's hard to answer this, because i do think that circumstances affect the answer.
i don't ever read my husband's email or texts, but then, he's never given me cause to be suspicious. and my kids were teens by the time cell phones became ubiquitous, so i never actually had to wrestle with the 'how much oversight should a parent provide?' question.
i do think that in the case of protection, parents have a little more leeway than the privacy granted to one's partner and other adults. if you've got someone vulnerable (young child, or perhaps an elderly relative who is becoming less self-reliant) some degree of oversight is necessary. but it ought to be pretty upfront, shouldn't it?
khairete
S.

I specifically believe that if you are married, you have no business hiding relationships with other people from your spouse. That includes in the form of emails, text messages and phone calls. And spouses have a right to look at all that, open mail, etc.

If you don't want this, then one shouldn't be married.