Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Protection built in.

Meet the Other Phone.
Protection built in.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

to think women who use their husband's email address are submissive stepford wives who don't have a life of their own?

371 replies

Picante · 14/10/2009 08:32

Seriously, is it that hard to work out how to get your own email address?

The ones that share are bad enough e.g. '[email protected]' or whatever, but I've seen quite a few that simply have the man's name as the email address.

Yes I know there are more important things to worry about, but come on ladies, this is 2009!

OP posts:
stillstanding · 14/10/2009 22:53

Gawd, Maggie, that is a terrible tale! DP wouldn't know what hit him if he attempted to claim any role/contribution in my giving birth.

Don't agree with you on email however. If someone wants a joint email for whatever reason, not for anyone else to judge.

piscesmoon · 14/10/2009 22:53

I don't see that it matters. We have separate, but they are not private. DH is quite likely to ask me to look and see if he has any emails and I do the same. I really can't see why anyone would care.

scottishmummy · 14/10/2009 22:53

goodness me now you are overstating things.trying too hard to make that point

fact is no one needs to have a shared email account.it is lil wifey subservient

simplesusan · 14/10/2009 22:53

I've nevr really thought about it much before. I don' t send personal stuff via email (well not personal stuff about myself anyway!). I do think it is a bit odd though. I wouldn't want to speak to my friends on a party line with their partner, it would just be wierd, so I suppose it is a similar thing.

MaggieBehaveOutGuising · 14/10/2009 22:54

it's up to you always, it takes two minutes to set up your own email address and you continue to choose not to do it...... that is what 'says' stuff.

But it's entirely your perogative to share an email address of course!

alwayslookingforanswers · 14/10/2009 22:55

no thanks - quite happy with my ISP provider account thanks (in my name) - DH had a gmail account (still does just never used) - which was compromised.

MaggieBehaveOutGuising · 14/10/2009 22:56

and my perogative to leave a metre of blue at the bottom of my post. hmm?

alwayslookingforanswers · 14/10/2009 22:56

you seem to have TOTALLY missed the point that the our "joint" email address is

MYNAME(andintialsoftheDS's) - no mention of him whatsoever

scottishmummy · 14/10/2009 22:57

absolutely individual prerogative,to chose my prerogative to have wet boak at such twee affectations

ABetaDad · 14/10/2009 22:57

scottishmummy - methinks you protesteth too much!

Go on, admit it, you and DH have matching jumpers.

scottishmummy · 14/10/2009 22:59

LOL you are right we have matching bras.he looks dapper

defineme · 14/10/2009 23:00

People really think about this stuff? Do you find shared bank accounts strange?
I didn't take my dh's name when we married because I felt that that was an important part of my identity.
However, I don't think where my email gets sent to is - we live together, we have the same address - why not the same email -Neither of use it for private communication - we use landlines for that!
My dh only got his own mobile phone a feww months ago -I really think people place to much importance on this stuff.
Your email address will not be going on your birth certificate - it's not your name or your identity.

WebDude · 14/10/2009 23:01

"i think it is odd that people dont have their own e-mail addy."

Crumbs... heaven help the 30% of households who don't even use the internet (UK, or 50% for Wales) then.

Whether you have one or 10 or 100 mail addresses is none of my business and if it works well for a couple to share a mail address, that's fine too.

Oh dear, mail notifier has totted up 25,022 unread mail messages for me... and those are not including spam messages... once got 44,000 in a morning. Off to glance through the mail!

stillstanding · 14/10/2009 23:02

Arrgghh, scottishmummy. No one needs to have a shared account. Some people want to have one. It suits their purposes.

And why assume the wifey is the subservient one or for that matter that a joint account makes any one person subservient? It is just a joint, shared thing. Not the death to individuality. My individuality can withstand the perils of a joint email account even if yours can't.

(Always, I fear you may be a last cause )

scottishmummy · 14/10/2009 23:03

for some people shared bank is a necessity,and works.shared email isn't a necessity

and no we have individual accounts and one joint account we pay mortgage,nursery,bills from. no shared money

Toddlershambles · 14/10/2009 23:07

Am just lazy. Set up a joint one for stuff where it made sense and then slowly stopped using the personal one I (still) have which is now full of mailings from Vertbaudet etc etc. Check it approx once a month ... DH has kept up much more active use of his own. Can understand it might freak friends sometimes, but I'm not a big social emailer/texter/Facebook user. Just another bloody thing to do (can't find a grumpy face icon). Anyway, we share a landline and a letterbox, so it's surely not that mad. Still, I am a bit about it, if honest (and I changed my name - but am the more serious career person and do much less than half the cooking and as little housework as I humanly can, and we share the childcare, so have long since given up trying to work out my degree of infidelity to the pure feminist ideals of my youth, many decades ago in the era when telephones were made of cans and string).

alwayslookingforanswers · 14/10/2009 23:08

actually we started off life together with a joint hotmail account which was a combination of our first names. There was no point in having 2 email addresses - we couldn't afford to access one account more than 2 or 3 times a week, let alone access 2 of them

Then we progressed to an ISP one where we were given our email address by the ISP - only the one, and it was his name on it as he was the ISP account holder. This time we had dial-up but again couldn't afford to access the internet often enough for me to have been able to log into a hotmai/yahoo account on any sort of regular basis (those were the days when hotmail still ran slower than a sloth)

Then we got broadband several years later, but kept the email address - couldn't be arsed with the faff of setting up another email for "me" to use and having to make sure we told everyone (I don't keep an addresss book on my thunderbird - well was outlook back then). After having had a joint one for so many years seemed a bit pointless to get separate ones.

He moved out - I kept the account (was going to cost me a fortune to get the account transferred into my name). I then moved house and cancelled "his" account and got my own.......with my own email address (didn't think we'd be getting back together).

We got back together and jstu moved my account back here and he uses mine.

It's really no big deal.

mrsruffallo · 14/10/2009 23:10

Really, who gives a shit?

scottishmummy · 14/10/2009 23:11

did it used to cost to access email accounts.why was 1 cheaper than 2

i know people pay broadband etc fees but did having 2 account cost more than having sole joint?

alwayslookingforanswers · 14/10/2009 23:11

"shared email isn't a necessity"

if we both wanted email contact with people for the first 4yrs or so of life together then yes it was a necessity.

TheIggorcist · 14/10/2009 23:12

Judging my comments from women with shared emails, they are clearly not stepford wife types and have their own reasons for the joint email account - but I for one will never email a friend (even my own sister) who has such a thing, it's like sending a text to someone with a shared mobile phone, just for business not a chatty message! I think I'll invent one: [email protected]

TheIggorcist · 14/10/2009 23:13

Should say "judging FROM the comments" etc

alwayslookingforanswers · 14/10/2009 23:13

it used to cost us a hell of a lot of money to access internet of any description when we had the hotmail account. It wasn't unusual to spend 15 minutes of 1/2hr of internet time just waiting for pages to load!

Once we were able to get our own ISP we had dial-up - it was expensive and our ISP provided us with ONE email address - we rarely used the internet - just the email - because of the cost - and hotmail and yahoo were still horrendously slow at that time.

alwayslookingforanswers · 14/10/2009 23:15

TheIggorcist - so I hope you don't send texts to them instead. After all if their DP/DH is likely to read the email then there's nothing to stop them reading a text when it comes in either.

TheIggorcist · 14/10/2009 23:25

Eh - one comes to their phone in their pocket/handbag, the other arrives (pops up, in my case) on my screen and if you are scrolling from one email to the next opens automatically.. If anyone I knew had a joint mobile/email, I would text them for practical stuff eg "meet you at 8" but I sure as hell wouldn't tell them about my love life, feelings about being a mother, what I think of my boss (or ask them the same questions) - I'd be stupid to. So, have a joint email if you wish, I'm just saying it might limit what friends send you.