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

[Picante]

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!

Are you really serious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the laugh

Stepaway, the point I was making with the joint accounts analogy was that I do treat my joint email account in the same way. That address is for house/admin/child-related stuff that both DH and I deal with. DH will call, I don't know, Little Swimmers or whatever and ask for the relevant forms, they will be sent to our account when one or other of us will deal. Of course if you use email in the way that you do, ie for "conversations" then it is completely obvious that you will want a separate email address. All very logical and not terribly difficult.

UQD - you commented "if you use communication intelligently or allow it to use you. People have their own way of controlling it." and went on to give an example about your MIL whose phone answering irritates you...

That's the point, I think, hit clearly on the head...

People seem to expect others to do it the way they do things themselves so having a "joint" mail account seems so utterly foreign and "it only takes 2 minutes to set up your own" that there's some {illogical} dislike of another method which works for someone else.

As I probably hinted at earlier, it's down to individual preference. For those who think it silly, or daft, or weird, just get over it that it's how some others like to go on with it, whatever you think!

agree WebDude - I (personally) think you're a bit odd to have some many phones/email addreeses etc etc - but I'm not going to start making odd assumptions about you because of it (although I still reckon you sometimes talk to yourself )

Agree WebDude.

Didn't want to wade in before as I, at present have:
3 phone numbers
4 email addresses
5 bank accounts

[not leading a secret life, promise]<

DH has his own:
3 email addresses
2 phone numbers
3 bank accounts

The paperwork is staggering

I can get the OP though, a little. My best friend married my other best friend and she is not technologically adept. She started a hotmail address that got closed because she never checks it, so she just uses her husband's existing address. I'm a bit stuck in though because I now have no way to contact her privately (lives in another country). Even her facebook is set to the shared address.

Has become particularly difficult when she sends me a long, ranty email about her DH - specially cause I want to rattle her and tell her she is being overbearing and unfair. Oh well, I am diplomatic.

Has not become a real problem until I started trying to suss out Christmas for them. How can you ask someone for Christmas ideas when you can't guarantee some level of security?? I would hate to ruin a surprise

Dad checks mum's email - no big deal. He also prints off important newsletter-type messages and reads them aloud at the dinner table - and he wrote the book on Windows NT so is not a technophobe.

Email can be used whatever way you choose to use it.

Twirls....

Life is not so bad when everything is blurred

PMSL @ blurred

must add, I wish we had a joint account sometimes. when communicating with The Family, particularly his family, we CC each other on everything.

It saves having to repeat it and ensures we both know what's going on.

We tried to set up a joint email account while we were engaged but everyone just emailed our personal addresses and we stopped using it maybe 4 years ago.

ALFA - they broke the mould after me
cue Chesney Hawkes "The one and only"

LOL @ marenmj - see ALFA, it's not just me that lives in gadget heaven !!

Can also see marenmj's dilemma (well, frustration, really) at situation with friend, who is clearly lost to why she doesn't see a personal response to her long and personal ranty e-mail... can I suggest 1899.com and speak on the phone so you can reiterate how a joint mail address / Facebook means she will never get an unguarded response!

'Can also see marenmj's dilemma (well, frustration, really) at situation with friend, who is clearly lost to why she doesn't see a personal response to her long and personal ranty e-mail... can I suggest 1899.com and speak on the phone so you can reiterate how a joint mail address / Facebook means she will never get an unguarded response!'

I'll be there in person in a couple weeks to sort her out

I just feel bad. I can tell she is VERY lonely. Her DH doesn't go to her (very demanding) church and she feels that he joined just to appease her before the wedding (he did, and I think it shows how dedicated he was to her). She is frustrated that he up and quit a job and was unemployed for a time before getting another one - which I understand is very stressful. But it was a call center job, one that I had as a young college student and he took as a temporary measure after being made redundant, and I know that it can suck the very soul out of you and you reach a point where you walk in and realize that if you don't get out NOW you will lose your humanity.

So I see both sides

I think I will be setting up a gmail account for her when I am out. Then she can email me at any time and get exactly the shouty-fishwife response she needs

must be me then but i would never use e-mail for a personal conversation. If i want to chat then i phone people. e-mail, mn and fb is just not real.
been thinking about this thread today and really am pissed off at being labelled a "submissive stepford wife", what a bloody cheeky assumption from someone who knows diddly squat about me, just because dh and i have a shared e-mail account

and i did like the earlier post querying why someone so keen on stating her individuality would call herself S.......mummy. Is that in case we mix her up with S.......daddy????

Do you have a joint Mumsnet account? Is it MrsLadymariner we speak to somedays and on others, MrLadymariner? Just wondering.
It's funny to call a personal email to your friend "not real" and then spend time on a chat room!

'must be me then but i would never use e-mail for a personal conversation. If i want to chat then i phone people.'

Phoning people is lovely, but my family and friends all live in another country so phoning is not practical. I keep in touch with my family much more when we can email.

I also use email when I want a bit of distance from the other person (i.e. telling MIL to fuck off I don't want to combine my daughter's birthday party with a much older boy's. I can compose a diplomatic response and don't have to do so immediately).

The OP was BU, but it's also BU to claim that email is not a sufficient medium for personal communication and recognise that a lot of people use it that way, people who may be frustrated that they cannot email you, personally, for whatever reason.

Honestly, if your friends know to phone you, great. My friends know that if they phone me they will likely get my voicemail because I am either at work, or the damn thing is buried under stuff and I can't hear it ring, not that I would notice a missed call for three or four days - whereas I have to have my blackberry on my person for work so email reaches me instantly. It is faster to email me than call me. Different strokes and all that.

Agree with the OP that it's weird, but at least it warns you that emails sent to one spouse/partner may be read by the other.

Even worse is that my cousin's wife reads and replies to emails sent to her husband(they have separate addresses but she reads his). It's not that I send him anything particularly private but I still find it really odd and intrusive - like opening someone else's post.

lol iggorcist, don't think dh would be found on here inthis lifetime tbh....then again, you never know

fair point, marenmj, about phoning people, and i do really agree with your point about different strokes for different folks.

chose scottishmummy as statement of fact,not scottishdad as we dont share that role,as he is plainly not the mama. nor would a shared title or account be applicable.

so no shared account or allusion to scottishdad unless he wants to log on as his prerogative

I still don't the "it might be read by someone else" thing.

Most people only have one computer. Perhaps they have several log-ins - but one of them will be the administrator and able to change the passwords/access the other accounts. In my mind if someone is likely to read emails in an inbox that aren't for them they'r ejust as likely to log-in to someone elses user account on the computer and have a snoop at their emails.

Trust is trust imo.

ALFA, we don't connect our email accounts to a client unless on our personal (laptop) computers. We use webaccess on the shared machines. We also don't have apps save our passwords.

For us it's more of a courtesy. DH would be happy for me to have is passwords and has given them to me before to check things for him, but I don't keep or remember them.

To get into my email he would have to run a keylogger program, or, you know, he could ask me

I don't think its unreasonable for couples to share an email address, but on the other hand, I do find it really difficult to send personal emails to my best mate, who uses her husband's email address! Sometimes I want to email her something private and I worry that he might read it too.