Do you read your DH's post, emails, phone messages?

[Moosma]

I do and always have done and he reads mine too, we think nothing of it and would both become suspcious if the other person requested the other not too (does that make any sense?).

So, do you? And if not, why?

No. Never. Why would you ?
Saying that 99% of our post is bills and non personal stuff. We tell eachother about our days, our phone conversations with our family.
I think it is wierd that you do read it all.

I had it drummed into me by my dad that a person never opens post that's not for them unless specifically instructed to do so by the person it is for. So it would never occur to me to read someone else's text messages or emails either, unless they asked me to. DP often leaves himself logged into his various email accounts - I just log out again. Same with friends.

If he's writing an email while sat next to me I might read it over his shoulder, but only in the same way that I would idly watch him playing a computer game or something. Similarly I would never expect him to read any of my shit, and I don't think it would occur to him to do so.

We've nothing to hide that I'm aware of, but these are our own things, and personal in that sense. I don't write stuff in emails to my friends that I don't want him to know about, but that doesn't stop them being private conversations between me and the other person. I've got a big file of letters from friends and ex-lovers - I wouldn't expect him to read them, and he would never think to do so.

Anyway, my emails are all full of talk about shoes, whereas his are full of stuff about audio equipment and VST plugins. BORING!

OK - heres the scenario - we're going away on a rugby club weekend - an email is sent to me, (as I registered my email address with the organiser) saying we need to let her know some details ASAP - I'm out for the evening, I'd far rather he checked my emails, and responded, than ignored it, which is just another chore for me to do, and delays the info being sent. Or similarily he gets an email asking if he can give a lift to some kids at the weekend to a match they are going to - he's at work, and can't pick up his mail, so I read it, and confirm, so the parents can go and make their arrangements, and he doesnt have to deal with it when he gets home.

I have a very separate life to my DH, but there is a big chunk of stuff, related to the kids, and the family calendar, that we manage together. We could have an email address each, plus a joint one, to accomodate this, but thats too much hassle, much easier that we treat life as you would a job share at work - you pick up each others emails, and ignore any that arent relevant to the role you share.

For those who dont read each others mail - how do you deal with all those emails relating to stuff you are both involved in ?

What stuff?

And for those of you who do, what on earth do you do when you need to rant at a friend about What He's Done Now, or Do We Really Need Another Bloomin' Wossname, or AIBU to Wish To Bash Him Over The Head With A Blunt Instrument?

Don't tell me, you're all best mates with your partners and never feel even a moment's coruscating ire....

I gave two examples of the stuff at the begining of my email - plus

Are you available for lunch on Sunday ?

Could you give x a lift to the meeting you are both going to ?

A bill is due for payment for the business we run together - please provide credit card number

Will you help at school fete ?

These are all joint responsibilities, so whoever is sitting at PC should respond and get it out the way

If something comes in to my email that is relevant to him - like are we free for lunch - I'll forward to him. And he does the same re me.

Yes and no. I dont go out of my way to read them but if he gets a text and he is not in the room he will ask me to read it for him. Same with post really. I don't read his e-mails but he hardly uses it so mainly gets junk e-mail.

If I get an email that is of interest to dh I'll mention it to him. I really dont get the need to read all of someone elses correspondence. Do you record the conversations he has when are not there, you know, just to be sure?

Of course we could forward, I'd just be grateful to him if he is sitting at the PC, he processes it for me, and saves me the job, I'm busy enough as it is.

I just use email for arrangements, and committee related stuff, never for anything personal, so I guess thats why I'm treating it as I would at work - co-worker and I can both read and deal with each others mails.

And re the sounding-off - I'd never do that in writing - thats what bottles of chardonnay and nights out with the girls are for

Rant on the phone. Email and texts should not be used (IMO) to say things you don't really mean, might regret later or would feel terrible if anyone else were to come across.

Because invariably, someone else will come across what you're written. 90% of women on MN found out about affairs due to texts or emails.

And for you cynics, of course I do rant about my husband to my friends - usually with him in the room!

Dh doesn't facebook.
He sends 3 texts per year, mostly to his mates who support chelsea when they lose a match.
We have a joint outlook account.
We have about 3 passwords, to our e bay, paypal etc.
We open post together and discuss , say medical appoinmtents.
There is zero going on in dh's life that I don't know about. And thats not becasue we are very 'open'.
Just becasue we are very BORING

No, don't need to, he has nothing to hide and tells me just about all of them anyway. With shifty xh, I read them when I knew he was up to something but didn't know what.

i open all his mail because he is on a 2 year posting away from home, plus because he is hardly ever here 90% of things through the door are for me anyway.

he has a email account that never really gets used but i go through it every few weeks and delete all the spam and pass on any thing i feel he should know about.

dont have access to his phone as he is not here but when he comes home he usally throws it at me and tells me to look through all the new pictures/tunes he has.

Well, I see any emails that come home as we only have onbe email address at home - mine. I don't see his work one obviously.

Post - sometimes, sometimes not. We have no worries over opening one another's mail although wouldn't open something that looked personal, handwritten, etc. Although if DH founds up and I say something ad arrived he will often ask me to open it and see what it is, and vice versa. TBH most of mail I leave to DH to open; most is not very exciting!

Txt messages - sometimes. If his phone goes off and I am nearest I will pick it up, read it and tell hm what it says. But he is happy ith that and will ask me to do it anyway if I haven't already done so, if I am closest to phone.

It's never been an issue one way or the other for either of us so far.

dh and I both have e-mails we can pick up from anywhere with internet access, and we both have office based jobs, so it would be fairly exceptional that one of us would need to as the other one to open mail. All our house bills are in our joint names and paid by dd, so anything else is personal and for us individually to sort out. Regarding arrangements I would expect dh to ring me up and discuss with me if he had an e-mail that had an impact on me and vice versa. But then my home e-mail account is really just for personal matters. I don't have anyone else open my work emails either unless there is some particular issue and I have forgotten to ask the sender to send to a colleauge in my absence. I don't think of picking up e-mails as a job, I guess. I tend to think if someone has sent something to me it's for me to deal with/respond to.

i do think there is a slight element of hypocrisy here, if I may say...

a lot of you seem to be saying that you wouldn't mind if your DP looked at your emails and texts because you don't use them to talk about intimate things i.e. you only have those types of conversations when you are with your friends in person.

but would you be happy if your DP was standing over your shoulder listening in on these conversations? Or if he was bugging you against your knowledge. Surely that would be an invasion of privacy, no?

so if you wouldn't want your DP to be present at your intimate friend chats, why would it conversely be ok for you to look at his/her emails and texts?

I do realise that a lot of people find out about affairs in this way but I can only imagine that if someone is looking in the first place, it is because they have something to suspect i.e. this behaviour says more about the relationship itself than the act of snooping per se.

I leave my phone on and my pc too, within easy reach of DW but I really would be pissed off if she snooped on them - and I never look at her laptop or her phone, unless I am expressly asked to do so in a specific situation.

The main problem is one of context. Things read very differently from a third party. And if she sees a bit of porn in my internet history, will it tell the full story that I was probably bored while on a long business trip?

I don't think any relationship can be perfect and I feel that snooping is unhealthy because it implies that one or other of you wants to control the entire information flow and know everything. That just doesn't feel healthy to me. As long as everything is good between two partners in their day to day interraction, why go looking for issues?

No. Wouldn't even occur to me, in the same way it wouldn't occur to me to clean my teeth at the same time as he's on the bog.

Everyone's entitled to privacy.

I never have actually although once, I believed, I had cause to. I needed to be able to contact him by phone one day but had an issue with my phone so he let me borrow his. A text came in whilst I had the phone and I went to read it (as I was so used to doing so with my own phone) and it was from a woman saying "you were quite the tiger the other day".

Naturally this made me VERY suspicious and I asked him about it when I got home. He told me that it was just some nonsense from a girl at work and that there was nothing to it. I remember one time however, that this girls number came up on his phone and he went into another room in the house to answer the call. I walked into the room as this was odd behaviour and the conversation continued without any awkwardness. I asked him again if there was anything going on.

He told me that she was simply a friend and that they had a laugh together. I told him there and then that I would not tolerate any funny business and that if I wasn't right for him, he should tell me there and then and we could finish things.

He reassured me that our relationship was sound and I've never encountered anything suspicious since. He left that work place about a year or two later. I still wonder sometimes, what did go on. I'm pretty sure that it didn't get physical but I think that it did cross the line in terms of work place flirtation... We're now married with a baby and I do trust him 100% but will always wonder if anything did go on back then...

I did. Me and DH split up for a period of 2 years about 2 years ago. During that 2 year split DH went through a self destruct phase and slept with any slapper that would look in his direction before getting a wake up call and realising what an arse he was being and what side his bread really was buttered on, so when we got back together I would check his phone alot. I was convinced that some of the girls he had been with during our split would still be in touch and wanted to see how he was handling it.

After a while I realised that he had in fact got himself back on track and turned back to the lovely DH I first fell in love with. It helped me that he changed his phone and mobile number (through work) and I knew that none of the past conquests were on the new phone!

I open my partners post because he asks me to, he hates opening post and it just ends up stacked up in the hall. If there is anything that looks personal (ie hand written) then I shall point it out to him and he might open it himself, or he might ask me to.

We know eachothers passwords so we could both check emails if we wanted, although to be honest it'd be a complete waste of time because any cheater worth their salt will delete anything anyway and I know i'm not going out with an idiot, so even if he were to be cheating he wouldn't be stupid enough to leave evidence!

Equally our phones are always lying around so we could check if we wanted, I wouldn't mind if he did, it's only curiosity at the end of the day, and even I am curious sometimes, I just don't bother doing it because I'm sure it won't yield any results.

However, one of my ex's was a complete arse and made me really feel the need to check things and he had left all sorts of crap on his phone. I knew there would be though, he wasn't very bright at the best of times, bless him!