Can Cyber-Snooping Ever Help a Relationship?
Have you ladies ever thought about going through your man's texts or taking a peek at his emails—just, you know, to keep tabs? Jools Oliver, the wife of celeb chef Jamie Oliver, has admitted to doing just that—and from what she said, it's safe to assume she's not snooping around for dinner ideas! Does the easy accessibility of our partners' messages, Twitter and texts actually backfire on the trust that comes with a relationship?
Time out, Jools. Just take a deep breath and eat a carrot.
The Telegraph reported that "When asked in an interview over the weekend whether she feels confident where Jamie and other women are concerned, Mrs Oliver said: 'Yeah, I'll check his emails. I'll check his Twitter. I'll check his phone. Everything seems fine. He says I'm a jealous girl, but I think I'm fairly laid-back, considering.'"
Checking the emails, Twitter and phone of your hubbie doesn't seem that laid-back to me! Granted, Jamie is a celebrity, so he probably speaks with lots of people, of whom it's a statistically sound bet that slightly more than half of them are women. And—as I sit here eating muesli because I can't be bothered to cook today—there are probably more than a few ladies out there who would love a man who's as good in the kitchen as he is in the bedroom.
But what caught my attention is that the two are married, which joins two people together with the promise of monogamy until death or divorce do you part. Disclaimer: I'm a single girl, and I don't know the Olivers' personal interpretation of that (though the marriage seems pretty traditional from the Telegraph article), but it seems like there's an implicit trust that comes with a wedding vow.
The snooping also creates a state of constant questioning for Jools, too, which can't be healthy. Her reassurance has to be refreshed every time the Twitter feed is. So can marriage work—really work—when you snoop on your husband's communication to be reassured that the work lunch with Katie really was all business?
Some couples share passwords as a way to be completely transparent, but, to me, the transparency implies that there's doubt that already exists.
And if you do find a text from Katie with a "Thanks for lunch! x", there's no context to figure out whether her "x" is a friendly ending or a thanks for a (ahem) happier one.
And then if you don't know, you won't know whether to bring it up to him at the risk of looking like a significant other who looks at her partner's messages without him knowing.
The kicker is that social media and cell phones make it so, so easy to browse through your significant other's recent activity. Even if you don't think he's cheating, are there many of us who wouldn't be tempted to just have a casual click on his messages icon if he left his Facebook logged on? That's not to say we would go through with it, but is it possible that the one-click, instant accessibility to communication makes us question our partners' fidelity more than we would have in the past?
Smitten ladies, have you ever been tempted to have a peek at your SO's inbox when it was left up? Is it a good idea to keep tabs —you know, just in case— or does it signal other problems in the relationship?
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