Just how much do you trust your spouse or partner? Enough to share passwords? For some, passwords are the final frontier of privacy not only in financial matters, but in social media and email correspondence. But for others, there are no secrets when you're in a relationship — even risking the potential payback should a break-up sever the happy union.
The New York Times tells us about an "intimate custom" writer Matt Ritchel says is happening between teens in love: "sharing their passwords to email, Facebook and other accounts." The desire to be one even extends, the article claims, to couples creating identical passwords and letting each other read private emails and texts.
For some, it takes a court order to share so much.
But for others, it's imperative to know each other's passwords as part of an open, healthy and fully functioning relationship. Sometimes this comes after a loss of trust, as when one partner has cheated on the other. On the Surviving Infidelity website, where more than 34,000 members have exchanged stories of betrayal and support one another in the forums, there is a saying that becomes a mantra for many of them: "Those who have nothing to hide, hide nothing." To that end, nothing is private anymore in order to facilitate healing for the offended party.
In this philosophy, those who have been unfaithful should share (or make open and available) not only passwords to their email accounts and Facebook, but also the contents of their text messages, phone logs, work and travel itineraries "without qualms."
Many in those forums mention how finding secret Facebook and email correspondences led to the big reveal of infidelity in their marriages and relationships, and we've seen surveys that attribute at least some fault in Facebook, though an informal poll we took at the end of year showed that nearly half of the 876 votes attributed the demise of their marriages with other factors. But 34 percent did blame Facebook.
Some of the teens in the New York Times article who opened themselves up were dealt a nasty lesson in human nature when their not-so-better halves decided to use the passwords in retaliation for perceived wrongs. The Times listed some examples:
The stories of fallout include a spurned boyfriend in junior high who tries to humiliate his ex-girlfriend by spreading her e-mail secrets; tensions between significant others over scouring each other’s private messages for clues of disloyalty or infidelity; or grabbing a cellphone from a former best friend, unlocking it with a password and sending threatening texts to someone else.
Take our poll and let us know if couples should share passwords.
More stories:
- Survey: Facebook-related divorces on the rise
- IceBreak is like couples therapy in an app
- Divorcing couple ordered to disclose Facebook passwords
- Facebook: Marriage killer?
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