<p>I just read an article that said more couples are sharing an e-mail address in the spirit of openness and accountability – and to help avoid the danger of flirting online through e-mail. I would never share an e-mail address. My e-mail is off limits to my kids and my husband. It’s not because I’m doing anything I need to be ashamed of. It’s because what other people write me is meant for me, not for someone else, even my husband. Sometimes friends and family share personal information. Also, I serve on a board of an organization and we e-mail about matters that are only the business of those on the board. In fact, in the past, I’ve been uncomfortable when other board members shared e-mail addresses as their spouses were not elected to serve on the board. I can imagine sharing an e-mail address if you are the kind of person who doesn’t do much e-mailing, but I do a lot and I would not share openly with a friend on e-mail if I thought her husband was reading it.</p>
<p>I always wondered why people share emails. To each his own, but I’ve always thought it odd (only because I can’t relate to it). Spouse and I share a lot together, but we also have separate professional lives, with obviously separate work email accounts; as well as separate personal accounts and cell phones too. Just like we have some different hobbies, interests, research, coauthors and friends of both genders. </p>
<p>Is it really about openness and accountability? I mean if you have to have a shared email to trust your spouse or feel a sense of security, I think something deeper is going on that might be better resolved with therapy than email sharing (not to mention, it would not stop someone from having “an account on the side” :)). </p>
<p>I imagine there must be other reasons that make more sense.</p>
<p>I have a friend who shares an e-mail account with her husband. But that’s because she isn’t a computer person. So when e-mails come in for her, he prints them out for her. It would be inconvenient for him to check a second account. So that makes a certain sense and she never sends email so she doesn’t get a lot. But the article I read said the increasing popularity is more for openness and accountability.</p>
<p>My husband and I share an email account, I never really thought about it, kind of like
our home address and our home phone #. I don’t open his emails and he doesn’t open mine, not that I really care, I just like to open mine first. One of my son’s also often uses our home email, he can easily use the one through the college or get another one, but for
some reason he uses this one. I get a fair amount of emails, husband gets very few. Maybe we are odd?</p>
<p>H and I have been sharing our e-mail address since the day Al Gore invented the Internet. We do not use our home e-mail that frequently (I guess it has something to do with e-mail overload at work), so we are OK with this setup. Our bank and brokerage accounts are all shared as well. </p>
<p>If someone needs “privacy”, there are plenty of free e-mail services like Yahoo or Gmail.</p>
<p>It sounds like a lot of it has to do with how much use the home account gets. SRW, how do you know which e-mails belong to whom without opening?</p>
<p>My husband and I don’t share an email account, but we do have linked accounts (so, seperate email accounts, but he can access my account and I can access his). We’ve done it for years. I can’t even remember why we set it up, but it’s been useful - e.g. when I was travelling abroad and couldn’t check emails, he accessed my account and texted me if I had any important ones. I don’t feel that, for us, it’s anything to do with checking up on each other or anything. It’s just more convenient.</p>
<p>My husband – that would be the guy with two engineering degrees and an MBA that did his engineering masters thesis on computer modeling of water flow – does not know how to turn on the home computers. He also can’t figure out the difference between email accounts and is constantly thinking that mine is his and having strangers send me all kinds of junk. Junk he wants, but it gets deleted because it’s junk I don’t want. He theoretically has an email account that I set up for him but won’t/can’t/doesn’t use it because I can theoretically do it all for him.</p>
<p>It bothers me when I know that anyone is having their personal e-mails filtered through someone else, i.e. a spouse or employee (personal assistant). I tend not to communicate with them except by phone or snail mail.</p>
<p>I have a friend who shares an email with her husband. They is a lot of co-dependency between two of them. Even when the husband is traveling overseas, whenever I am out with the wife, she could expect multiple calls from him. I feel funny sending anything personal to her because there are certain things I wouldn’t want to share with her husband. Sometimes I’ll have girlie discussion with friends, and we don’t always tell our husbands about it, so it is strange sending an email to a friend knowing her husband would read it also.</p>
<p>My email is almost always open on my computer. It’s there for anyone to see. But it’s MINE and nobody does. I leave it open because I use gmail and my kids chat with me on it.</p>
<p>My husband has his own email on his own computer that he rarely reads. If someone has something important to send him, they send me a message and tell me to tell him to read his email, or just send it to me. </p>
<p>We don’t open each other’s mail either. Unless it sits around so long or he says “please open this and handle.”</p>
<p>My brother and SIL each have their own email address but she reads his and responds to me from it. I do not like it. I don’t have anything to hide and neither does he, but sometimes I want to talk to my brother, not her. I do like her. I email her often. But like others have said, I like knowing who I’m talking to. So I text or call him.</p>
<p>I think it’s a boundary issue. We grew up with our own clothes, rooms and possessions. In my son’s girlfriends home, they share everything. If someone buys an ipod, everybody uses it. My son finds it very weird and can’t get used to it. Just like I wouldn’t like one of them going in my purse to find a pen, but in their household, it’s common.</p>
<p>We share home email. He has own at work that is very protected by his employer due to black hole work.</p>
<p>I would think it odd and secretive if he had his own acct and didn’t share password.</p>
<p>I don’t use email to discuss emotional things with my friends. I call them. Maybe this is the key difference between myself and previous posters.
It never even occured to me to have my own.</p>
<p>It never occurred to me to share!! DH gets e-mails about things I care nothing about, and vice versa. We’re separate people. Why in the world would we want to share?</p>
<p>I think I likened it to regular mail. It’s all delivered to the same box out front and we take what is ours.</p>
<p>Your regular mail would have individual’s name on it. You wouldn’t open it unless it is addressed to you. Same with emails. You could have one acct with your ISP, but you could set up individual email address.</p>
<p>DH and I share our home email address, but it’s mostly mine. We both have our own work emails, of course. The truth is, DH doesn’t have a whole lot of personal communications via email, and when he’s not working he’s so sick of the computer and email that he’d avoid checking an email address if he had one. So if I get an email for him I either tell him about it, show him or forward it to his work email. He has one volunteer commitment that sends him a schedule once a month - I put those in a separate “mailbox” for him.</p>
<p>On such issues I always say if one feels the need to share / have access to such ‘joint’ things there are probably much bigger problems with the relationship that are rooted far deeper than just the e-mail account, bank account etc…</p>
<p>Not saying there’s anything wrong with doing it, but when one insists on it then there are usually deeper problems at issue…</p>
<p>True oldfort. I guess neither of us use email so much that it matters.</p>
<p>I would however find it odd if he had his own acct passworded at home. I liken it to a PO box in his name only.</p>
<p>well rocketman…no deep seated problems here that I am aware of. But this is an interesting discussion…</p>
<p>In our case our email address was set up by me and mostly used by me because DH didn’t have much desire or need for one. But as email became more popular, he started giving different committees and such he was/is on the email address. He joined one professional organization that sends several emails a week. Which he rarely checks. However on the occasion that he DOES check (or I’ve called and told him "you need to go through your emails!!!) sometimes he will now call me and say “can I get rid of so and so of your emails” - they are nothing hugely important but honestly, I’m quite annoyed that he does this! I DO check the email several times a day and WILL get rid of things when I can!!!</p>
<p>That’s annoying.</p>
<p>I did open a seperate account recently for my Facebook and Twitter - I have nothing to hide, but yes, I like keeping my own account tidy and organized the way I like it. The hassle is all the online places I shop that have our shared account and family members - because of those, I still consider the first email my primary email. </p>
<p>To sum it up, I WISH we had seperate accounts!!!</p>
<p>DH and I have the same account but different email addresses for our home computers.
It’s like someone else mentioned about the mailbox out front. He opens his mail and I open mine. </p>
<p>He basically uses email at home for paying bills. He spends so much time on the computer at work that he avoids it at home. All of my emailing is with friends/family or the occassional online shopping. Reading my emails to my girl friends is the last thing he would be interested in doing in his spare time!<br>
There have been times when he was expecting something to be sent to his email that he has called me from work and asked me to check it for him. </p>
<p>I check email every day. DH does not. Other than bill paying and i-tunes, he avoids the computer.</p>
<p>Rocketman, no weird issues here, just the way Outlook Express was set up from the beginning. We have a joint bank acct. too.</p>