<p>I heard on the radio a while back that a really high percentage of people who are married have a “secret” bank account that their spouse does not know about. The number was kind of staggering as I recall. So I have to imagine that there are lots of people who believe that all their accounts are shared while a spouse is hiding money.</p>
<p>Thank goodness my H has his own email. He enjoys receiving all the ads from Kohl’s, JC Penney’s, etc. No thanks. I’d rather spend $5 extra than read 50 emails for some coupon.</p>
<p>My parents are in the 80’s and have been married 55 years. They do not share an email address. I would be annoyed if they did. Most of the time, when sending them things, I send it to both. But there are occassions when I want to tell just one of them something. How can I ask my mother if the present I’m thinking of getting for my father would be a good one, if he read her emails?</p>
<p>Some one earlier asked me how I tell which email is for me and which is for my husband. We just look at the sender. We don’t do a lot of emailing with our friends. He gets an occasional email from his brother and some of the guys in his fantasy football league. I get some from my club members and an occasional one from my aunt and of course from the kids. I guess I talk on the phone with my friends and family and we seldom email each other. Mostly we open emails from people we know and delete the rest. My husband just cruised through the room and I told him about this current discussion. He said he’s just not an email-kinda-guy he’s just back in the stone age! I guess if I did do a lot of emailing with my friends I would want my own email account. So I guess it boils down to how one uses email.</p>
<p>We don’t share email and if we did it would drive me crazy because of different styles. I like an empty email box while he lets his emails pile up. He uses a lot of personal folders to save emails. I delete everything or save it in a different place if critical. He likes emails that I would consider “junk” and reads them. I take myself all of those types of lists.</p>
<p>Neither of us have our email accounts password protected, so he could read mine but that would require he use my computer or I could read his if I used his computer. All passwords are kept in a little book so even things that are password protected are accessible by everybody. It wouldn’t occur to me to go reading his email but if I were looking for something and thought I needed to find it there (can’t think of an example but it could happen), I don’t think he would object and vice versa. We don’t share a closet or desk either, but if I were rummaging in his closet to find a tie for S2 or in his desk to find a nongraphing calculator (both of those things happened recently), I don’t think he would consider it an invasion of his privacy.</p>
<p>Hmmm. No privacy in our house. Mostly my fault - I grew up in a very open family, and can’t stand secrets. H and I share most everything … at least as far as I know! Email, bank accounts, snail mail… He has a work email that I can’t access (but he can’t either, outside of work). I have several different email accounts for different activities. One of them is a shared account with H that is automatically downloaded onto both computers. Most of our family and friends use that address. We both know where to find the passwords to each other’s other accounts if necessary.</p>
<p>Do you who share email accounts: do you have separate phones, and do you have each other’s passwords to check voice mail?</p>
<p>This is fascinating. It never occurred to either H or me to share an email account. I don’t see any reason why we should. Not being a “computer person” doesn’t seem like a good one—if you know someone hates using the computer and doesn’t even have their own email address, why would you email them? I would pick up the phone and call. I also am very adverse to doing any administrative/clerical work for my H (or anyone else for that matter, I can barely stand to do it for myself). He has at any given moment at least 100 unread emails in his personal account. There is no way I have any interest in wading through that muck!</p>
<p>Also wanted to add that when his family members want to make sure he has opened an email, they will cc me. That way, they know that at least I’ll tell him about it, since I open all mine daily.</p>
<p>When I started reading this I thought that my h and I did share an e-mail address. </p>
<p>That’s the one we set up when we got the ISP we are with at home. Then I realized that it had become my e-mail address (he doesn’t even know the password, which I changed when DD broke up with her high school boyfriend two years ago–we changed all passwords because he’d been on our home computer). </p>
<p>I also have a gmail account for Facebook. He has his work address and a gmail one (I only know the work one, have not cared enough to learn the gmail one).</p>
<p>So, in summation, we both respect each other’s privacy without even having thought about it.</p>
<p>DH and I have always shared an email address. We can usually tell whose mail is whose (it’s mostly mine). I don’t open his, he doesn’t open mine – it goes without saying. That includes the occasional email I get from a former BF. We don’t open each other’s snail mail either (unless DH is on the road and I ask him if he wants me to open it). I have a separate email for my small business, which also comes through on Outlook (so the mail shows up in the same queue anyway). </p>
<p>I have a gmail account I use for when I’m traveling and may not be able to get into Comcast. It’s also useful for the Google Docs function.</p>
<p>DH has an email address at work, so if he ever wanted to send anything personal not for my eyes, that’s what he’d use. (He has done this a few times when planning a surprise trip or ordering a gift online.)</p>
<p>I guess I don’t feel territorial about what comes in on email and neither of us is the jealous sort. Works for us. I don’t spend time worrying about it.</p>
<p>Re; cell phones – we have separate lines, all on the same plan. DH also has a work-supplied crackberry. I don’t know his regular cell VM password – have never been in a circumstance where I’d need to get his messages. He usually answers them instantly anyway.</p>
<p>We do not share email accounts…it isn’t that there are things that we wouldn’t want the other to see, except for holiday shopping emails and such. His email is way too overwhelming and filled with all kinds of junk that I wouldn’t be bothered to search through.
It seems a little weird to me, actually</p>
<p>We share a home e-mail account, but have separate investment accounts, bank accounts and a whole lot of separate “stuff” etc. We share “friends” so we share a home e-mail account which is used primarily for bill paying (which we share) and friend correspondence which we share and correspondence with college kid which we share and parent correspondence (ours) which we share…not really all that complicated and never really over analyzed. Work e-mails, of course, are a whole 'nother world, but I don’t use my work e-mail address for personal correspondence so that is not a factor.</p>
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<p>We each have our own cell phone (family plan.) Neither of us are gabby people, so it just doesn’t ring that often. I can barely check my voicemail on my own phone, let alone his. We do share a house phone - What a concept! Never occured to me to get him his own. :)</p>
<p>I think sharing email is weird. It’s not like it comes addressed to a sender like snail mail. I don’t always know who’s behind screennames, some screennames send us both mail, but on different subjects. I think this only works when one person gets very little email. I know my dh’s passwords and he knows mine.</p>
<p>My H has his own acct at work- Luddite that he is.
However- he is not able to return emails & I set up a seperate gmail account for him, when he needs to use outside emails.
Its not a big deal- we don’t share accounts because he would take one look at my junk mail, and spend the $ we have coming to us from royalty in The Gambia, but he doesn’t have his own computer so he has access to mine.</p>
<p>I haven’t thought about it as an issue, probably cause the technology is my domain- but was this ? prompted by this article?
[Christian</a> couples share email accounts to stay faithful](<a href=“http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/christian-couples-share-email-accounts-to-stay-faithful-20090907-fdaw.html]Christian”>Christian couples share email accounts to stay faithful)</p>
<p>We shared email in the early days of the internet when we first got a PC and an AOL account and it was a “family” email address. That’s when email was a novelty, though.
As soon as AOL enabled multiple screen names, though, DH got his own, which never bothered me in the least since he’d use it for work related purposes. I then branched out with a “play” email address for message boards and now use my work one for everything.
We’ll sit side by side on our laptops, he’ll be going through his email for work and his personal correspondence, I use my work address for both work and personal, it would be very odd for us to share an account at this point. The blurring of work and personal has really made it so that it would be very confusing to dump all of those together in one account. I will send / receive hundreds of emails a day with back and forth with my coworkers and clients; why he’d want to “share” that with me, I have no idea. I don’t see it as any different from the two of us having separate cell phones with separate voicemails. It’s not a “secret” - it’s just that we each have personal business to attend to which doesn’t concern the other. </p>
<p>He corresponds with psychiatrists / psychologists about some of his patients and I certainly shouldn’t be seeing / hearing about that.
I can see it if you have one person who really doesn’t use email a lot and there’s one “family” email address but in this day and age, it seems odd to share an address.</p>
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<p>House phones / landlines are becoming obsolete, though. Lots of people I know are dropping their landlines as soon as their kids are going away to college. Both adults can still be reached via cell phone at any time so there is no need to call “the house.”</p>
<p>We share our primary email though we both have work emails that we only use for work stuff. We have a few other accounts that we use to forward stuff when one of us is traveling. It has never been an issue, and generally is better since much of our emails are things that we both want to look at. Actually, most of it is stuff we just delete from groups we belong to. We even use the same CC account because I don’t use it enough to bother setting up my own so I sign my posts.
Ellen</p>
<p>My husband and I have always shared an e-mail. I have never ever thought it to be weird. We share everything and have never had secrets from each other. I tell him everything. He has access to my facebook account. Too lazy to set up his own. After almost 26 years of marriage we still have an incredible relationship. We must be doing something right.</p>
<p>Ellen, where has Mini been? I miss his humor on the Politics Forum?</p>