Is it kind of expected between couples that they share access to one another's e-mail, facebook, whatever accounts?

I dunno about dating couples, but my husband and I use the same password and pin number for everything. We have nothing to hide unless he’s got a gmail set up that I don’t know about. :) I doubt it though, I know more about the man than he knows about himself.

I would not share my e-mail or passwords to online accounts. They’re none of the other parties business. Too much transparency can have the same effects as too little.

I wouldn’t expect email passwords and such unless we were married i guess? but changing the status yea, it just makes me feel better like he’s not trying to hide it from someone on his friends or something and yes, all hell will break lose if he chooses not to.

I wouldn’t share access to my accounts with anyone. If the email goes out with my name on it, it’s from me. Period.

Absolutely not.

I have never shared access to any of my online accounts with a boyfriend, and I see absolutely no need to do so. Unless you had a specific reason for requiring access, why on earth would you need access to anyone else’s personal accounts in this way? You can love someone and share your life with them without having to surrender your privacy. I’m an individual first and foremost, and someone’s girlfriend second. I’ve got nothing to hide and nothing I’m ashamed of, and I don’t see why I should need to prove this to anyone.

In addition to this, it’s simply not fair or respectful to the people who think they are contacting you and you alone in a private message or e-mail. It would bother me if I discovered that e-mails I was sending in private to a friend were being accessed or possibly read by their partner. If someone want to share everything with their partner, they can go ahead, that’s their business. But, without seeking permission or making others aware, if they share other people’s private words that are sent to them in confidence, I feel that’s totally unacceptable.

No- we have different accounts for everything online.
I agree with @asmonet on this one. Too much transparency is not a good thing.

My husband set up most of my accounts in the beginning of our relationship. I was completely computer illiterate and he is my geek!

So, he knows mine, I know his (now).

My husband and I have access to all our accounts, we don’t have anything to hide, but we don’t spend time in each other’s accounts either, there just isn’t a need.

I wouldn’t do it if I was dating someone, that would be giving too much access to someone…unless of course you were living together and planned on being together forever, then maybe, but not after you first start dating.

The wife and I know the passwords to eachothers’ email and bank accounts. Neither of us ever go snooping. We have nothing to hide. Sometimes I need her to look up something for me, or pay a bill, her knowing all my info is necessary at times.

No. It’s not that we have anything to hide, we are getting married in 9 days time, it’s just that we respect each other and more importantly trust each other enough to not need to be in every single aspect of each others lives.

My boyfriend and I do not share passwords or accounts. We also don’t go out of our way to make sure that we are always, at all times signed out before someone else picks up the computer. I’ve seen his email and facebook quite a few times from the inside. But—and this is important I think—I then logged out and logged into mine. Because his email is not very useful to me, but mine is. Also, he’s not cheating on me. And if he was and I found out via his email, I wouldn’t exactly have a moral high ground. So there is no need, reason, or logic behind ever actively trying to get a peek at his.

Well, except for nosiness, which I fully admit to and ask him about stuff in his email all the time. But when he’s on the computer and can choose not to tell me, not when it’s open before me. That’s just rude.

No, no it isn’t.
I dont do facebook because it causes problems in people’s lives.
I never want to have a fight with my gf over something I or she posted on our facebook page.

As for privacy, even couples need privacy from one another.
The whole idea of “share everything” sounds nice but couples need their space from time to time and logging into your partner’s facebook to see what they’re doing is a flagrant abuse of trust.

@all: Thank you for the responses! I’ve never shared acct. access with a spouse or SO but I have gotten snarled at for not posting a change in my relationship status. My attitude was that I was more focused on “relating” than posting during that time but they took it almost as an insult. Another issue is I have a few friends whose spouses routinely monitor their accts. and I have once received what I call a “fishing” e-mail supposedly sent from my friend but it really came from the spouse who was trying to see if anything untoward was going on; I took that as an insult. Glad to read this isn’t a run of the mill thing :D

The cautious answer is, every relationship is different.
Personally, the idea of not being able to write exactly what I think to my best friend
because my husband might read it – not okay.
Also, what @reverie said above:
if someone writes something personal to me and doesn’t know someone else they may or may not know is going to read it, then really, they aren’t going to write it.
Bank accounts… I would never give my passwords to someone I didn’t consider to be flesh of my flesh.

@hungryhungryhortence So many people get all upset about that relationship status thing. It screams of insecurity issues.I’ve seen it before on myspace where it turns into a nasty and pathetic flame war between 2 people and often features there words “Why wont you love meeee?!”

Oh! I totally forgot about the facebook status thing. Yeah, I’m dating my guy on Facebook. We both barely ever use it so it wasn’t a big deal. I was up in the air on if I wanted to divorced Thor, my facebook husband, to date him but in the end I did.

And that should tell you how seriously I take facebook.

@hungryhungryhortence – I find the relationship status thing on Facebook utterly unnecessary for the way I use the website. I have that function switched off. I think Facebook can be quite unpleasantly voyeuristic at times; friends who I care about know these personal details anyway.

Also, even though we both have accounts, my boyfriend and I aren’t “Facebook friends” – he’s never seen my profile and I’ve never seen his. I’m totally cool with this – neither of us are hiding anything, we just don’t need to be connected through every medium possible, and neither of us like the site or use it that much anyway. I see him and talk to him enough as it is, so if we were “friends” on Facebook I can only see that it would be to snoop – something neither of us are interested in doing.

There’s also my personal (irrelevant) issue that there are lots of old pictures of me on there when I was quite overweight, and as he’s never known me as a “fat” girl, I feel a bit self-conscious. He totally wouldn’t mind or be surprised (he already knows), but I guess I feel a bit vain or a bit embarrassed about it.

Like someone else said, every relationship is different.

I think if I was only dating, I wouldn’t give our my passwords…I’d have to be serious with the person before I did that. Unless it was my school account or something, I know I shared that with my ex-boyfriend because I’d use his computer to check school stuff quite often.

My husband and I share pretty much everything. He knows most of my passwords, but doesn’t remember them. I change my passwords pretty frequently, way more often than him, so he always has to ask me if he needs to get into my email for something. My email account is connected to PECO and Comcast, and a lot of other bills, so he’d need access to my account for that.
But, he also doesn’t go on half the sites I use for socialization, and I’d never give my passwords for that since those are my accounts. (he may know my Facebook password though, from me asking him to log me on or something)
I don’t view it as an invasion of privacy since I gave him my passwords, and I know he’d never go through my things with ill intentions.

Depends.
Recently someone I know lost her husband and he had all their financial information in their computer and she didn’t know any of the passwords. She had to hire a geek to crack the codes.
On the other hand, my husband won’t even open mail addressed to me as he knows I am a very private person and he respects that. (even though I have nothing to hide).
Every situation is different.

I definitely don’t think it’s expected. Sure, some couples share a lot of their passwords. Bur other couples don’t. No, no hell breaks loose in this case.

My husband and I don’t share accounts or know each other’s passwords because we don’t really need them. Either one of us would gladly give our passwords to the other one if needed or requested.

I have asked his password for some things before. For example, I needed to set up account-to-account transfering with our joint account and his personal one. He gave it to me no questions asked. If I had left it to him it wouldn’t have gotten done and he needed money put in his account. He has only asked my passwords if I need something fixed and I have no issue giving them to him.

never exchange passwords.
you’ll find things you won’t like. and he’ll find things he won’t like either.
trust me.

I’m the geek at our house, so I set everybody’s email, etc. up. Naturally I set the original passwords.

My husband hasn’t used the computer in years so he will ask me to email someone for him. In a way, then, I suppose we share accounts in that I write all his emails for him and print out the answers in large print (and then generally have to read them to him anyway).

My daughter promptly changed her passwords, but she did friend me on Facebook so I have some idea of what she is willing to admit that she is up to.

My son never remembers any passwords or even any account names, so he starts new accounts on almost a daily basis. Thus, most friends and family know to copy me on any reply so I can print it out for him. In a sense, then, we also share an account.

And I have several email accounts. One of them is a sort of “family” account in that the kids will send things to it for me to print out, but they don’t know the password. They don’t know much about the other accounts that I have.

We don’t share accounts or passwords. Too much work to snoop/pry. If I want to know what he’s up to, I’ll ask, vice versa.

I changed my status to married and changed my last name on the day after our wedding because I thought it was funny. I even put a status update that said, “Screw legal documents, how do I change my last name on Facebook? I know what my priorities are!” as a jab at Facebook and the people who take it too seriously.

Facebook: despite what internet drama queens would like, it is not srys bzns.

Even if I had not, he would not have noticed, and if he had not, I would not have cared. But when I changed mine, it prompted him to change his with a yes/no button.

Hubby has ‘log-me-in’ on my computer and has access to every thing I do. I could have for him, but his stuff bores me. We only have one place where secrets are kept, he is an ordained minister, and his ministerial duties are private.

As far as I know, sharing passwords only cause trouble. If its not something recent, then its about an old girlfriend or boyfriend’s email. It has never worked for me before, but maybe for someone else.

My husband and I know each other’s passwords to everything- email accounts, Ebay accounts, Blackberrys, Myspace, Facebook, online banking, credit protection accounts, etc. We don’t necessarily “expect” it, but we’re just open and and have nothing to hide, so why not? It’s just not a big deal. If I felt like I had to hide something or just valued my privacy with these meaningless things so much that I must hide it from my husband, I probably wouldn’t be married. I think marriage is all about meshing your lives together, so while we still have our own accounts, nothing is secret. Not even his debit card PIN number :)

I could be wrong but it looks like the couples that have been together for some time are the couples that have no problem sharing this information. My husband and I have been a couple for 18 years now and we have learned that secrets can only hurt a relationship. I like how @BBSDTfamily explained it. “I think marriage is all about meshing your lives together, so while we still have our own accounts, nothing is secret.”

Having the passwords and using them are two different things. MY S/O knows some of my passwords and I know some of his, but I have no intentions of using them unless he asks me to. I like that I can trust him and he can trust me with the passwords without worrying about what the other might do with them.

@Kelly27: that seems reasonable to me because any activity would be with the other’s knowledge and consent.

My partner and I don’t share accounts or passwords for anything. Neither of us feel the need to snoop in what the other is doing.

No. There’s no reason why my boyfriend should feel the need to give me his password. I trust him. He’s never asked me for my passwords to anything, either.