This is a very complex question, as the responses so far have suggested. On the one hand, I believe that everyone has the right to some privacy--in personal thoughts, in diaries and personal journals, in personal correspondence. Even in the most intimate marriage, there needs to be the fundamental respect that leaves certain thoughts private and shared only voluntarily. (And, let's be realistic, there are some thoughts that should not be shared. I doubt if any of us would be comfortable knowing all of our spouses' and lovers' thoughts! Momentary pangs of lust, Walter Mittyesque fantasies, surges of anger that are dealt with internally and pass quickly--these are not things that we want to know and are thoughts that we should not want to know.)
On the other hand, when one partner believes that the fundamental trust in the marriage is being betrayed, it is natural--if not commendable--for the person to begin to pry and to demand to know and look at what should be private. Many, many years ago, in the late seventies, I had a long correspondence with a person lived in Canada; we had met while on vacation and, unusually, he followed up on the usual meaningless exchange of addresses. I responded and the correspondence over time grew as intimate as a diary as we shared our deepest thoughts, silly musings, everything. Although he was free to read the letters and although I used to read parts of them to him that I thought he'd enjoy, still my husband grew convinced that there was an affair in the offing. While I was on a business trip, he dug all of the letters out of my lingerie drawer and read all of them, then he telephoned me and accused me of meeting this man while on the trip. It was possible: We could have met on the trip, but we didn't. I was incensed at his invasion of my privacy, but I understood the fear that drove him to it.
I have a very dear friend, the person for whom I am currently consulting, whose wife has been having a cyberaffair--and on at least a couple of occasions a 3D affair--and for a while, because she didn't cover her tracks, he was reading the AOL exchanges. She had demanded a divorce and he needed to know what was going on in her head. He even faxed them to me, asking for help in understanding her thinking and her rage. He has stopped monitoring, but I understood his need to know why beyond the information she was willing to give; she is changing his whole life as well as her own.
I have another friend whose wife discovered a cyberaffair. The man had never been physically unfaithful, yet his wife went to pieces and insisted on reading his every e-mail, etc. I understand the driving force behind it.
Things were already difficult in the world of correspondence and diaries; the telephone added a level of complication. Now we have e-mail, chat rooms, one-on-one online chats, and the possibilities grow endlessly. People have all kinds of relationships that are incredibly complex and growing more complex each day as the various ways in which we can interact multiply. (One of my favorite examples is one afternoon, when I was going to meet a lover for dinner. We communicated via e-mail, telephone, and online on ICQ simultaneously and each interaction was different.)
The complexity of the relationships grows, yet it can be very difficult to deal with in a marriage or a really important affair. How does one explain to one's wife that this is a cyberflirtation that will never be consummated and that both parties prefer it to be this way, that this is a fantasy à deux? How does one explain to one's lover erotic poetry e-mailed from a person one has never seen? How does one deal with the deep and loving friendships that form in cyberspace that evolve into telephone calls when there is really trauma needing a friend? How does one deal with the people from one's past with a million 3D associations when they show up in cyberspace? How does one deal with an erstwhile lover when he shows up on SI when personally and professionally there is still electricity? How do people in this situation try to work together, telecommuting?
I don't want to put you to sleep reading this response, but you have raised an incredibly complex issue. It is not simply privacy in a marriage, which is what you posed. It is a Pandora's box of the issues of online relationships.
This subject is really worth exploring--and "feelies" is precisely the right thread on which to examine the issue. In passing, I note that if we do discuss it fully, it may provide better answers to your question. |
