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Wednesday, October 27, 2010

The Old Ball and Chain


I have several married lady friends who live in different parts of the U.S. and many are friends of forty plus years. They have an individual e-mail account and no other person would be reading our silly conversations so we are pretty open and uncensored in our e-mail conversations. (Yes, I know, nothing is really private on the Internet, but anyone who reads my e-mail is intruding on my privacy and deserves to get shocked.)

My girl friends and I have wonderful conversations by e-mail on a frequent basis, sometimes even daily. Those conversations are philosophical, or newsy, or sometimes family-related. We do a lot of "girl talk" and discuss our lifestyles, clothes preferences, makeup, guys and so forth--a lot of stuff no guy would ever want to read about, or care about. Some of our e-mails get down and dirty and would make the guys' ears turn pink. We write about stuff I would never put on a blog because the subjects are just too personal. I would cringe at airing my dirty laundry in public which is typical of my generation.


Men tend not to be as gabby as women and their male ego, self-respect requires that they communicate about sports, jokes, or stuff you would expect to hear them discuss at work. Men don't usually do the kind of e-mail that I do with my girl friends because the guys don't spend a lot of time on the social type communicating and small talk that women love.


I have some lady friends who for reasons unknown to me, share an e-mail account with their husbands. What? Are they joined at the hip? Do they share a brain? Is this some new way to try to snoop on the guys and make sure they aren't doing e-mail with an online honey? If the guys(or girls) really want to do that, they can always have secret e-mail accounts. If you can't trust them enough that you have to snoop, you've got a real problem and a shared e-mail account won't solve that.


Whatever works for them, and it isn't my business, however it does mean that I don't do e-mail with those girl friends at all. If I don't know which one of a couple will be reading the e-mail, it totally destroys my interest in communicating. Togetherness is great, but I have my limits and I don't send girl talk e-mail to co-accounts.

3 comments:

  1. RJ - I love your posts.

    You can't be that much older than me (52) but I have to say that I don't know anyone who doesn't have their own e-mail account! Of course my e-mail account is personal and no-one but me permitted to read it; but in all honesty it was never my spouse I had to worry about. My kids think it fair game to read anything not securely guarded by a password and my mother never did get the hang of privacy!

    I remember when I was at school she thought it perfectly normal to read letters addressed to any of her children (and yes she got an enormous shock on more than one occassion)

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  2. Thanks. I am 66 and tend to be very guarded and private. My mother always respected the privacy of my brothers and I. I never found that she had intruded into my mail or my room. I am always shocked when a visitor to my house presumes to go into the master bedroom and open drawers or closets. When I give them a guest room and a bathroom, they don't need to go into mine. I hate that kind of lack of respect for others. These are the kinds of things my girl friends and I rant about in e-mail.

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  3. My sister and I share lots of things on the phone, but I have always kept the stuff in email down to what I think might pass as appropriate for an old lady. I don't exactly know why, though. I also love your posts, R.J.

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