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.