Don't know what to do (long)

It depends on the intimacy with a person, I don't expect privacy from bloke I met yesterday who works behind the deli counter, but if I am seeing someone or they are my best friend and I am sharing something private with them, than yes. I don't give a toss if they are married to someone, that doesn't give that partner an automatic right to know 'MY' business.

Being pretty sure that a girlfriend is not going to be offended (which is an assumption btw), is not the same as being quite clear that you are reading everything she writes just because you want to!

If people make it clear that this is what they are doing than fair enough, people can choose whether or not they want to correspond with you, my complaint is when people do not make it clear but instead say their status as a married couple should make this 'obvious' It doesn't and it is not right.
 
Being pretty sure that a girlfriend is not going to be offended (which is an assumption btw), is not the same as being quite clear that you are reading everything she writes just because you want to!

I do agree that everyone should know the score. Gif and I established pretty much on our first date that we both tell our husbands everything. Neither one of us had the slightest problem with that. Everything means everything, so we didn't need to go into details about texting etc. But fair enough, that does need to be explicit. Honestly, it was such a non-issue for Gif and I that I haven't given it much thought in over a year.

Barring infidelity, I'm not saying you aren't entitled to your privacy. I'm saying that just as much as I ought to inform you that I tell my husband everything, you ought to tell me if you value privacy. Communication is a two-way street. I have no problem keeping your secrets. But if they become my secrets, that's a problem.

Bringing it back on-topic... If you're sexting a married person, and their spouse doesn't know you exist, then yeah sorry, your desire for privacy is less than irrelevant.
 
?Part Time Poly?

Sorry to hear that your encounter turned out to be so tragic. It sounds a lot like you all should've first experimented with a weekend 3some type of fling.
To me, as well as my Wife and our Girlfriend (soon to be Wife), what separates the Poly way of life vs. a 3some is that Poly totally permits, allows and all but promotes "feelings & emotions" to develop and come into play. A 3some is more of a sexual agreement between consenting adults and emotional attachments don't necessarily play a part in it.
You all could have even explored the swinger set in order to satisfy your urges & desires to be with others. But again, I need to stress that the "True Poly" lifestyle is "UNrestricted Love". That is why the infinity symbol exists in all Poly related images. Rules and restrictions mean that you are something other than Poly, and it sounds like Hubby never got that memo. He went into the life as fully Poly & you were what you now know to be "Part Time Poly"
BEST WISHES,
From:All THREE of Us
 
I am curious about why, when a person comes on here and posts that they suspected their partner of cheating, check their phone or email, find out that the partner was indeed cheating (sometimes severely so), and simply get scolded and berated for "invading the other person's privacy". The person caught cheating sometimes uses that too, probably to take the attention off the cheating itself and making it out like the cheating is less wrong because they were found out through another person's self-help.

Now, i admit that sometimes people have a suspicion that turns out to be false, and when they snoop in the other person's messages and find out the truth, the person who was snooped on has every right to be annoyed or angry. But if you were up to no good in the first place, what right do you have to be pissed about your privacy? Obviously you don't even care that much if you treated the person in a way that made them suspect something in the first place. I mean, if you're gonna be a liar, at least be a GOOD liar. Play your game to win, not to get presumably unwanted attention. I always suspect that people leave incriminating things on their phones then leave their phones where the person they are fooling can find them actually WANT to be caught. What i don't understand is why other people (including but not limited to this forum, other places too such as reddit) jump all over them for omg snooping omg, when they are the one who was being lied to and were just trying to find out information that was being hidden.
 
Transparency is a good thing.

Transparency is key. Trust comes from knowing that the answers you receive from your partner are every bit as valuable and true as what you might read on their texts, emails, etc. and hopefully supercedes the need to actually read them.
 
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I am curious about why, when a person comes on here and posts that they suspected their partner of cheating, check their phone or email, find out that the partner was indeed cheating (sometimes severely so), and simply get scolded and berated for "invading the other person's privacy". The person caught cheating sometimes uses that too, probably to take the attention off the cheating itself and making it out like the cheating is less wrong because they were found out through another person's self-help.

Now, i admit that sometimes people have a suspicion that turns out to be false, and when they snoop in the other person's messages and find out the truth, the person who was snooped on has every right to be annoyed or angry. But if you were up to no good in the first place, what right do you have to be pissed about your privacy?

While I agree that a person who uses covert means to learn that their partners are cheating shouldn't be the one to get berated, I can't agree with the second conclusion. By that logic, police shouldn't need to bother with warrants. They should just search anyone suspicious and then if they find something, it's admissible and if they don't, well oops sorry.

It's also the kind of logic Harper is using with this child porn law. "As long as you're not breaking the law, why do you care if the government snoops through your data? You're either with us or you support the child porn rings. Which is it?" That being said, I wouldn't really care if the government snooped through my data, provided it was an honest and responsible government. That'll be the day.
 
Re (from loserville):
"The fury translated into wild mood swings with husband and he said he refused to discuss our relationship until I'd been to see a shrink about my moods so I went to the doctors for a referral."

What did the doctors say?

Re (from BoringGuy):
"I am not even interested in reading my partners' personal correspondence, although I have had almost unlimited opportunities to do so. It would bore the hell out of me. I'd rather come here and read about other people reading each other's messages. That's how boring it would be."

LOLOL ... that is just so wrong ... LOLOL

Especially coming from a boring guy, don't you like boring things? :)

Alright, butseriouslyfolks ... I reckon the government has more responsibility to respect privacy because it has so much power (such as to throw people in prison for life). If someone's conducting a secret affair by text (and the government's not involved) ... hmmm, that's a little more of a gray area.

@ loserville: Can you give us an update on your situation?
 
Kevin, that is what i feel about rhe difference btwn the gov't and a person in a private personal relationship, too. There is not really any comparison beyond a superficial, rhetorical, hypothetical comparison.

Scrodinger's cat: what kevin said, me too. ^^
 
When everything started with DH and I it was because of an online affair I was having. I was lying, I was, well, a royal douchbag asshat. Totally. The thing is, he reached out for help. He knew that I had dated more than one person in high school, that I was the kind of person to have adopted people to love people and just fall in love. He also felt I was the most empathetic person he had ever met and so to be so UNEMPATHETIC, was just boggling. (Have I mentioned how very long we have been working on healing my douchebaggery?)

Anyway, the problem came when he looked for help and answers and all he got was "YOU READ HER texts/emails/etc.??!!" They totally overlooked that I had been lying and cheating and just berated him for not trusting me! I can tell you from that experience alone we would NOT be where we are today. All that taught him was that poly people seemed to be all about what they wanted and anyone that didn't get in line was an idiot, not as evolved, immature, stifling, abusive even in expecting anything else.

I agree, that it's wrong to 'snoop', but if it catches you red handed it's like a scale of one to ten. That he snooped on me was a 3 at most, that I was consistently lying and having an affair, was at least an 8! So guess what, we focus on the 8 and deal with the 3 later!

(Which we did and is why transparency was required at the beginning of new relationships and yes everyone knew about it.)

PS The government thing is a whole separate topic. My husband is not my government and so the comparison does not work for me personally. Though I have my own beliefs on government that would take up a couple of threads. :D
 
In 2009, we separated for a while but got back together and, one of the things I asked for then was to be open to the idea of having relationships with others instead of running on our old rule of no emotional connection..
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Suddenly, without consultation, the no emotional connection rule was thrown out because he wanted Mary badly. I wasn't happy with it, but as I'd asked for this sort of thing back in 2009, I could hardly complain ...

How could he have thrown out the no emotional connection rule when you yourself had removed it already?

I said this in another thread recently, but it bears repeating: for me, stumbling into poly via a friend in an open marriage, this is exactly the sort of post that makes me think some people really do see OSOs not as people, but as toys, hobbies, and marital enhancers.

I see a bit of a catch 22: you understandably want your marriage to be protected--to come first--when you start on poly, yet having a romantic relationship with another person changes things. It's not only unfair, it's downright selfish and cruel, to bring another person in, involve their feelings and emotions, and then toss them to the curb when it proves inconvenient or uncomfortable.

Even putting the relationship on pause is a little problematic. Mary is not a DVD to be watched when it's convenient. She is a person who was invited into this and stepped into it with some trust. She is now used to spending time and emotional closeness with someone she's come to value and maybe depend on a little, someone she looks forward to talking with or seeing on a daily basis. Now she can just cool her heels and find something else to fill that space while you decide if you want the flip or the flop or something in between or something altogether different?

How often can she expect this to happen? How often will she be asked to just step aside for a bit from what is now also her relationship and her boyfriend, as well as your husband?

I admit that my feelings have changed over the past year and some months of seeing a married man, of watching the dynamics of poly close up both in his marriage and here on the forum. At first, I felt that I just needed to 'understand' that I'd stepped into this knowing he was married. Now, I feel that a married couple at least equally needs to understand that they are inviting real people with real emotions into this situation, and those people need to be treated with as much respect and care as they would in any other relationship. If BF were to tell me at this point that his wife wants him to take a break, I'd say, Go ahead, just realize I won't be waiting around, and the men I meet on dating sites are highly unlikely to agree to poly.

There is no way in hell I'd be putting my life and opportunities on pause while waiting for a third party to decide where my relationship with BF goes...especially knowing it could happen repeatedly and ultimately be tossed out altogether by her.
 
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Yeah I am not really sure where the cheating and snooping link came in actually. My point about reading texts/emails/etc has nothing to do with someone checking up on a suspected cheat (though if anyone caught my post on another thread, someone I know did exactly that and got it wrong, plus she was totally inappropriate, unapologetic and very entitled about it all) but in those cases when it is a standard practice between Poly couples especially if the people involved with them are not implicitly aware that this is what they do...

Having been a victim of it myself I DO have an issue with it but the main problem was I did not realise I was essentially talking to an audience, once I was made aware of it, it was less of a problem but to be honest I still did not like it and will not be involved with people who did that again.

Again, this is not a cheaters situation and I don't have any strong opinion on that topic.

Natja
 
I said this in another thread recently, but it bears repeating: for me, stumbling into poly via a friend in an open marriage, this is exactly the sort of post that makes me think some people really do see OSOs not as people, but as toys, hobbies, and marital enhancers.

<<<>>>
There is no way in hell I'd be putting my life and opportunities on pause while waiting for a third party to decide where my relationship with BF goes...especially knowing it could happen repeatedly and ultimately be tossed out altogether by her.


Seconded!!! Well said,

N
 
the main problem was I did not realise I was essentially talking to an audience

As far as this is concerned I agree with SC. If it is incredibly important to me to know that anyone other than my intended recipient of a text might be reading it... I need to voice this concern. I'm not sure why I would care that someone was sharing my texts with their friends or lovers unless they were doing so to hurt me (not sure how they'd do that). Then, the fact that they were trying to hurt me would be the problem... not the texts.

As far as my personal phone and computer are concerned, anyone who has the audacity to look through them without my explicit permission to do so (not that I would ever give it) does not meet my qualifications of respecting independence as a virtue. Even if my partner asked me "Mind if I look through your texts on your phone?" they'd get a raised eyebrow and an invitation to explain why they would want to do that. My answer will almost certainly be "no", and depending on their explanation I may instantly begin to reassess my decision to date this person.
 
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