#468. Sharing an email address with your spouse.
Jan 8th by JonDang you Ben Washer. He’s a friend of mine and recently emailed me a great idea for Stuff Christians Like. “You should do a post on Christian couples that share one email address.”
Perfect, I thought, that’s such a silly thing to do. How archaic, how old school fundamentalist is that? Sharing an email address with your wife as if the two of you are standing out in cyberspace holding hands in front of a Thomas Kinkade painting waving, “ya’ll come back now, you hear.” There was only one problem with that idea though, my wife and I do that.
Our email address is theacuffs@yahoo.com.
We leaved and cleaved our separate email addresses and lit a unity candle on yahoo that burns brightly throughout the virtual landscape.
I am that cheesy guy I wanted to poke fun at, but in my defense, there are three things I should say:
1. Our email address is normal.
We created that address 8 years ago when we got married. We decided that “theacuffs” was what you might see on the side of our mailbox. We didn’t come up with something like “theacuffsaresoinlove” or “truelovewaitsandcelebrateswhenjonandjennyfellinlove” or “Jennyssnugglepandaisjon.” We went straight forward and direct.
2. We don’t read each other’s emails.
Because I’ve been upfront about my personal experiences with porn and have sponsored some guys going through recovery programs in the past, I get some crazy emails. My wife gets a lot of personal emails from the Community Bible Study she leads. We are both cool with keeping those unread in the inbox until we’re able to deal with them privately. Jenny’s got her space. I’ve got mine.
3. We offset the whole thing by not dressing alike.
Rarely, I mean rarely, will you see us in matching homemade Thanksgiving sweaters that have cornucopias spilling their bounty across the tummy with plastic fruit hand knitted on for a 3D effect. We only do that maybe six, seven times a year at most. So having that boundary, a word we learned in counseling, keeps us pretty hip.
All in all, it works for us. I don’t think it’s some sort of mandatory thing that everyone has to do though. I mean sure, I’ll probably have a slightly bigger house than you in heaven with a slightly easier to fold up ping pong table but I’ll invite you over sometimes to use it. Just email me at theacuffs@yahoo.com, where I’m in love, holding my wife’s cyber hand tenderly.
Comments
Ping pong in heaven, eh, Jon? Sorta different than that song from that song from the 77s, Ping Pong Over The Abyss.
Haha, I was just joking about this recently with a friend, after noticing your email address and realizing many Christian couples do this. It’s definitely something that Christians like that’s kinda weird. Glad to see your post on it.
I’ve noticed that does happen a lot with the adults at my church. The youth leader has more than one email, including one that she shares with her husband. I’ve made quite the effort to continuously email her through her work email because of this. xD
I would not be able to handle sharing an e-mail address with anyone. That would blow! LOL! I’m serious.
My brother’s incubator for his children (no love lost there) has an e-mail address that couldn’t be any further from the truth. SmokinHot something or other. Hmmm. Call me a judgmental Apocalypse whore riding a red demon if you want, but she is so not smokin or hot. Ick!!
I think I might have to repent of that last paragraph.
Heidi Reed
My church is the only place where people struggle with the fact that my email is not, in fact, my husband’s. And vice versa. We’ll live in a hovel, unless of course, it’s all grace.
Well, Jon, your MacMansion to come won’t need a bigger mailbox. Yahoo has no limit…at least on earth.
My husband uses computers every day, but he is virtually email illiterate. I had to set up his account and still monitor it to make sure he doesn’t leave any important stuff unanswered. I guess that makes me his digi-nanny. Hey, that might be a cool new e-address if I need another one…digi-nanny@yahoo.com
@Katdish, I’m confused. Are you saying that heaven is actually yahoo? Or vice versa?
This really messes with my theology…
We were constantly arguing over computer access, so when my oldest son bought a laptop in September, he gave my wife his PC. She already had another e-mail address, but mine was our original shared one.
This week however, I realized that what I’m writing on our old “Paul and Ruth…” address doesn’t truly speak for her anymore, and we want her mail to go to the other computer so I reluctantly changed it to “Paul…”
Now, I’m counting the days until someone broaches the question, “Are you two still married.”
We could never share email…
I actually like my inbox organized. He, however, could care less. He often just hits “check all” and “delete”.
Besides the fact that he just doesn’t email anyone anyway. Even his family doesn’t email him. If they want to get in touch, they email ME!
And I’m fine with that. I’m the talker anyway.
As long as you know each others password. Or make it easy enough for the other one to guess. That’s a solid marriage.
That’s a great post.
Why did this make me laugh so hard? It never occurred to me that sharing an email address was “christian” or “weird”. It just happened to us, and we never changed it. Outside of work, my husband could do without email … so I generally just tell him when he has one. I only read his email if he tells me to, and it’s always obvious who it’s for. We don’t have any deep seated trust issues … well, our trust is pretty deep … but we certainly didn’t marry our email addresses for any special reason. It was just practical for us and isn’t for others. It never occurred to me that people thought separate email addresses were naughty or something! If it means Jesus is workin’ longer on our place and installing a swimming pool, I’m sure not gonna sin with a separate account.
wv: unchalli … what, like Donald Wilson, the opposite of Tim Challies?
michele
It wouldn’t make sense for me to share email with my husband since he gets about 50 work-related emails a day.
HOWEVER, I appreciate what all of you are saying about transparency, accountability, etc. and I am going to post this anonymously because of what I’m going to say next.
I am a Christian and am married to a Christian whom I love dearly. I have no doubt that he is my God-given mate. However, I almost got in big gigantic horrible trouble via email. It started off fairly innocently, with another Christian friend, and before I knew it, I was in deep trouble—wrong thinking, wrong acting, wrong dreaming, I’m sure you can fill in the blanks.
It is one of those “it-can-never-happen-to-me” situations….that almost did.
It was only resolved (and terrible after-effects still linger) by confessing to a trusted friend, and praying long and hard with her, and by completely ending this wrong friendship that I was saved from a treacherous path.
Even looking back, I have to steel myself against wrong feelings and call on Jesus’ name to turn away from even thinking about it.
And, at the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I now know this temptation was from the devil, and have no doubt that the Lord was showing me something that I needed to know about myself and also about Him. Very very painful time. And the fact that I had my own very private email was certainly a contributing factor.
Now we still have our own emails, but mine is on the house computer, with a password everyone knows.
Jon, I think you should have been a role model for all the couples out there who do this…you could have had a cyber-conversion right here in front of all us. You would have inspired many…I could have forwarded this blog to all the guy friends I have who share email addresses with their wives. But alas, I’m going to have to continue to screen my emails to these guys with the “I know that their wife is going to read this” factor.
(giggle) donald MILLER … I was up too late last night.
michele
We share an email address too and it is good for accountability. BUt also, my husband is not that savvy on the computer so I make sure he checks his messages. But we have separate Facebook accounts.
we share an email address, but that began because 11 years ago email wasn’t so big as it is now and we didn’t have a computer, so my husband would print out emails for me at work so i could read them at home. now that we have a computer its just good transparency, and why not? it easy to remember: (our last name pluralized)@hotmail.com yeah its that oldschool. but our password really is that sappy.
wv: aphyrie: a firey aphroditey, i.e. women’s lib version of greek goddess! (its ironic, not dirty. think about it)
New poster. I couldn’t share an email with my wife. She’s in the medical field and I was an English major. She’d have to tell me what stuff was and I’d have to tell her how to spell.
wv: beente
Redneck-Have ya beente the store.
Blogger Sylvia Goode Basham said…
Very sweet post….but I bet it would have been loads more sarcastic if you weren’t “one of them.”
(Maybe that’s a post idea: being harder on other’s choices than we are our own….just thinking….)
WV= twist
Too easy… I get disappointed when it’s an actual word.
I always say the best thing about my church is finding out I’m not the only one who has gone through “stuff” and I have that same sense here. I thought your email address was “thea cuffs” as well. I never analyzed it…just blindly accepted it.
wv nelya: The look of scorn from your spouse when your spouse discovers that you have in fact worn a matching shirt.
hahahahaha… just when I think that you have nailed every single thing about us Christians, you go and do a post like this and I’m calling my husband into the room going “Hon! Guess what thing Christians like today? SHARED E-MAIL ADDRESSES!! HAHAHAHAHA”… signed robertandhannah@ gmail.com.
So what about engraving both your name on a joint Bible?
I share an email address with my wife because she has no idea how to access her email…so she has me do it for her.
Okay, sharing pants?? lol okay in the UK pants are men’s underwear – not trousers. A woman wearing her husband’s shared pants give a whole new grimness to that reader’s comments here.
Alas, to the subject. We share email but it is his name. But that’s okay, what’s mine is mine and what’s his is mine. Sounds okay to me.
This transcends to forum accounts, as well. (we’re not just going for the ping pong table, but the swimming pool as well). It was initially because I didn’t really frequent the forums we read but as time has progressed I began to post but putting my name in the subject so people could see it was me posting not him. Now, he actually feels the need to apologise for posting in my stead.
We don’t wear matching jumpers though. No, the closest thing to that was when we met and would go out and were both a little bit goth and we’d both be wearing all black. But then, we matched every goth in London. Having said that. Being a very light blonde, I never did pull off the goth look and my husband well, he looked like a 12 year old androgynous as a goth so yeah, we pretty much lost that look pretty quickly. It lasted roughly two weekends.
Re-reading this post I see no reason to ban our IP address.
ME in London
wv: progine
A small group of 80s rockers that have embraced Gene Simmons sans Kiss makeup. I think there are 4 members – all in their 50s. They meet twice a year and drink light beer wearing rock t-shirts that almost cover the ‘evidence of all that light beer’ belly.
Pretty interesting blog. I only use usreq32@techtotal.com as my main address. She does not care for one.
We have a shared one. It was his, before we got married, so I was just kind of added. I didn’t even have an email account before we got together. But I rarely check it. Just like phone calls to the house, the emails aren’t for me!
But the dressing alike thing? Very very often. It is common in the morning at our house to hear “But I got dressed first! Neener neener!” Neither of us are the slightest bit into fashion so our “uniform” is more often than not a pair of blue jeans with a black T-shirt or polo shirt. Is it doubly sad that a bunch of my shirts were passed down to me from his closet? Yeah, yeah I think that is sad. The trendy one, that’s me!
WV: woodys
“When we go to eat at woodys, the black shirts hide all the BBQ sauce drips.”
I have friends that share a facebook profile, but it is under her name. So when I tagged photos of him from high school it was fairly annoying to have to explain that “John” wasn’t really “Dawn.” Made me feel that I was somehow telling people that he was now a cross dresser or something.
There is a couple at my church that ALWAYS dresses alike. Not matching, the same. Same shirt, probably same jeans and even the same shoes – although he has the guy version of her shoes. They have done this for as long as I can remember. It is because of them that all of my friends have permission to smack me upside the head if I ever dress the same as the man I end up marrying.
Shared Facebook pages – strange. Shared email: it’d be way too annoying to filter our each of our messages. We do have a shared address (lastname@mydomain.com) that sends messages to both of our accounts, but it’s not a shared account.
Since I run my own mail server, I set up new aliases for any site requiring an email (so if this site did I’d have scl@mydomain.com, etc.); it’s very quick and then I can easily remove an alias if a site starts spamming me, and then all their messages to the now-defunct address will bounce.
Although I "get" the concept of shared e-mail, and think it is a good idea for some people… I just don't like to send an e-mail to a shared address. But hey, I'm single! What do I know? It might be my first act as a married person!
But I do NOT approve of shared FB accounts. One per person, please, and just share the passwords!