Snooping

So this past Saturday, I threw a surprise birthday party for J (the hubby)and invited some of his friends from grad school. I didn't really know any of these people but I managed to do some stealth sleuthing to get names and contact info. I had actually met a couple of his school friends briefly before and memorized their names. Then I waited till he left his cell phone unattended and frantically searched for these people's names in his contacts. The first one I came across I quickly jotted down the number and walked away.

Now, you may have thought I was going to post about the party, but not today. Today I want to talk something else entirely. As I left his cell phone and was nonchalantly acting like no big secret was going on, I inexplicably started to feel a little guilty. I wasn't doing anything bad and on the contrary, it was for a very good cause I was snooping around his cell phone. But still...

There was an episode on Friends where Monica and Richard had broken up. A devastated Monica decides to leave a message for Richard on his answering machine after hearing one on hers from him, which she can't remember if it's an old or new message. She's not happy with the message she ends up leaving and decides to let herself into Richard's answering machine system with a code she knew. Her motive wasn't to snoop for other messages but the whole thing goes comically awry and she ends up setting her message to Richard as his new outgoing message.

How many of us ladies are out there with access to our mates' private stuff? Cell phones, emails, bills, bank statements... etc? How many of us (and yes, I say "us" because I'm guilty of this too) have at one time or another in the relationship have gone into this private territory, for whatever reason, and "looked around"? And I have some girlfriends who have done this too. It's interesting because I think if I were to take a poll, we would find that more women do this than men to their significant others. Why is this? (Ok, other than the fact that it's probably a rare species of man who will throw fabulous surprise birthday parties for their wives or girlfriends... not that a man couldn't. I'm just not sure that there are bucketfuls of men out there who love party planning.) And how many of you ladies have your mans passwords, PIN #'s etc? How many of you have given this same info to your man? No judgement here, by the way, because while this recent time was innocent, I can admit to a time when J and I were just dating that I've looked into his email. Not because I suspected some torrid secret love affair, but just because I was being nosy. I actually confessed this to J expecting him to break up with me but blessedly, the man is forgiving.

So really, what's going on? Are we just more snoopy? nosy? less secure? Or are we just more clever and if men could figure out a way to break into our private domains, they'd all be doing it too? Or do men do this too but just never cop to it? Or is it just a philosophy of "once you're married, it's all community property, there is no such things as 'private'"? But what about the dating but not yet married ladies? OR is it just that we're all planning surprise birthday parties for our men? ; )