A Password to Trust

It started out as a kitchen-table conversation about e-mail and computer passwords.

Before we knew it, we were talking about the state of marriage.

Our marriage, to be exact.

The New York Times reported Saturday that an increasing number of spurned lovers, particularly those going through a divorce or suspecting they may need one, are engaging in behavior one normally associates with seedy characters in spy novels and most of the men in Lifetime movies.

Reporter Brad Stone wrote that these couples, often emboldened by their lawyers, are sneaking into each other's e-mail accounts, loading surveillance software onto family computers and absconding with their not-so-beloveds' BlackBerrys and laptops. Their goal is to set the sun on persons they used to think hung the moon.

This doesn't tend to bring out the best in people.

One couple's story made the hairs stick up on my neck, which was hair I didn't want to know about.

After suspecting that his wife was having an affair, a technology consultant installed a $49 surveillance program on her laptop.

"The program surreptitiously took snapshots of her screen every 15 seconds and e-mailed them to him," I read aloud to my husband. "Since the program captured her passwords, he was also able to get access to and print all the e-mail messages his wife had received and sent over the previous year."

Had Mr. Super Sleuth always shown this much interest in his wife's comings and goings the marriage might have turned out differently, but that wasn't my point as I looked at my husband and drummed my fingers until he looked up from his own reading.

"What?"

"Passwords," I said.

"What about them?"

"Well, you know mine," I said.

"And you know mine," he said.

"I've never looked at your e-mail," I said.

"And I've never looked at yours."

"But we could."

"Yes," he said, finally setting down his paper.

"We could. But we don't. Because we trust each other."

"Which is why we have each other's passwords," I said.

"Right."

We just sort of stared at each other for a moment.

"Can I go back to reading?" he said, raising his eyebrows as he reached real slow-like for his newspaper but not quite touching it. "We're done, right?"

"Right."

Sort of.

It's a test, isn't it?

(a) Do I trust you enough to give you my password?

(b) Do you trust me enough never to use it?

There is no e-mail I've written, no Web site I've visited, that I would not be willing to share with my husband. Having said that, I'm not sure how I would feel if I knew he checked.

I have far less trouble figuring out what I'd feel if he didn't want me to know his passwords. Fear masquerading as rage, I suspect. How could he not trust me?

And because he trusts me, I have his password but would never read his mail. Because then I'd feel guilty, which, as emotions go, is much better than rage, but still not great.

More than a decade ago, I experienced an earlier version of this kind of snooping. I was sitting in divorce court when I suddenly realized the stack of papers on a nearby table were photocopies of all my journals.

You have to decide how you're going to turn out after such a betrayal: Either you become someone who will never trust again, or you decide you will never write anything you don't want to see on Page One.

Or a blog.

Especially a blog.

What it comes down to, I guess, is the difference between mystery in a marriage, and secrets. I don't want to know my husband's every move, and I doubt he would find mine very interesting, either.

And I don't want to use his password.

But it's nice to know I could.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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