Have you considered putting together texting rules for you and your spouse? There’s a good reason we ask you this. The Internet can pose a significant threat to any relationship if misused. It has led to a dramatic increase in use of pornography. Viewing pornography can become habitual, even addictive behavior. And it can have a negative impact on your own relationship with your partner. In addition, the Internet allows individuals to make contact with strangers and encourages inappropriate intimacy. It can lead to both emotional and physical infidelity.
Because some people view online relationships as harmless, they engage in behavior they would never consider in a face-to-face relationship. Many marriages and relationships have broken up when one member of a couple discovers that his/her partner has been involved in a relationship online. They also could be regularly visiting pornographic or other inappropriate websites.
Internet and Texting Rules
Here are a set of rules that will help each couple avoid the trauma that comes from discovering hidden relationships and porn use on the computer. This includes texting rules, as well.
- Share your password with your spouse.
- For couples that own computers that require usernames/passwords, it may be best to have a single account/username for the couple.
- Offer to install web-tracking software to build trust. This device allows your partner to see every place you have visited on the net. This is particularly important if trust is an issue in a relationship. If trust has been violated, or one partner is prone to jealousy, then offering to install web-tracking software can help restore trust and reduce jealousy.
- Do not create additional email accounts to hide communications (including texting) from your spouse.
- Make it clear to your spouse that he/she is welcome to look through your computer emails and texts.
- Never visit pornography sites.
- Never visit personals sites. This includes sites like Craigslist Adult Services and other sites that are a cover for prostitution services.
- Do not visit open-ended chat-rooms. Only visit chat-rooms that are issue-specific on issues that you need help with, such as software problems. Most information can be found through bulletin or message boards or on sites that do not allow interaction between individuals.
Instant Messaging and Texting Rules
- Make sure your spouse knows or is aware of everyone in your “buddy/friend” list or knows that she has access to the list at any time.
- Do not engage in IM conversations of a private or provocative nature.
- Do not search for prior boyfriends/girlfriends online.
Social Networking sites like Facebook, and MySpace are the exceptions. Former partners may contact you regardless of whether you initiate contact. In these situations it is always best to inform your partner and ask for their input/recommendation. This two-way communication and decision making process builds trust.
Social Networking
Facebook/LinkedIn are all very popular and it is likely that at least one person in a relationship will have an account. Rules to follow:
- Make sure to set your relationship status to “Married” to alert others that you are taken and post a picture of yourself and your spouse.
- Have a single account for a couple, e.g. JohnAndJane Doe@facebook/myspace.
- If each person wants their own account, make sure to share passwords.
- Tell your partner when you’ve added a friend of the opposite gender.
- Do not carry on private conversations with friends of the opposite gender via social networking sites. [This includes texting.]
- Place the family computer in an open place in your home. This reduces the temptation to browse adult-themed sites and engage in provocative conversations via computer. This is especially important when there are children in the home. Children should not be allowed access to the Internet unless they are in an area where parents can freely observe their activity.
- Designate specific times during the day when you should and should not use the computer for personal use.
This article was written by Chris Gersten, and was posted on the Internet, Wednesday, 09 December 2009 on the web site, famlibeta.com.
— ALSO —
For a list of Do’s and Don’ts, which can help you in your relationship with your spouse as it applies to texting each other, please click onto the Marriagetrac.com web site link to read:
If you have additional tips you can share to help others, or you want to share requests for prayer and/or ask others for advice, please “Join the Discussion” by adding your comments below.
(USA) My husband periodically receives emails, txts and phone calls from his 2 ex-girlfriends. This upsets me and I’ve asked him to tell them he is married and to not contact him anymore. He says he does not initiate contact with them, and only responds to them to answer a question. He says he doesn’t want to upset them or cause conflict by being firm and telling them to go away. Yet my husband, as a result, is hurting my feelings and causing great conflict in our marriage by letting them keep ‘contact’ with him.
Am I being selfish to ask my husband to be firm and tell the 2 ex-girlfriends goodbye once and for all? We have been together for 2 and 1/2 years, married almost one year. Also, I have never met his two ex-girlfriends. There is no genuine friendship between them and my husband, and they have no intention of meeting me or wanting to get to know me. Thanks for any advice.
(U.S.) There is no place in a marriage for exes! Until your marriage is totally transparent with no personal contacts via phone, email, IM, Facebook, in person, or any other means of contact with a friend of the opposite sex. If your spouse is not willing to give up his contacts with these ladies, you should make it clear that is unacceptable.
Total transparency! Email passwords, phone passwords, freedom to check each other’s phones at anytime, a joint Facebook account (if you have to have one at all!), knowing where your partner is at all times, being able to reach your spouse by phone at all times, and having regular conversations regarding trust, respect, marriage guidelines, feelings, and daily prayer together, will serve to keep your marriage Satan-proof. Satan hates happily married Christian couples that love each other the way Christ loved the church. In these times, Agape love and faithful marriages face a constant stream of temptation and evil. Keep God at the core of your marriage. God Bless! Debbie
(USA) Satan does hate happily married couples, families and kids; you are right. If a couple is as God intended “best friends” there’s no need for opposite sex friends, which almost always ends up in an affair. I know 2 “Christian” couples that ended up in one affair and a child.
Fulfill each other. If they have given their passwords, they often open other accounts you know nothing of. Why chance it?
(CANADA) Kat, I know how you feel. My husband and I have been married just under one year and have faced the same issue. I am still hurt but working on forgiving both my husband and those women. My husband is a very outgoing and loveable guy who has 2 younger sisters, and while he has no ill-intent when he carries on friendships with other women, he doesn’t always see where I’m coming from on this issue.
I know that as a woman, it is always easier for us to see the dangers which lie ahead of a married man carrying on a friendship with a single woman. At one point my husband had a single female co-worker who wanted his support as she went through a serious illness. I was quite upset with this, especially when my husband told me “but she doesn’t have anyone else” and treated my feelings as jealousy. I explained to my husband that this is the basis of building unhealthy ties and he asked me to speak with the young woman. I related to her that she was crossing boundaries and told her to stop. She continued to contact my husband and I got the same response from him about his not initiating the contact and that he was only responding to her texts.
I prayed a lot about this and finally went to my husband with this explanation: when I spoke with this woman, I told her not to contact my husband further. She refused was disrespectful to not only me, but our marriage. I went on to further explain that because my husband wasn’t cutting it off, he was allowing this woman to disrespect me, and he in turn, was disrespecting our marriage. I explained to him how I felt betrayed by his actions because he wasn’t putting me before a ‘friend’. My husband related to me then, and has ended all communication with this woman. He was able to stand up for our marriage, and for me.
One thing I can say, is that the more positive affirmation I give to my husband, the less attention he pays to the comments of other women. I’m not saying that the responsibility lies solely on the wife, but we do need to keep God’s commandment to submit to our husbands as we submit to God. I recently read a book called The Heart of the 5 Love Languages
, which has helped greatly. It may take some time, but when we fulfill our duties as a Godly wife (much harder than I ever expected), our relationship goes much more smoothly. I pray that your husband will open his heart to your needs as a wife and stand up for your marriage as mine has.
(USA) I am trying so hard to trust my husband, but because of my own past trust issues I have a hard time with his attitude and behavior on his iPad. We are older and this is not either one of our first marriages. My husband shared some very personal information about Internet activity that he used in his past marriages when he wasn’t happy in the relationship.
In the beginning he was the one who was insecure in our relationship. Then suddenly he was so confident that, for lack of a better word, his desperation that I would leave was gone. Now I question is whether I trust where he gets his security -crazy, right? Well, he deletes all of his search history on his iPad, not just daily but every time he uses it. He works primarily with all women. In the beginning this didn’t bother me (because he was the one who could barely breath without me) to now after a little over a year and a half he no longer wants to discuss what he does at work. His statement was that “I don’t need to know everything he does everyday.”
I love him with all of my heart and after being alone for so long I feel completely vulnerable. I quit my job, moved to another state, have a completely different lifestyle and he is my only friend here. Am I crazy? He plays computer games that are interactive with people from around the world. It infuriates him when I question the communication he has with people he doesn’t know and always turns the conversation back on me that his feelings are hurt that wouldn’t trust him.
Why would you have multiple email accounts, spend hours in a virtual world, and delete all search history if you weren’t hiding something? This was not the way he was during the first year and a half. Any ideas that can help me get through this and find a way back to this man that I love?
(S. AFRICA) Dear Debbie, I know exactly how you feel. My ex-husband was always secretly busy on the internet and his cell phone during his affairs. These two items were out of bounds for me. All information was always deleted and when I approached him he became so defensive and the “don’t you trust me” words were continually thrown at me. Well I DIDN’T trust him; he gave me no reason to.
Debbie, I don’t know what to say. If your husband is not prepared to be 100% open and honest with you something slowly dies in your heart. My only advice is not to let this continue. You have to in prayer and with God’s guidance approach your husband and let him know just what this is doing to your marriage. He has to be willing to “get it”. Oh how I pray that all those living in this way would just for one minute realise just how dangerous and hurtful this behaviour is and just how quickly the love and trust in a marriage will be eroded as a result. I will be praying for you Debbie. God bless.
(USA) It is bothering me a lot that my husband is kinda secretive about his phone and computer. He doesn’t let me touch his phone or his computer. What does it mean? Please help, we already had a fight about this issue he said he doesn’t hide anything and he said he needs privacy. He doesn’t like anyone going into his stuff.
(SOUTH SUDAN) I am experiencing a very challenging marriage. My wife is very secretive with her phone. She locks it with a series of passwords. When I ask to unlock the phone since there shouldn’t be secrets between married spouses she says, she will never unlock and wants her privacy to be respected.
In the evenings she will sit with her phone facing a position where I will not see what she is doing on the phone and when I ask she gets violent. I am absolutely frustrated and am thinking of separating from her. However, we have a 1 yr and 8 month baby that needs our attention. Please advise.