Is it a right or a privilege to have access to your partner's phones?

So far we’ve got society and people continue to attach so much importance to happiness and longevity of marriages, then you can expect that the conversation on what it takes to make a marriage work for long will never cease being part of our repertoire of relationship talk.

Cheating and all of its attendant angles and dimensions will always be spoken about, too. Because, hey, when have people never cheated?

And as it is, the age of technology and social media seems to have contributed its own quota to the list of relationship things we may always have to talk about.

Should a woman automatically get access to a man’s devices when the relationship begins [Credit - Getty] ece-auto-gen

Access to one’s partner’s mobile devices and other private gadgets – a right or privilege?

So, to quickly make one thing clear; there is a presumption here that your partner should have some form of access to your device[s]. I mean, we can all agree that this is needed in order to shut down suspicion and enable openness in the relationship.

The question now is how far is that access to be taken? Is it yours as a matter of right the moment y’all became a couple, or something subject to your partner's willingness to grant and share?

Is it something you can’t be denied of, or something that is given only because the other person deems it the right thing to do?

To simplify the question further: should a man automatically get access to a woman’s devices when the relationship begins or does the woman retain the right to either give it or withhold it?

Some say it’s a right

Jonathan Hoover of lifeinacrazyworld dot com rants on the issue:

“What privacy? I don’t remember that being part of the marriage deal. When I get up in the morning, my wife sees me in all my unadorned, pudgy gutted, hairy-legged, bad-breath surrounded glory.

"If ever there were a time when she might wish that I would want privacy… that might be it. But the truth is marriage and privacy don’t really mix.

“When you choose to spend the rest of your life in emotionally and physically intimate contact with another person, transparency is simply part of what you bargain for.

“An invasion of my privacy? I don’t think so. It’s an invitation to intimacy.”

Some of the people I asked have similar opinions; one of whom is Joy, who has just recently walked down the aisle.

She misses no beat when says: “In marriage it should be automatic... in other forms it can be flexible. Marriage is no longer child's play and damage cannot be afforded.”

Many people believe hat a phone is a private property and remains so even in relationships [Credit - Shutterstock] ece-auto-gen

It’s a privilege, according to some others

Believers in this, one of whom is Kemi, a Lagosian, say that you are not entitled to these things as a matter of right. It is meant to be granted.

“I feel everyone is entitled to a level of privacy even in relationships. Plus we all have some things in our lives which we'd prefer to leave unseen or unsaid, things we're not proud of and these gadgets sometimes happen to house those things so please do not touch my gadgets without my approval. Boundaries, please,” Kemi says.

Adeola, engaged to be married, also tells me the same thing.

“With my own relationship, we are an open book - I check his phone when I please, and he can check mine. If there’s nothing to hide, I do not see the big deal in your partner having access to your digital footprints.”

But, according to her, the relationship is open because she and her partner both realise that that is the best way, not because it is an entitlement. They both see it as a privilege, as opposed to regarding it as a right.

Joy, a different woman this time, agrees with the other women above; saying that unrestricted to her device has done more harm than good in her relationship. Having toed the line of access as a right, she has now stepped back and considers access to her mobile phone and other personal devices, something that only she can grant and rescind as she pleases.

"When I get married, I want us to respect each other's phones, no snooping, no checking. He can't check my phone, I can't check his, too.

"Let's stay like that," she says.

Everyone is entitled to a level of privacy even in relationships. [Credit - Shutterstock] Shutterstock

Author's opinion

Relationships are deeply intimate things and agreeing to be with someone is basically an invitation into your deepest intimacy. So those who consider a mobile phone and other devices a part of the complete package might be justified for thinking like that.

Regardless, the individuality of a person is not eroded by their involvement in a union. Being boo’d up is not equal to giving up your ‘singleness’. You are still a person of yourself who still possesses autonomy over certain things. Your body is one of those things, and I dare say your mobile phone and other devices belong in this category, too.

Phones are private. Very private as a matter of fact, given the way they are being designed these days to hold loads and loads of information and serve as a gateway to people’s most personal lives – think bank accounts, investments, secrets, deeply personal journals, etc.

Access to something like that definitely cannot be automatic. I think people should retain, at all times, the right to grant and rescind access, even with husbands and wives.

Admittedly, being overly guarded over these devices would raise suspicion and it just makes sense to grant access because, hey, what have you got to hide, right?

Phones are private. Very private as a matter of fact. [Source: Onipa] Pulse Nigeria

Regardless, you need to still realize that that access is given for the smooth operation of the relationship, for the necessary openness that relationships need to thrive. The owner of the phone still retains control over who has access and who does not. Do not feel entitled to your partner’s devices.

It’s not a like for like comparison but think of it as sex with your partner. Of course, who else would you be sleeping with, right? Your partner has been there several times. She has been all over that body, he has been all over yours in the most x-rated ways imaginable, too.

But does it make it right for them to force it when you say you don’t feel like giving it up on a particular day? Surely not, right?

What makes it wrong for them to do that is the autonomy you have to what happens to your body. The fact that you bath with a partner regularly does not mean your request to be left alone to have a private moment should not be honoured.

Why? Because every human, single, dating and married, deserves ABSOLUTE control over their privacy. It is just as simple as that.

Access to your partner’s device is always willingly given; and although that is the advisable thing to do; it should never be misinterpreted as a right. Anything freely given is a privilege.

You have a right to see your children and determine what happens to them just as your partner. That is a right. When it comes to mobile phones and other devices, though, it just don’t work that way.