There is a special milestone in each significant relationship that is rarely celebrated. There’s no holiday, no dinner, and no party. It just happens – one day you’re strangers, the next you’re not.
It’s the day you hand over your passwords to your SO.
Everyone reaches this particular milestone differently. Some – if they’re smart or particularly untrusting – never reach it at all.
Sometimes people realize one day, without ever being told explicitly, that they already know their partner’s passcode. Some treat it like a small declaration of trust and intimacy. “0852,” they say, proudly. “Don’t snoop.” Others learn out of circumstance. “Can you text Jane and let her know we’ll be late?” they ask with their hands full. “My phone is over there. 4928 is the passcode.”
And then it’s happened. Likely the two most important entities in your life, your partner and your smartphone, are bound together. They have access to each other. As with any new phase, if this milestone is reached too early it can spell trouble.
A couple years ago, I started dating a girl named Rosie. We had both just gotten out of serious relationships, and the rebound factor was clouding our judgement. That said, we moved way too fast. After a month or so of dating, I was essentially living at her place. I had a set of keys. We were grocery shopping together and combining laundry. (I’m a cliche, I know.)
I remember when I eventually gave her access to my digital world. I was making meatballs, and she asked me to send her a picture I had taken earlier that day. Hands covered in raw hamburger meat and egg, I said she could do it herself: “9873.”
She smiled, silently accepting my trust. It was an offering I made out of circumstance, but I also can’t pretend that I didn’t quietly warm up at the notion of being that close to somebody. And make no mistake, it’s a unique type of closeness that can’t be achieved through passionate sex or honest conversation. Your smartphone is a reflection of yourself. It knows more about you than almost anyone. Your entire history, from years worth of communication and pictures to general interests, is recorded right on the device.
Eventually, we grew even more “trusting” with our digital lives. We left our computers open, email and Facebook logged in, and didn’t worry about snooping or invasion of privacy with each other. It wasn’t a conversation we had, but as trust grew in the relationship, we simply left more things accessible in the digital realm.
For a minute there, I actually believed that this form of sharing strengthened whatever trust we already had. I had opened myself up to her, and she to me.
But that ended.
After we had been dating about six months, I got a call while I was on a business trip in Atlanta.
“How much did you spend on the flowers you bought Hayden?” she asked coldly.
Hayden was my ex, and when Rosie and I first started dating, I had sent Hayden flowers to congratulate her on a new job. Rosie knew about it, but I might have lied about how much I had spent.
“Like… $30,” I said, sticking to my lie. Meanwhile, I was frantically flipping through my phone to figure out how she knew I had lied.
“You left your email open on my iPad, Jordan,” she revealed. “I’m looking at the receipt right now. So did you still only spend $30?”
That fight lasted all night. We moved on eventually but the breach of trust on both sides of the relationship never left. And by that point, there was no way to go back. I couldn’t very well change all my passwords. She had already caught me lying. Any new password that shut her out of my life would be a red flag, signaling that I was lying or misbehaving once again.
Though this story is my own, I’m certainly not alone in the password swap or the snooping significant other.
In fact, teens seem to think of password sharing as a modern-day equivalent of exchanging letterman jackets or senior class rings. The NYTimes found that around one in three teens has shared a password with a boyfriend, girlfriend, or best friend, with girls offering up the secret spell more often than boys.
I talked to my sister about it. She’s 21, and goes to a state university in the south. And just as I have a different perspective from people who didn’t go to college with Facebook, the divide between us is bigger than five years suggest. She had Facebook, and an iPhone, from the age of 13.
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