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'Til Tech Do Us Part
WSJdpatton writes "Marriage often requires coping with the loss of some individuality, whether it's adopting a spouse's last name or setting up a joint bank account. Now, some couples say it can be equally tricky to navigate intimacy in the digital sides of their lives. They are running into thorny questions regarding how much to share and how much to keep separate in areas ranging from email addresses to online calendars.
For some young newlyweds, this means a debate over whether to combine their blogs. Longtime spouses, meanwhile, say perennial arguments about who has more closet space are now joined by bickering over which TV shows get deleted to make room on the TiVo."
In my experience what is "best" is to let each married couple decide for themselves what is "best".
When my common-law partner and I had children and moved in together for the first time we quickly disolved into a complete mess. I played my fair share in that. My biggest issue, looking back on it, was that I put far too much stock in what other people thought that MY marriage should be. People start treating you differently. Parents and friends try to, innocently, impose their ideals on you regarding what it means to be married and to be a parent and how you should behave and what your role is etc.
It also doesn't help that not only do you have your own family trying to be helpful, but your spouse's family, who may have been relatively distant before you actually moved in together, all of a sudden begins to act like they've known you all your life and you get the expectations from them too.
In my case it went down something like this. My family is relatively small and likes to get together every couple of months to celebrate someone's birthday. When multiple people have a birthday in the same month we merge the gathering into one and we get together for 3 - 4 hours and we try hard to plan it around everyone's schedule. The idea of celebrating something like an anniversary was entirely foreign to me. Sure, my marreid relatives celebrated, but they went out for dinner just the two of them. It wasn't a family event. My wife's family, on the other hand, is massive and they get together at every single possible opportunity (birthdays, anniversaries, 'just for the heck of it' bbqs and pool parties etc.) and they make it an all day and all night event and everyone is expected to be there. This wore me out. My wife and I had to balance two family responsibilities, but I never cared much for my wife's family and being forced to spend a great deal of time with them and listen to all of their expectations and 'advice' drove me to the point where I wanted to end it after about a year. If I didn't step up and be part of their family then somehow (in their eyes and, after absorbing so much of their opinions, in mine as well) I wasn't a good husband and father.
Of course, in the end, we compromised and worked it out. But my point is that I found when we moved in and started treating our relationship as a marriage, that the expectations on us from others grew exponentially over night. I wasn't prepared for that. We've been living together for 7 years now and I found that the most important thing is to concentrate on what the two of you want out of your relationship and to ignore all outside 'advice', regardless of how positively intentioned it may be. Every single person goes into a relationship wanting unique things out of it and most people are a little vulnerable in the beginning because they don't truly know what they're getting themselves into. And so at that point they're more likely to pay attention to what other people have to say. Particularly if there's children involved because (most) people want to be the best parents that they can be. But putting too much stock in what other people, particularly family, thinks can really drive you mad.
In other words, different strokes for different folks. Some people will want to merge every aspect of their lives and be completely happy with that arrangement, other people will want more independence. There is no "right" marriage or relationship. Everyone needs to figure out what's best for them and ignore all outside influences.
you sound reasonably computer savvy, so just build her(or rebuild the slow one) so it runs fast enough for her. Just b/c what she does is simple doesn't mean people like to have to be on a slow machine to do it. I can do my work on an ass slow machine, it's just number crunching. I still rpefer to do it on a top end, dual processor, multi core, 4 gb memory system so I don't have to twiddle my thumbs for too long.
My friend got caught by his wife. He was basically masturbating to bukkake photos on some online site. So instead of freaking out, she said she'd let him and some of his friends bukkake her. He ended up turning down the offer, as I imagine she had been expecting. But it just goes to show how putting things in perspective works out best for everyone.
"Humor is tragedy plus time". Mark Twain
There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.