Should You Read Your Spouse’s Diary?

Should You Read Your Partner’s Diary?

It depends—does your partner want you to read his or her diary? If not, then you should not read their diary. Diaries and journals are deeply personal items that often contain raw, unfiltered thoughts. We have a lot of thoughts throughout the day: wouldn’t it be nice to buy a trailer in rural West Virginia and just work a menial job with no real responsibilities? Probably! But that doesn’t mean you’re seriously considering it, or that you’d absolutely do that given the opportunity. Diaries are places where people can explore their thoughts and feelings without judgment or fear of being judged—and that’s why they ought to stay private.

Why Is It Wrong to Read Someone’s Diary?

It’s wrong to read someone’s diaries without their permission because it’s an invasion of privacy. If you have the urge to read your spouse’s diary, that may signal there’s something wrong in the relationship. It could mean that your spouse has done something or is currently doing something to make you feel insecure. Instead of going through their diary, you may want to discuss the problematic behavior with them. If they are not willing to have the discussion, that may be a sign that you may want to look into counselling so that you and your significant other can learn ways to overcome a communication problem. The urge to read your spouse’s diary could also signal that there’s something going on with you—perhaps there’s trauma from a past relationship that you need to work through or heal from.

Can You Go to Jail for Reading Someone’s Diary?

While reading another person’s diary is an invasion of privacy, simply reading another person’s diary and then putting it back where you found it is not likely something you will face jail time for doing—although that doesn’t mean that you should do it, or that it’s appropriate to do, or that there won’t be any consequences whatsoever. Just because you live with another person doesn’t mean that you can just go through their stuff whenever you want—even when it’s a device that you paid for. You do not have the right to go through your spouse’s diaries, phones, computers, email accounts, and social media accounts. This is true even if you know the password, purchased the phone, or pay the phone/internet bill. While invading someone’s privacy isn’t likely to result in an automatic life sentence, that doesn’t mean that you should do it. Your spouse has a right to privacy.

Should a Diary Be Private?

We all have thoughts that don’t necessarily reflect our true desires and goals in life. Diaries are ways to process those thoughts in a constructive manner. There’s a difference between privacy and secrecy. There shouldn’t be any secrecy in a marriage, but there should be privacy. Not every thought you have needs to be shared with a significant other. Imagine a man who’s out with his wife and his eyes linger a little too long on another woman. Should he tell his wife every time he spots an attractive woman? Probably not. There are things your spouse doesn’t need to know and, in some cases, may not even want to know. Diaries are particularly useful for people to explore thoughts that the aren’t ready to share or don’t need to share at the moment. You can have thoughts that aren’t reflective of how you’re really feeling and what you really want, and those thoughts can be explored in a diary where they won’t be judged by someone else.

Strong Marriages Have Boundaries

Good marriages have good boundaries. A lot of healthy married couples like to think of themselves as two halves of a whole—but make no mistake about it: they’re two distinct halves. In healthy relationships, there’s a clear delineation between where one party begins and the other party ends. In unhealthy relationships, two parties may feel like they’re the same person. They may feel like they don’t know who they are without each other. It may be difficult for them to assert boundaries because they can’t tell where one person ends and the other begins. If you’re considering reading your spouse’s diary, it may be a sign that you need to do some work on finding where you end and where your spouse begins.