My husband and I have been married for almost eight years and during that time, we’ve developed a system. It’s a system that I only recently realised others find controversial, even a little strange. Yet it’s one we have both adopted and find it relatively convenient.
We track each other with our iPhones.
Now let me explain, like I have to so many family and friends who have labelled it a a sign of ‘mistrust’ and aim to convince me that it’s ‘just not normal.’
My husband and I a few years back discovered a nifty app available for Apple devices called Find My iPhone. It basically uses the GPS feature in your phone to track the handset’s location, so if you lose it, you can pinpoint it’s location on a map.
My partner and I have a shared iTunes account so both our devices appear on the same app. Over time, we began using it as a way to see where the other one was. Nothing suspicious, we just found it made our lives easier.
There was never a conversation about it, a moment when we said to each other that we wanted to point-point each other's location around the clock. We're not crazies. It's more so that he can see that I've gotten to work safely, I can see he is on his way home and get dinner ready and so on.
But recently when our friends and family found out that my husband and I track each other like this, they were very vocal about what they found wrong with us behaving in this way. A friend of mine even pulled me aside and questioned if it was a sign of a marriage breakdown, that we mistrust each other so much that we feel the need to know where the other is at all times of the day.
I found this suggestion incredibly offensive and was shocked to find that the majority of those close to me felt the same way. To me, surely this is a sign of trust, that my partner and I couldn't give two hoots about where the other is, because neither of us have anything to hide.
To provide some context, my partner has been cheated on in the past. At the beginning of our relationship he found it difficult to develop trust and I found this understandable. But after nearly a decade of marriage I feel we are well and truly beyond this. It shouldn't be an excuse for our marriage to be ridiculed.
I believe this history may be why my friends and family are airing such concerns, but it doesn’t give them an excuse to do so.
If it’s not bothering my partner or myself, I can’t understand why our circle of friends and family has such a huge issue with it?
Do you and your partner track each other's whereabouts?
This writer is well-known to The Motherish but has requested to keep her identity private.
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