34 GQ.CO.ZA OCTOBER 2017essentials
THE TALK
ILLUSTRATION BY GARETH GREYWords by Jon MooallemThere it is, two
easy clicks away:
your browser
history. Is it okay
for your partner to
sneak a peak at
your online
wanderings?IS MY BROWSER
HISTORY FAIR
GAME FOR MY
SPOUSE?Before there were browser
windows, there were regular
windows – ones you could
see through. One day back in
1914, Florence Carman saw
too much.
Florence’s husband, Edwin,
a local physician on Long
Island, had an offi ce on the
ground fl oor of their home. One
of its windows faced the yard.
Th rough it, Florence apparently
spotted Edwin canoodling with
a nurse, or so the story goes.
She hired technicians to install
a clandestine listening device
in a baseboard of his examining
room. A small microphone led
to an ingeniously camoufl aged
wire, which ran upstairs to
Florence’s bedroom, where
a speaker was hidden in a desk
drawer. Now she had a way to
keep tabs on Edwin. Turns out,What’s
hiding
in your
history?
nothing particularly dramatic
happened. Until one evening
in June when, as Edwin
ushered a certain Mrs Lulu
Bailey into his offi ce for an
appointment, someone
shattered the garden window,
reached in with a revolver,
and shot Mrs Bailey dead.
Th e offi ce became a crime
scene; detectives swarmed in.
Two bloodhounds sniff ed the
ground below the window,
circling about before tearing
off on a fruitless search. Yet,
without anyone noticing,
Florence somehow managed
to rip out the listening device
and stash it in the attic.
‘I thought it was best,’
she later told police. She
understood that her
suspicions of her husband
would bring suspicion on her,
and she didn’t want to get tied
up in a murder investigation.
Realising she was ensnared
in a tangled web of distrust,
Florence had started snipping
the threads. It didn’t work.
She was eventually charged
with the murder. In secreting
away her surveillance device,
it appeared to some observers,
Florence had been covering
her tracks, destroying
evidence of her motive.Th e trial was a high-profi le
circus, with many sensational
twists and turns, ultimately
resulting in a hung jury. In
a second trial, Florence was
acquitted. Th e murder was
never offi cially solved, leaving
suspicions to fester. ‘I would
hate to carry the burden that
rests upon the shoulders of
Mrs Carman,’ Lulu Bailey’s
aggrieved widower told
a reporter. ‘If she did the
shooting, she will never have
a happy moment in her life.’
Now, on to you. You
deserve all the happy
moments in the world,
I can tell. So does your
spouse. Fortunately, your
predicament isn’t nearly as
complicated: your browser
history is not fair game for
your spouse. I say this
because, as the very fact that
you’re asking the question
makes plain, you yourself
do not consider it fair game.
If you don’t feel comfortable
with your spouse having
open access to your online
wanderings, then your spouse
can’t claim any extrinsic,
inalienable right to it.
Th ere are, inevitably,
idiosyncratic lines of
openness and privacydrawn through every
marriage; this can be one of
yours. Th e end. Case closed.
Except for one thing: Why?
Why does your spouse feel
compelled and entitled to
look at your browser history,
as your question implies
they do, and why don’t you
feel comfortable with it?
Am I wrong to detect an
erosion of trust in your
relationship – some slippage
of confi dence in each
other? If my suspicions
are correct, then I advise
you to be careful. Such
a disturbance can provoke
other disturbances and
further slippages, until, in
an absolute worst-case
scenario, a hand slips
through a window and
someone winds up dead.
Yours isn’t a worst-case
scenario. It’s probably not
even a particularly bad-case
scenario. Still, it’s worth
getting to the bottom of
whatever caused this impasse.
I’d encourage you to ask
yourselves why it is that you’re
asking me this question in the
fi rst place. Th e answer will be
somewhere in your history,
I’m sure. I suggest you search
through it together.