If you found a piece of paper in your lover's pocket with a phone number on, would you ring it?

[jack]

This question wasn't one of the "writer's block" prompts on LJ, but it might as well have been. But it completely baffled me. I understand what it's TRYING to say, but I don't think it IS saying what it's trying to say. The suggested answers were "ring the number", "confront your partner", "trust your partner", and "respect your partner's privacy".

I think there's a cultural stereotype of someone arranging a clandestine romantic reception with someone, and scribbling down a phone number to do so. And that if you ARE, for whatever reason, suspicious that your partner is betraying your trust in some way, you have to know how to deal with that. Whether to automatically respect their privacy? And/or trust they are NOT betraying your trust? And/or talk to them about it, because whether the lack of trust is your fault or theirs, it should be resolved, not buried? Or to surreptitiously lay your fears to rest without bringing them up. Unsurprisingly I'm a big believer in (a) privacy and (b) communication.

Firstly, I'm so used to a mixed-sex social group that, even though I know some friends have relationships where it's understood neither have private meetings with mutually attractive members of the opposite sex, it's just normal for everyone I know, so there isn't a leap from "coffee" to "aha! must be infidelity".

Secondly, the thing that most boggles me is the leap from "phone number" to "clandestine meeting". I have LOTS of phone numbers on bits of paper, but they're all for things like plumbers, and job applications, and people I might want to call in an emergency if my phone runs out of battery while I'm abroad. I'm failing to make the leap from "spoke to another human being remotely" to "illicit sex".

Further, even if my lover or I DID meet up with someone for an unspecified reason, the overwhelming liklihood is that it's not private, we just didn't have anything interesting to say about it. It's healthy to have some privacy in a relationship, but there's generally some sort of cue as to when someone would LIKE something to be private and "spoke to them on a phone" is normal to wonder who it was, rather than assume it's a dark secret.

I understand where the question writer was coming from: they were trying to say, are you used to the sort of casual relationship where suspicion is normal and/or justified, or not, and laudably trying to promulgate trust and boundaries in relationships. But they just seemed to completely miss anything where that would apply to me.

Comments

[simont]

If someone found a scrap of paper in my pocket with a six-digit number on it, it's not even certain it would be a phone number! Could just as easily be a record ID out of one of several bug tracking systems. In fact, that's probably more likely; I store phone numbers elsewhere.

[hilarityallen.livejournal.com]

Well, quite. Or it might be a work phone number - that's where I'm most likely to scribble a number on a piece of paper (before transferring it somewhere more useful).
As Jack said, we typically wouldn't be suspicious. Mind you, should any of us carry out a clandestine affair, we're all quite likely to be cautious, and take lots of security precautions - such as memorising the phone number...

[jack]

Yes, one of my comments was that I'd expect if someone DID have an affair, and to actually keep it secret, it would be much more sensible to simply have the acquaintance in your normal address book (probably on your mobile or email account), and just avoid (a) leaving any messages about how much you love each other lying around in non-encrypted or non-synchronious mediums, and (b) not go on and on about how lovely the other person is :)

However, it's true, if someone WERE having an affair, they're likely to feel guilty rather than efficient in arranging it, so are likely not to do common sense things.

[jack]

A six digit number? Wow, I'd thought having a piece of paper with a _mobile_ number on was very twentieth century, I'd forgotten so many friends still have friendships mediated at least partly by same-area-code landline conversations. FWIW, I'd assumed it was an "01xxx xxxxxxx" number or more likely "07Xxxxxxx" number, and so likely to be a phone number.

[simont]

I suppose it depends on whether you're using the number for an hour-long heart-to-heart or a twenty-second "meet at the corner of X at Y:00" logistical manoeuvre. I still use mobiles absolutely as little as I can manage.

[forestofglory]

I'll have you know that my cell phone number is written in the Rolodex. (Which has come in handy because I can't seem to remember it.)

[forestofglory]

Huh. Here in the US a phone number is 7 digits with a dash between the 3rd and 4th digits. (Unless its out of area code in which case you tack on 3 digits in the front.) It very much does not look like any other type of number.

[jack]

Ah, hm. Good point. (For clarification, the 6 digits is an approximation, I think it varies, and don't know exactly how much. My parents phone number is 5 digits long and once someone didn't believe me.)

[lavendersparkle]

If I see something of Alec's which I don't know about I ask him about it because I'm interested in his life. If he appeared to be trying to keep something from me I would normally assume it was because it was to do with a surprise present for me or something confidential to do with work.

[jack]

Yes, exactly. There are many reasons for something to be private: it's private to family or to a friend rather than them, or to work, in addition to simply needing _some_ private space.

Although, to be fair to the author of the question, even if "they did something private" is not a reason to be suspicious, SOMETHING would be, and presumably what they meant was "if you were in the situation of, for whatever reason, having an actual good reason to suppose your partner was concealing something important and bad, what would you do"

[seryn]

Weirdly it tends to be business stuff that gets scribbled on bits of paper. Socially it's not as awkward to pull out my phone and enter the data directly. Stopping to take a minute to organize things like that made me look weak at work where no one else (apparently) had trouble remembering whole phone numbers which were merely recited and everyone projected the image of being in a hurry.

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

no one else (apparently) had trouble remembering whole phone numbers

They are bluffing. Don't be ashamed of doing your job properly.

[sunflowerinrain]

I agree with you and the other commentators. It looks like one of those questions on an ersatzrelationships site, made up by someone who has a specific incident in a specific relationship/set of circumstances in mind. Outsiders wouldn't necessarily have a clue what it was about. Even if the formulator does want to know what other people in the situation would do, it's so vivid for them that they don't describe it sufficiently for others (or or they can't without making too much public!).

Alternatively, there are a lot of people unlike me in the world ;)

Filed under Not Applicable, or Makes No Sense To Me But Anthropologically Interesting.

[jack]

Yeah. I think I'd assumed it was a _sort_ of incident they had in mind, but it could equally well be a specific one. The question could perhaps be better phrased "suppose you found a piece of paper with a phone number, _and had some reason to be suspicious your partner was having an affair_, would you..." :)