Does your partner really need to know your location all the time?
Imagine you have your partner’s location. Is your immediate reaction to ask them to pick up dinner from your favorite restaurant that you can see is on their way home or grill them about their whereabouts? On an iPhone, users have options to share their location with someone for an hour, until the end of the day or indefinitely. This means, for whatever chosen timeframe, you can become a little initialed avatar drifting around the map within someone’s Find My app. Most often referenced for when women are going out on a date with a man they don’t know well, they’ll send their location to a friend so someone can keep tabs on their safety, but it’s also become more common to share within familial relationships, parent-child relationships, and romantic ones. While father of two and husband Christopher Rucker can see how it’s useful within a safety context, he is not for it with his spouse. "Just constantly tracking your significant other? It's either mistrust or just general insecurity," he says. "I think it all depends on the context," Dr. Akua Boateng, a licensed psychotherapist, said. "Somebody can track you if you're in an Uber or in a strange country or different situations that would allow you to have that level of security is really, really great." SEE ALSO: 'Beige flags' are the TikTok dating trend that could ruin your love life However, the same behavior can be detrimental and damaging. "If it's being used for surveillance or if the demands are made as a result, now we've taken something that could potentially offer safety and security and actually made it a threat," she said. Different experiences inform the diversity in how people feel about sharing their location with a significant other. Boateng points to certain cultures that have more of a "collectivist" mindset. "We navigate the world together. We support each other. We are our brothers’ keeper," she says. "If it's been normalized over time and seen as a sign of the collective tribe, that's a good as a p
Does your partner really need to know your location all the time?