It’s a funny thing about marriage—you think the biggest hurdles will be communication, finances, or perhaps leaving the toilet seat up. What you don’t anticipate is the total surveillance state your spouse might install—voluntarily, of course, with the noble intentions of “keeping everything under control.” I can’t sneak anything past Hubby—not that I deliberately try, except during holidays. But in this day and age of real-time bank notifications and GPS alerts, even a well-intentioned secret feels like a mission doomed to fail. Hubby monitors every online purchase, credit card transaction, and, in the olden days, checks written. Ordering anything online guarantees there will be no surprise—birthday, Christmas, and anniversary presents are all known by Hubby before they even leave the warehouse.

So today, when I stopped by Hubby’s office, and he announced, “I see you ordered that medication for Younger Son,” I could only claim guilty as charged. Well, sort of. It wasn’t exactly a secret, so technically, I wasn’t guilty. As Hubby was fully aware, I had been looking for medication for Younger Son’s foot rot that he apparently picked up at basic training. Still, there’s something unnerving about my every keystroke being tracked. It’s not like I’m trying to slip illegal drugs past Hubby’s nose.

“I saw we got something from Fed Ex,” he continued.

“Yes, the ink cartridges YOU ordered.” Thank goodness it wasn’t contraband chocolate that I didn’t want him to know about. Otherwise, he’d expect me to share.

“And something from the IRS in the mail.”

“Another notice that our refund is being delayed.” At this point, I was starting to feel like Big Brother had some competition.

And as if his computer wasn’t enough of a snitch, Hubby casually asked, “Were you in the truck for something?”

Mind you, the truck is sitting in the driveway, a good five miles from his office, so there’s no way he could have seen me.

“Yes, I had to get my sunglasses.”

“I had an alert on my phone that the driver’s door was opened,” he said.

Yikes! So even Hubby’s TRUCK tattles on my moves? This constant spying on me by inanimate objects is rather creepy. It’s not that I’m up to anything I don’t want Hubby to know about—I’m far too boring for that—but still, knowing that every movement and transaction is tracked feels like living with a private investigator who moonlights as a pastor. No wonder he ends up writing his sermon on Saturday nights; he’s too busy tracking things on his computer and phone during the week to get any work done when he’s at work.

It’s not just me, either. When Younger Son got his cell phone, Hubby immediately installed a tracker on it. “So we can always know where he is,” he explained. I suppose there’s something to be said about living in the age of constant digital chaperoning. I, for one, am thankful that these devices didn’t exist when I was a teenager. Enough said.