Christian Couples Staying Faithful Online

Lance Maggiacomo was out of work, bored and lonely when he started hiding his online relationships from his wife.

There was no affair, only chatting through e-mail, yet it felt like cheating just the same.

A few years later, a reformed Maggiacomo has an in-house check on his impulses. He and his wife Lori, like other Christian couples around the country, share one e-mail account as a safeguard against the ever-expanding temptations of the Internet.

"There's not a Gestapo, KGB quality to it, like I have to check in with mother before I do anything," said Lance Maggiacomo, a 40-year-old surgical nurse from Beverly, Mass. "It's what we believe as Christians: We are our brothers' keepers. It's about biblical accountability."

The e-mail addresses -- "tim_shawna" and "christyandbrian" -- broadcast the couples' commitment to all correspondents. If one spouse has a Twitter or Facebook account, the other is usually given the password. Often, spouses have separate work accounts where bad behavior could go undetected. However, the goal isn't policing each other every minute, they say. Instead, they are doing whatever is possible to avoid keeping secrets.

"It's not a matter of distrust," said Ronda Hodge, 53, of Amesbury, Mass., an ice-cream maker who shares an e-mail address with her husband Tom, 60, a landscaper. "We really don't have anything to hide from one another. We were friends first before we even dated so we've got that level of openness there."

It's impossible to know how widespread the practice has become.

Couples with a joint account said they never heard preaching about it and didn't read it in an advice book. Some said they initially created their account for bills and other household business then later realized the personal benefits. A 2003 article published by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family urged husbands and wives to share one e-mail address, but it was one of many suggestions on preventing infidelity.

Still, the phenomenon has become common enough to merit a post on "Stuff Christians Like," a popular blog in which creator Jonathan Acuff, an evangelical and son of a pastor, good-naturedly mocks Christian culture and himself.

Acuff shares one account with his wife of eight years, Jenny, and estimates that one-third of their married friends also use one e-mail address. He joked on the blog that he and his wife "cleaved our separate e-mail addresses and lit a unity candle on Yahoo! that burns brightly throughout the virtual landscape."