At first, it sounds like a huge red flag: Oh, my husband and I have each other on Find My Friends, the crazy woman says cheerfully to her friends at the bar. I use it all the time. Let’s see where he is now! Well, spoiler alert, the crazy woman is me and this is one of the least clingy things I do in my whole dang life.


Tracking your partner’s whereabouts when they’re not with you seems like the domain of control-freaks and neurotics, tinged with paranoia and fear, when we drill all the way down, of abandonment. But I make a counterintuitive proposal: knowing where your partner is allows you to relax a whole lot more.

My husband and I share our locations with each other on Find My Friends. I mostly use it to get a sense of his ETA, whether that’s to home or somewhere we’re meeting. If I’m cooking dinner while he’s commuting home from work, being able to see where he is helps me time the meal (and lets me know if he’s already passed the supermarket). I can also take the dog for a walk to meet him on his walk home from the subway—and I’ll know which path home he’s taking.


Sure, sometimes I’ll check his location when he’s out drinking with friends to see if he’s left the bar yet, and when he travels for work I’ll sometimes have a look to where he is so I feel a little closer, but for the most part this saves us a barrage of neurotic texts, What’s your ETA and Have you left the bar yet and What about now and Are you on your way home or dead in a ditch?

This is more logistical than anything else. If you’re worried that your partner is cheating or lying to you, this is not a fix and probably a bad idea to boot. But for a stable relationship, probably once you’re living together, being able to track your partner on Find My Friends can add a lot of ease to coordinating your lives (and assuage fears of being really, really clingy via text).