What It Means if Your Partner Goes Through Your Phone
I have never password-protected my phone. I believe passwords are for people who have something to hide. But that belief changed the day I caught my ex going through my phone.
No, he did not find pictures of me vacationing with bare-chested men or text exchanges revealing my secret desire to have a tryst with my mailman. I am as loyal as an old nag finding her way back to the same barn. I don’t stray.
But he did dig deep. He went way back and read my undeleted text messages from before we were in a committed relationship. Those text messages narrated a past he was not part of. Not exactly a crime of the heart unless you are looking to convict.
And he was looking to convict.
My reaction was admittedly defensive and unproductive. Don’t do what I did.
“Ok, let’s do this,” I said. “You went through my phone. Let me go through yours. Let me read your text messages…”
The sweat on my palms turned to ice at that moment. I didn’t want to go through his phone. And if he had passed it over to me, I would have handed it right back without a glance. But I needed to know he had nothing to hide. I was playing a dangerous game of chicken, and I wanted to lose.
I didn’t lose. He refused.
“Doth protest too much,” I thundered as if Shakespeare could be our mediator.
“If you don’t let me see your phone, I will always know you have hidden something from me. And my imagination will fill in those blanks far better than the truth will.”
He continued to refuse. But when do ultimatums ever work?
I had my Pyrrhic victory. From that point onward, trust became a rubber band between us. Once stretched out, it never fully snapped back to its original shape. We continued to have the same fight over and over again, all of it around the same issue — respect.
Here’s what someone is saying when they go through your phone. (And it can be more than one of these.)
- I am insecure and afraid I am not meeting your expectations, so I will make it your fault by finding something flawed in you.
- I am cheating or thinking of cheating because that is my nature. I feel guilty about it, so I am projecting my guilt onto you.
- I like to control my partners. Violating your trust gives me power over you. I will find something horrible you did, and then I will weaponize those secrets against you in future fights.
- Your behavior is making me suspect you are cheating. But instead of coming to you and addressing my fears like an emotionally intelligent person, I will find something to confirm my suspicions because I am not self-aware enough to understand how confirmation bias works.
The problem is not trust.
If your partner falls into category 4, you might have a chance of surviving the betrayal, but only if you get at the heart of the issue. There might be something you are doing that is inflaming your partner’s insecurities, and that behavior can be modified.
Or perhaps your partner was cheated on in a previous relationship or came from a family where infidelity was normalized. Those ghosts might be hanging around to haunt your current relationship.
But let’s be clear. It’s not your job to chain your partner’s ghosts. It’s theirs.
And unless you are shamelessly flirting with that hot co-worker, you are not to blame for your partner’s snooping. Past hurts are never an excuse to violate your current partner’s trust. If your snooper is willing to do the hard work of addressing their fears and take responsibility for their actions instead of blaming you, then you might have a chance.
If your partner falls into 1–3….it’s over. I am not a fan of dichotomous thinking, but snooping draws a line in the sand. The problem is not mistrust. The problem is disrespect. And although trust is something you can rebuild with patience and time, respect is not.
Respect is the keystone. Once it is gone, the whole damn building falls down.
About the author:
Carlyn Beccia is an author, illustrator, columnist, and speaker. Beccia's books, including The Raucous Royals, I Feel Better with a Frog in My Throat, They Lost Their Heads, and Monstrous have won numerous awards, including the Golden Kite Honor, The International Reading Association's Children's and Young Adult Book Award, and the Cybil Award. For more information: www.CarlynBeccia.com
Want more? Subscribe to Conversations with Carlyn for free content every Wednesday, or become a paid subscriber to get the juicy stuff on Sundays.