I am sure nearly every girl has been tempted at least once or twice to look through her boyfriend’s text messages or log in to his Facebook. Maybe you did just once in the past, or maybe you do so on a regular basis (read: once a day… okay, okay twice at the most). And while maybe a little monitoring is necessary, how far is too far? What would be a deal-breaker for a guy if he knew? How damaging is this behavior? Her Campus explores the good, the bad, and the crazy when it comes to ‘checking in’ on your boyfriend.
Define Monitoring
Okay, okay so not every behavior can be labeled as ‘monitoring.’ If you accidentally glance at your boyfriend’s phone when it lights up with an incoming text, I’d say you’re probably safe; I mean, “Bar Girl” might really need his help! But what about when you snag his phone while he’s sleeping to read through all of his texts? Or when you log in to his email to see just who he has been talking to? We put together a list of behaviors that would be considered ‘monitoring’ your boyfriend:
- Logging into his Facebook on a regular basis to read through his inbox messages, check his notifications, and look at his event invitations
- Stealing his cell phone to read through his text messages, check his call log, and look for new contacts
- Logging into his email account to read his inbox, outbox, and deleted messages for any information you can find
- Asking his friends for information on what he has been doing, who he has been hanging out with, and where he is at all times
- Stopping by places he says he’s going to be to make sure he is there, to check who he is spending time with, and to make sure you know what he’s doing
Obviously this is not an all-inclusive list. “I would go on my boyfriend’s Skype account to read his conversations with whoever he talked to,” says Liz, a student at the University of Missouri. “It became an obsession – I checked it all the time, and I never found anything. I had to move on eventually and realize I was acting crazy.”
Behaviors like checking in with his family to get information about him, reading through his tweets to see where he is, etc. all count as ‘monitoring’ your boyfriend. So now that you know what it means to ‘check in’ on your boyfriend, we will discuss the implications of this behavior.
