Trust, the foundation of all relationships. Whether that be leaving yourself vulnerable via emotional commitment or even something as trivial as not posting happy birthday on an ex’s wall, maintaining adequate levels of trust between you and your partner is always key.
In this day and age however, the balance of trust between openness and intrusion is very thin, largely due to phones and social media.
Let me set the scenario: your partner leaves the room; they’ve been fixated with their phone all day and is finally parted from it. Should you be tempted to check?
No. Absolutely not.
Rarely will I ever outwardly state my opinion on a matter without first acknowledging the fact that there are many ways of looking at it. For this matter however, it is that simple – if you want to have a lasting & fulfilling relationship, privacy must be respected. Checking a partner’s phone not only shows that you don’t have complete faith in them, but to me also screams of insecurities. It may not even be a personal insecurity, more so an insecurity within the relationship, but an insecurity nonetheless. If you can’t have faith in what should be one of the fundamentals of your bond, why should you even be in the relationship?
Let’s imagine you did look at the phone, what would you be aiming to find? If you find nothing and your partner finds out you’ve been checking, they’ll instantly lose trust in you. It would also weaken any chance you have of challenging them in the future, if there were anything you became suspicious of. They and even you would doubt yourself. You’re also very unlikely to find them messaging something you’d interpret as very positive i.e. ‘I love my girlfriend’ etc. If you did find something, it could very well turn out to be nothing and undoubtedly problems would be caused in your relationship.
Assuming it did turn out to be something worth calling a partner out on, are you sure you’d be prepared to deal with them point blank lying to your face, or worse, admitting to cheating or whatever you’ve accused them of? A female friend of mine said she’d never look through her boyfriend’s phone because she didn’t feel she’d like what she saw and it would cause unnecessary drama.
That’s not to say that I’ve not come to understand why some girls in certain situations would do so. Ironically, hearing it from a friend who’d been in a relationship in which his girlfriend regularly checked his phone made me understand why some would be inclined to do it. He had previously cheated and in coming clean he’d agreed to surrender the password to his Facebook account.
In such a situation, I can completely understand why his girlfriend would check his phone and Facebook, after all she was actually given permission to do so and it was an effective means of keeping tabs and ensuring he’d not cheat again. Surely nothing bad could come of that though? Wrong. He just became very good at covering his tracks and hiding things. Ultimately, having his Facebook password put more strain on their relationship than him cheating in the first place.
The one and only excuse I’d allow for a girlfriend to check my phone or Facebook is if she had hard facts of wrongdoing on my part. But by that time the relationship would probably have disintegrated to the point where it would be of little consequence.
In other words, don’t get out. If there’s a reason you feel you need to go through a partner’s phone or Facebook, discuss it with them. I guarantee you’ll get much further that way. Otherwise don’t touch mine because I’d never touch yours!
If you have any topics or issues you’d like a different perspective on, drop our Facebook page an inbox. Submissions will be totally anonymous!
Image Sources
http://images.tangomag.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/630×314/image_…
https://www.allenresources.com/cfa-exam-questions/assets/images/slides/i…
Edited by Amelia Bauer-Madden