Does looking through your significant other's phone mean that your relationship is doomed to fail?
What’s the worst offense you can commit in a relationship? According the Relationship Advice subreddit it’s snooping through your partner's phone…. No seriously, people will be like "I looked through my boyfriends phone found out that my partner was conspiring with high-level politicians to eat children under a pizza joint, and also asked a insta thot for some tiddy pics", and the first thing every comment says is “you shouldn’t have snooped.”
So a pretty basic Google search will give a resounding same answer: Snooping and spying is a sign your relationship is trash, there’s no trust, you’re a horrible person and will die alone… unless. (there’s an unless we’ll come back to)
Vulnerability corner: I’m a snooper. I’ve read text messages, tracked location and looked for that secret calculator app that everyone knows is a front for a hidden folder. All at varying levels and at different levels of healthiness.
This leads to my rude question: Does snooping mean my, otherwise completely healthy and happy, relationship is doomed to fail?
Definitely Not a How-To Guide to Snoop
While the research all agreed that snooping is wrong, there sure are a lot of ways you can to do it. Here are some common ways you can spy on your spouse/partner/significant other... absolutely not a how-to guide.
Creeping activity on social media - “Why are you liking her picture” the most basic and stupidest form of snooping.
Snooping through personal correspondence - ie emails, texts, GroupMe whether through the device itself, or the CLOUD.
Location tracking - I’m a worrier, I use location tracking as way to confirm my loved ones are not dead.
Home camera options - everyone has cameras in their homes it feels like, I’ve had awkward encounters with them
Spyware - the EXTREME option this podcast you might not have heard of, it’s really small and unknown called…. Reply All has a good episode about it, #96 The Secret Life of Alex Goldman
OK Snooping is Bad, But How Common is it Really?
The survey says - it’s pretty average
A study by WhistleOut found that of 1,600 Americans survey 50% had snooped. The study found nearly half of women think snooping is OK, and 1 out of 3 men think it’s OK. But they also have good reason, because less than half of the respondents reported finding nothing: 57% found something incriminating
But it’s hard to pin down, since a study by BankMyCell of a similar size, just smaller age demographic found some contradictory data. This study determined:
2 out of 3 men have snooped, while half of women have
9/10 women were comfortable with a partner looking through their phone, while 10 percent less of men were
Men also are more likely to know how to get into their partner’s phone
When men snoop, they’re on a mission, with 9 out 10 male snoopers looking for signs of cheating, women are much of the same, except 30% are just be nosy lol
And they know where to look, going straight for texting apps like what’s app
Again, about half found something incriminating.
What Does Snooping Say About the Future of My Relationship?
The WhistleOut study found that as a result 38% of respondents go into fights/broke up, with the extreme option only happening to 7%
The BankMyCell study found that 1 out 4 men would dump a girlfriend for snooping, while only 1 in 6 women would.
The University of British Columbia did a study on relationship outcomes. From the 46 participants who provided information, it was a coins toss to whether the relationship eventually ended…. But this looked at relationships outside of romantic too.
APA says 50% of American marriages end in divorce… which matches the outcomes from our snooping studies, but could it just because that’s the number of relationships that fail? Maybe has nothing to do with snooping?
Why Does Snooping Feel like Such a Betrayal?
Why do you think snooping is such a no-no? Have our phone or digital devices become more than just tools, but extensions of our brains?
What do you think? Let us know!
Comments