You’ve been dating for a few weeks. Let’s hypothesize that you’re out to dinner. He goes to bathroom and you’re left alone with IT, his cell phone – the digital epicenter of his world, sitting on the restaurant table across from you. It’s accessible and annoyingly tantalizing.
Who hasn’t thought about snatching it and downing the contents like a binge eater devours a milkshake?
Probably people in really successful, trusting relationships.
I don’t know anybody like that. And even the couples we admire, the ones who trust their partner enough to be naked in a hot tub with supermodels of the opposite sex, couldn’t have been so confident at the beginning. Trust is a plant that takes a long time to grow and if you’ve been burned in the past, you might even be allergic to it. Trust is the most fundamental need in a relationship, while simultaneously being the most fragile.
So does developing trust mean snatching your partner’s phone to make sure there isn’t any dirty late night texts with someone named Cassandra? Or does it mean having faith that there’s no dirt at all and taking the highroad, keeping your hands on your own Crackberry?
A girlfriend of mine was privy enough to be left alone with the guy she’d starting dating’s cell phone. She had no qualms whatsoever. Before he’d been gone five seconds she flipped it open and went straight to the text messaging section. What she found was both good and bad.
The bad news: He had text conversations going with half a dozen girls who he clearly had slept with / was sleeping with / wanted to sleep with.
The good news: In response to some of the more pressing texts, he mentioned that he was seeing someone (my friend) and that it was someone he really liked.
By being a creepshow and violating his privacy, my friend got the straightest, cleanest, no bullshit answer possible on their relationship status.
Isn’t that what everyone wants?
Cell phone violation can give you the uncensored truth. A person usually can’t. Whether it’s because they don’t want to hurt your feelings or they haven’t figured out how they feel yet or because they’re a liar, doesn’t matter. If you don’t trust someone, asking “Can I trust you?” is futile, because you’re already pointing out that you don’t feel like you can fully believe what they say.
I did stealth phone control with two men in my life. Both were people I was in grey relationships with and in both cases I was hoping the phone control might unleash some sort of relationship clarity.
It never did.
Sometimes I found nothing suspicious and felt reassured. Other times, I’d find something suspicious, but not clear-cut enough to take it as evidence to People’s Court and tear him apart with “BOOO!s.” And even if you find the concrete verification of infidelity you’re secretly hoping isn’t there, what then? You start a conversation with, “So I was violating your privacy reading your phone and found xxx?”
Who’s the asshole now?
On the one hand, I think phone control is for cowards. It’s a non-confrontational way to try to read between the lines of an issue that’s important enough to be confronted about.
On the other hand, if someone has nothing to hide, why does it matter?
August 11th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Ooohhh, well I’m definitely against the phone snoop. I wouldn’t like it to be done to me, so I wouldn’t do it to someone else.
There’s one thing that’s better than any amount of snooping and it’s called ‘women’s intuition’. If something feels wrong, it usually is.
If you are driven to the point where you have to snoop through someone’s phone because you don’t trust them, it begs the question: why are you with them in the first place?
August 11th, 2008 at 8:18 pm
ahhh I feel like this is so controversial, i mean i had a friend who used to read her guy’s emails and they broke up twice because of it and most of the time it was just her overreacting…I guess if you would let the guy you were dating read YOUR cell phone then maybe all would be fair…I’m glad i always erase all my sent texts!
August 12th, 2008 at 12:45 am
when my girlfriends are doing something like this I call them ‘Nancy Drew.’ its detective work.
August 12th, 2008 at 4:04 am
I’ve got some more bad news for your friend…
If the guy trusted her before, he probably doesn’t now after she snooped…AKA showed SHE didn’t trust HIM. Trust is a 2 way street.
And in his defense, he DID tell those other girls he was seeing someone and really liked her. So, perhaps he was just flirting but never intended on taking it further. Now whether that is STILL considered “cheating” or not is a personal call one has to make for themselves in their relationship.
August 12th, 2008 at 5:48 pm
Yucck! Not good.
Get this straight: You are two separate, independent brains with a thin data line between. Each has the right to decide what goes on that data line. There is no “total intimacy”; communication is a decision, a personal choice, that can’t be violated.
Sexual histories are something that will be exchanged in time, but it has to happen in its own way. You can’t cheat the process; if you do, you’re “cheating” — in every sense of the word.
Google the guy, by all means. On the ‘net, there’s no “expectation of privacy.” With a cell phone, there is. If you don’t trust him that much, then YOU have already sabotaged the relationship.