I Read My Boyfriend’s Texts Without Him Knowing—Worst Decision Ever

Unless you’re a zen master of self-confidence and contentment, you’ve probably experienced some mild curiosity about what your partner’s phone might be hiding. But before you give into temptation and sneak a quick look, here are a few reasons I wish I never succumbed to the temptation.

  1. I feel so guilty. Pretty much the minute I entered the passcode on his phone, I felt awful. Obviously it didn’t stop me from doing a thorough search anyway, but there’s no part of me that feels like I did the right thing or even that I benefited from it in any way. Plus, now I have this horrible, guilty secret to live with.
  2. There were things on it that I definitely wish I hadn’t seen. I don’t think there’s a single scenario in which you could look through your partner’s phone and feel totally great and secure about everything you saw. In my case, I found a few random texts to a girl he works with and even though they weren’t sexual, they still made me feel jealous and angry. In hindsight, I wish I just hadn’t seen them.
  3. None of it was actually a dealbreaker. I went looking for some kind of certainty—either certainty that he was cheating on me or certainty that he never so much as looked or spoke to other women, platonically or otherwise. While I realize in retrospect that this is a bit of a high bar, at the time I was pretty sure I’d get confirmation of one or the other. Instead, all I got was a few texts that were enough to make me feel a little insecure and irritated but nothing that was actually significant.
  4. It accomplished nothing. Yeah, I looked through his phone and found some texts with a girl at his work that made me a little freaked out, but I didn’t actually get much out of it. I’m neither more nor less paranoid than I was before I looked. On the one hand, I’m relieved there wasn’t anything more incriminating, but on the other hand, he was texting another woman in a non-sexual but definitely friendly way. All this effort and I’m basically back where I started.
  5. If I had found something, there would’ve been no way to bring it up without telling him how I got the information. Even if I’d found some X-rated texts to another woman or confirmation that he was sleeping with someone else, I wouldn’t know how to broach the subject with him without revealing myself to be the paranoid snoop that I am. It would be pretty hypocritical of me to accuse him of being dishonest when I’d just looked through his phone behind his back. Even if his behavior was objectively worse than mine, I’d always want to take the highest road possible (and yes, I realize the irony of that statement given my recent choices).
  6. He trusts me, which just makes me feel worse. The worst thing about all of this is that my boyfriend and I have always made trust a number one priority and we’ve really prided ourselves on it. Now I feel like I’ve broken the golden rule of our relationship, and ruined the one thing that kept us content and happy.
  7. I feel like I’m keeping a really important secret from him. I have a serious problem with keeping secrets. It’s a lifelong deficiency and I’m fairly sure there is no cure, but I have to keep this one from him. If I tell him I’ve been going through his phone, it’ll destroy any belief he had in our mutual trust. I didn’t trust him enough to stay away from snooping on his phone, and because of that, he wouldn’t be able to trust me.
  8. I’m kind of addicted to it now. It’s embarrassing to admit this, but it wasn’t just one time. I didn’t find anything significant the first time so I’ve kept going back to check. It’s like I’m just waiting to find the one thing that will justify the fact that I’m betraying his trust and searching his phone.
  9. There’s stuff on my phone that I’d rather him not see. If I’m being completely honest with myself, there are plenty of things in my texts and emails that might seem incriminating if someone were to read them in a certain way. It’s all about context, right? And yet, when I look through his phone, I just create my own context and it’s always the worst case scenario.
  10. If you don’t trust someone, don’t search for more reasons—either fix the cause or leave the relationship. If you find yourself going insane with worry about whether or not your partner is honest, you need to be open about it. The issue isn’t going to resolve itself if you go digging for confirmation. Either have enough respect for the person to confront them about your fears head on or acknowledge that the fact that you don’t have enough respect for them to do that means that you really shouldn’t be in the relationship in the first place. I need to take my own advice here.
Rose Nolan is a writer and editor from Austin, TX who focuses on all things female and fabulous. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Theater from the University of Surrey and a Master's Degree in Law from the University of Law. She’s been writing professional since 2015 and, in addition to her work for Bolde, she’s also written for Ranker and Mashed. She's published articles on topics ranging from travel, higher education, women's lifestyle, law, food, celebrities, and more.
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