It’s morally wrong to snoop your partner’s phone – so why do we do it?

Recently I found out that the partner of a friend of mine borrowed her phone and used it to scan through our messages together, because he was worried we were having an affair. It was quite the discovery. Not because I minded someone poring over my crap jokes, it was more that I was sad that someone I liked felt compelled to do the one thing guaranteed not to bring a person any peace, which is to access their partner’s phone without their knowledge.

It might seem obvious to many that snooping around your loved one’s phone is a bad idea, but let’s recap some of the reasons why that is. First, it’s invasive. Even if you think your partner is guilty of infidelity, the irony is that by reading their private messages, you become the guilty party. Just as one should respect the privacy of what a loved one might say to a therapist, so you should respect what your partner might be saying about you in private with close friends.

And as any snooper will tell you, you’ll never truly be satiated or reassured by what you discover. Even if you find “smoking gun” evidence, such as the presence of a dating app, the questions and insecurities will only escalate, not vanish. I first realised a partner was lying to me after glancing at the BBC Weather app on their phone (why was it set to the Lake District when they’re supposed to be seeing their mate in Essex, I wondered, until the penny dropped) which is the opposite of a smoking gun, and the same tremendous feeling of uncertainty still abounded.

Deep down we know snooping is bad. Yet, as I’ve written before, to suspect someone of cheating creates a condition in us that sits somewhere close to madness. Our addiction to phones merely exacerbates the problem: they occupy such a big part of our private lives that it’s easy to regard them as instruments of inbuilt guilt capable of arousing suspicion 24/7. Even seeing a partner with their back turned, texting someone, can make the sanest person in the safest relationship feel suddenly paranoid. Then there are people who see phones as a form of public property. I went on a date with someone a few years ago who on her dating profile was very clear and eloquent about the importance of consent and respectful engagement. When my upturned phone went off, during our second drink, she reflexively leant forward and started reading the preview of the message on my screen. I laughed in an incredulous “is this happening” manner for a few seconds before saying: “Erm, do you mind?”

Life changes a little once you’ve had someone go through your phone in ways that go beyond a prying stare on a first date. I’ve had my phone accessed before. I deserved it, I made it happen: I was absolutely being a lying, cheating scumbag at the time and my partner wanted to know the truth. What changed though was that the hurt I’d created by cheating fused with the intrusive way I was busted, leaving me with a new awareness that the best way to exist in a digital space is to assume that everyone can view everything you’re doing, at all times. It helps, both to make you hypervigilant of when you’re doing something that makes you feel guilty, but also to realise there’s no shame in a lot of what you do. Would I feel bad if someone saw this? No? Well great – I must be doing a good job.

Of course, this sort of digital self-monitoring can be taken to highly dubious extremes. Take senior Republican and current Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, who admitted in 2022 that he and his then 17-year-old son monitored each other’s phones to check the other wasn’t watching porn. This almost dystopian approach to morality was achieved via an app called Covenant Eyes, most commonly marketed within hardcore Christian communities. It reports back to your “accountability partner” if you view anything deemed as “questionable”.

Most sane people would shy away from this kind of thing for a million reasons. But one of them is that simply having access to someone’s data isn’t enough. Data alone cannot satiate our human needs for dialogues, explanation and understanding. Knowing what your partner is doing on their phone with no context won’t make anything better, it will just frustrate you further.

There’s a million ways to be angered by your partner’s online behaviour. Often it can be almost entirely irrational. Following an ex on social media is one thing, but years ago, I met someone in a club who was loudly seething because she’d discovered her husband followed Katy Perry on Instagram. She was both consumed by it and also could see no reason why – he was not a stated fan, he stridently hated pop music. I didn’t know her well enough to just blurt out, “Have you tried asking him if he’s got a crush on Katy Perry?!” But for her, this one tiny online act alone had deep repercussions which the husband could likely have never comprehended.

Many of us fall like skydivers into relationships, intoxicated by the sex, attraction and attention. It’s easy to never once stop and ask the big foundational questions (Are we a thing? Are we monogamous?), let alone the small print T’s & C’s, such as, “Is it bad if I scroll through your pictures while I use your phone to order a pizza?”.

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Yet if you’re really in sync with someone, you should be able to bond quickly and reassuringly over why you both shouldn’t read each other’s phones or know each other’s passcodes as a matter of principle. Avoiding talking about it is the worst approach. It’s the stuff of saccharine Hallmark Cards for a couple to say: “Our love has no boundaries”. In truth, true love includes the ability to maintain boundaries that protect each other rather than restrain. When you’re open and trust your partner, there really shouldn’t be a single urge to read their messages. It’s a signifier of some of the most easygoing, respectful relationships I’ve had lately that I’ve been alone in a room with my partner’s phone and not had even the tiniest urge to look at what’s in there. Sadly there’s no prospect of wedding bells just yet, but if we were to tie the knot our vows would surely be: “For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, my passcode is none of your business.”