When Is Your Partner Entitled to See Your Cellphone?
By: Tracey Folly
Tags: Relationships, Lifestyle, Social Media, Self, Digital Life

When Is Your Partner Entitled to See Your Cellphone?

The correct answer is never, as far as I’m concerned

Photo by Luke Porter on Unsplash

We’ve been living in the era of the smartphone for quite some time now. Smartphones are capable of doing a lot of things, including giving us an insight into the habits of our partners via their most visited websites, search history, email, text messages, and phone logs.

So when is your partner entitled to see your cellphone and vice versa?

As far as I’m concerned, the correct answer is never.

For many people, there is nothing more personal than their cellphone. That pocket-sized miracle of technology holds more secrets than a hundred diaries.

With the right passcode, you can learn more about a person from their cellphone than you could from a lifetime of conversations. In the wrong hands, that information could ruin relationships.

To be more specific, it could ruin your relationship.

You see, the question of whether or not to allow your partner to have unbridled access to your cellphone is tricky. On the one hand, a faithful and honest lover shouldn’t have anything to hide. On the other hand, a matter of trust would dictate that you shouldn’t have to prove you aren’t hiding anything from your partner.

Your cellphone is a record of everything you’ve done since you owned it. For those of us who keep their files backed up in the cloud as I do, that record goes back even further.

While some people do keep old and outdated photos on their phones, I do not. You won’t find a single picture of me and an ex anywhere — unless someone still has the photo album filled with Polaroid pictures from my backyard wedding more than two decades ago.

I like to keep my search history clean.

It isn’t because I’m hiding anything from anyone. I just don’t like keeping an extensive search history on my phone for the same reason I double-delete all my email, my messages, and my phone call log.

Maybe it has something to do with my OCD, but I don’t like to see things pile up — not even digitally — and it makes no difference whether I’m single or coupled. I don’t save text message chains, either.

As soon as an active conversation winds down, I delete it. I don’t like seeing long lists of contacts clogging up my inboxes. If I need to reach someone, I know how to do it without referencing our last messages.

That brings us to the question of whether your partner has the right to ask to go through your cellphone. In my opinion, the answer is absolutely not.

It’s about trust, not passwords.

I’m not insisting you keep your phone locked and out of sight, but I am suggesting that you can if you want to. For years, I used a flip phone. No passcode required. When I bought my first iPhone, I was single. Yet when my phone prompted me to set up a passcode, I did it anyhow.

What followed was several years of having a passcode-protected iPhone but no one to protect it from. Then I did something counterintuitive. I removed the passcode from my phone as soon as I started dating someone.

He didn’t ask me to do it. I did it because I wanted to do it, and you know what? He still didn’t go through my phone because trust and respect were more important to him than scouring my search history or reading boring text messages about yoga and tacos.

I started keeping my unlocked phone face up and in his line of sight even if I left the room. It was my way of showing that I had nothing to hide. Yet, if anyone ever demanded that kind of access, I’d have a long and strong password on that phone faster than you can say, Jack Robinson.

As they say, turnabout is fair play.

I would never ask to see someone’s cellphone for the purpose of researching their call log, text messages, search history, saved photos, or any other information that simply isn’t my business unless my partner chooses to make it my business.

Trust is a two-way street.

The way I see it, the question isn’t about when you are entitled to see your partner’s cellphone. The problem is whether you are entitled to see your partner’s cellphone.

I can’t see a situation where the answer is yes. It’s like reading a person’s diary or journal without a specific invitation. It simply isn’t necessary or proper.

Everyone has embarrassing text messages or search history from time to time, and that’s not necessarily an indication of any wrongdoing. The strange things I look for on Google could fill a book, and I assure you that I’m not doing anything wrong. I just have a healthy curiosity about a lot of things.

Here’s something funny. When I decided to check my Google search history for examples of my recent and most embarrassing searches, I realized that I don’t even know where to look for that information. Sure, my most recently opened tabs are available for prying eyes to see, but my searches … I’d have to Google how to look them up.

One thing that proves is that I’ve never examined a partner’s Google search history on the fly. I didn’t even realize that I didn’t know where to begin.

Clearly, I know how to read someone’s text messages or emails, but I’m simply not interested. It’s important for me to allow someone the same privacy and autonomy in a relationship that I expect myself. As I said, it’s about respect.

If you don’t trust someone, then you definitely don’t respect them either.

So what if you’re dating someone who has already proven themselves unworthy of your trust and respect? The obvious answer may be to snoop around their cellphone info, but the correct answer is that you shouldn’t really be dating them in the first place.