Is Snooping OK?

"I found a few sexual texts in my bf’s phone from a girl, he tells me that he’s not doing anything in person with her and isn’t trying to hide anything, but I now don’t trust him. He said they met once before and he didn't like her like that. He admitted to looking in my phone a few weeks ago, but I am not doing anything to hide, like he is. That is why I think he went thru my phone, b/c he’s the guilty one, and he was trying to find something on me. I understand that most men would say it’s harmless, but if he couldn’t tell me what he is doing, then there is something to hide. Please advise," a reader writes.

I am not an advocate of snooping through people's things. Yet so many lovers are compelled to do it. The very insecurity that causes them to want to riffle through their significant other's things can cause them to make possibly wrong assumptions about messages and e-mails.  Why are they snooping anyway? Don't they trust each other? If they don't trust each other, why are they together?

Here's a scenario: You find a text message saying "Great time last night" from a woman on your man's cell. You don't know the whole story--maybe it is his female boss talking about the timing of a project that he just finished. You fret about it and finally are compelled to ask him about that message. Now he knows that you have been snooping around on him. This will make you appear in a bad light. Why are you going through his private stuff? Don't you have any boundaries? Can't a man be left in peace?

What else will she be rummaging through? My drawers? My wallet? My checkbook? What kind of psycho is she?

In the case of obviously sexual text messages cited above, the couple is snooping through each other's phones to see old text messages and possibly to hear their voicemail. She finds explicitly sexual texts. He gives her some lame excuses that are so obvious. If he didn't want to receive these things he would either tell the sender or quickly delete them. He even met the sender and saw that he "didn't like her that way." Obviously the guy is shopping around. But that's not my point.

What drove this reader to snoop around on her boyfriend's phone? She didn't trust him. Furthermore, he didn't trust her. So what is left in this situation? Two people looking for signs in each other that they are not meant to be together. Therefore, if you are snooping around, ask yourself, "Why am I doing this? Do I have any just cause for this (such as grounds for a divorce)? Is it my own insecurity running rampant? Why don't I trust him? Why am I with a person I don't trust?"

If you  have to snoop around to figure out that your lover is playing you, the situation is already out of hand. You might as well move on to someone you won't even feel the need to snoop about.