WELCOME TO THE THUNDERDOME

I’m on Facebook right now and a girl I went to Jr. High with posted a status saying that she went through her man’s phone and basically that she’s “shaking her head at her man and these hoes.” Now the first few responses were things like “What do you expect?” “What you don’t know won’t hurt you” etc…

Well she obviously expected something that she didn’t want to see, but did want to know, or else she wouldn’t have gone through his phone. One guy even responded by saying:

“Females like u need to stop going thur dudes phones… Think bout it wat ever u don’t noe won’t hurt u. I’m not sayin this to get u mad but to help u so u won’t get hurt seein something that u don’t wanna c.”

First of all “Females like u.” To me this means insecure females who go through their insecure boyfriend’s cellphones. And he’s saying this to help her? Helping her would be telling her to buck up and be with someone who’s ready for a healthy relationship! The next few people to comment agreed with this person, but I had to respond by saying it’s sad that this is to be expected from our partner.

I feel that a lot of relationships start because Subject A feels a sense of ownership over Subject B, that person belongs to them now and they’re not expected to go astray. Subject A feels that they are the dominate person in the relationship, therefore they can do whatever they want either behind Subject B’s back or right in their face without consequence. Now, just to be clear, I’m not trying to say every relationship is like that, just the majority haha. Relationships are not about ownership, they are about partnership. In a secure relationship there is no need to look through each others’ phone or e-mail because we know they have nothing to hide, or rather, we believe they have nothing to hide (we never really know).

A couple months ago my boyfriend admitted to me that in the beginning of our relationship every single time I left the room that he would look through my phone. When he told me, I wasn’t angry and I wasn’t angry because I never had anything to hide. I gave him my password whenever I changed it, not so that he could go through my messages, but in case he needed to use my phone or something. I never felt the need to go through his phone because I wasn’t doing anything myself that I felt I needed to hide. In my mind, if I wasn’t hiding anything, neither was he. I suppose if he was looking through my phone at the time that it was very possible that he had things he was hiding from me, and maybe he was looking through my phone to try to justify whatever it was that he was hiding, but honestly I could really never know, nor do I care because that was the beginning of our relationship. Trust must be earned, especially by people with baggage.