I hear a lot these days about people snooping on their partners. Our information is more accessible than ever to our partner with a lot of people having smart phones, email and texts which save all our information. So finding an email, phone number or text is quite easy to do.
People snoop for different reasons. Some look for evidence of an affair that they believe has happened or is happening. Some look for evidence that they are not good enough in the eyes of their partner and some just have so much fear that they will lose their partner that it drives them to snoop.
The “real” or underlying reasons of snooping is a lack of trust in their partner and a low sense of self worth and self esteem. It is a fear of being abandoned by their partner, a belief they are not good enough or a fear they will be betrayed if they let someone get close to them.
People who fear that their partner is cheating will often snoop to try an allay fears of it being true. What is most surprising is most of these people do not even have any physical evidence that it is happening it’s just an underlying anxiety that they feel driven by. Snooping will either temporarily relieve this anxiety or increase it depending on what they find while snooping. And the problem is they’ll always find something whether it is evidence for cheating or something that can be misconstrued. Either way it’s an emotional rollercoaster.
It is easy to make yourself believe anything. Any “evidence” they find they will twist and convolute so it backs their belief. They lose all objectivity as in their mind the partner is already guilty! So the snooping is then just to find the evidence to back the claim. This is the problem as it’s not like they are looking at the situation objectively weighing up the evidence, they end up saying this is definitely happening I just haven’t found the proof I need yet … but I will.
Snooping signals a lack of trust in one’s partner, but also it is a reflection on themselves. Some people will not trust any partner they have even if they were deserving of trust and had never cheated on someone before. Their lack of trust comes from their own low self esteem, fear of loss or having their trust violated in the past by a cheating partner.
The problem is if you don’t trust your partner 100% or you are at least working towards that, then the relationship will eventually fail. You’ll suspect some sort of hurt in the form of them leaving or betraying you and if they don’t follow through with your worst fear, often people will make it happen. Of course they don’t do this intentionally, but they create it subconsciously. They often drive their partners to leave or cheat through their incessant pestering and their low self esteem and insecurity and the partner gets sick of being blamed for not doing enough to fill the woman’s anxieties. This then validates again the part of her that says “see I told you he would cheat/leave” or “I told you I am not good enough”.
The problem with snooping is that it is toxic to relationships and toxic to self esteem. If you believe your partner may be cheating then confront them about it and go with your gut. Look to yourself to see if you have a partner of choosing partners who cheat or do you suspect cheating when it hasn’t been there. If you don’t resolve it now, then it will follow you into every other relationship you have. Time doesn’t make these things get better it makes them worse. And you will feel better about yourself as well. Snooping doesn’t make people feel good about themselves.
Snooping is also toxic to the most important relationship of all and that is the one you have with yourself. You owe it to yourself to find the cause of the snooping and heal yourself so you can feel lovable, worthy and whole. You owe that to yourself.
