I do not snoop on my partners. Whether it’s during the relationship, or afterwards, I prefer to stay in that sweet little blind spot called “ignorance is bliss.” Why would I go around asking questions I don’t want to hear the answers to? What you don’t know can’t hurt you. (Had enough clichés yet?)
I only snooped once, and even then I stopped myself. A few weeks ago, when I was cleaning out the closet in my office, I came across a box of old diaries and photos from a decade ago. Inside was a bunch of left overs from my first boyfriend. Along with crucial items like his birth certificate and passport, I also found a journal (men don’t keep diaries, right) and skimmed for my name. I saw it and slammed the book shut. Not my business. Plus, I’m not into ruining my rose-tinted world. I know plenty of people who do snoop. They want the truth. Some aren’t even looking for it, and then a text from an ex pops up when you are mapping out the nearest Japanese restaurant on your boyfriend’s phone. Have you ever snooped on your partner?
“I once found a very detailed journal entry my then-boyfriend had written about tying up and punishing my best friend. He was into kink. He was not a crazy serial killer. Moral of the story? If you’re snooping because you don’t trust the person, you’re probably right.” Melanie, 31, Brooklyn, NY.
“I was 19-years-old and my girlfriend at the time went to work early and left me alone in her basement suite. Naturally I went snooping. I found her diary and in it she wrote about how she went to a party and had a threesome with a mutual female friend of ours and some random dude, and how she felt so guilty about it. (I also found her sizeable collection of porno mags, which was super cool!) Now, according to the diary entry, this happened within the first month of us seeing each other, but we were sleeping together and definitely exclusive at that point so I was fucking choked. But I couldn’t just confront her with this, as that would mean I’d have to admit to snooping and I’d lose the moral high ground. I tried to get her to confess. One night while we were lying in bed, we got to talking about regret and I confessed the shitty things that I had done when I was a meth-smoking teenager. Then I asked her, “What’s the worse thing you’ve ever done?” and she tearfully confessed to the threesome. She said she was really drunk and she never let the guy inside her, and that she wished it had been with me. I told her that I felt really betrayed, but in the end, I forgave her and we didn’t break up. She made it up to me, though. We ended up having a threesome with that same friend a few months later!” Brad, 30, Ottawa, ON.
“This is a weird one, and not about a partner, but when I was a chubby, introverted, closeted teenager I found a box of my mother’s porn magazines. How common is that? I never thought much about how it affected me. I mean, apart from totally arousing me and forcing me to start using the magazines as bank material. This was ’90s porn, so remember it was all sorts of cocks on rocks. I remember one magazine printing a petition to show an erection.” James, 29, Vancouver, BC.
“I found a naked picture of the girl my boyfriend was cheating on me with. Cool.” Nicole, 31, Vancouver BC.
“I once went snooping in my boyfriend’s phone and found an entire folder of boob photos. It seemed like years worth of one-night-stands and ex-girlfriends. It enraged me, but I couldn’t say a thing because I had been snooping. Infuriating.” Katie, 27, Los Angeles, CA.
