About 25 years ago, the internet started creating a whole new set of problems for relationships, when it suddenly became possible for people to be secretive and sneaky in ways they simply could not have been before.
For the vast majority of human history it's been totally standard to be obvious about communicating with others.
Until very recently, to communicate you either phoned on a landline and had to run the gauntlet of whoever might answer the phone, you wrote them a letter which could quite easily be seen arriving on the doormat, you knocked on their front door, or you went somewhere and met them, which meant you had to physically go out of your way to keep it secret.
But somehow over the last 15 or 20 years some have been massively gaslighted into believing that secrecy is somehow a normal and healthy part of a relationship.
It's not.
There are a core few women on this site who will instantly jump in and tell you being secretive with devices is just privacy.
It's not. It's a very new issue and it's not remotely normal.
These people are very much in the minority, but they are mouthy and quick to jump on any OP discussing their discovery of abuse by their husband/partner through messages/emails.
You must learn to totally ignore them, don't feed the fantasy that it's normal to be sly. Don't even response to their interrogation, just as you would ignore anybody who tells you to accept abuse and tries to victim blame you.
You don't have to just meekly accept this bizarre gaslighting as standard.
We have complete access to each other's devices, just like nearly everyone past the age of 21, and we very rarely use that access, but of course we can. Because that's normal when you are living together and sharing your life.
If someone is saying that you are somehow just as bad as your cheating, abusive partner because you checked their phone, they are lying to you. If they are claiming looking at someone's device is abuse they are lying to you.
They themselves are secretive and sly, or they have been very badly gaslit.
And no need at all to mention coercive control, that's a completely different issue and you are definitely not worried about that at all. You're just trying to deflect.
We're talking about normal relationships, where deliberately hiding access to devices is sly, it's secrecy and it's a big problem. It's not normal.
If your response to someone exposing their partner for cheating or abusing them through messages is to immediately ask how they managed to access those messages, then congratulations, you have basically outed yourself as either a cheater or an abuser - or you need to reassess the level of gaslighting you have internalised.
Make ignoring these ridiculous questions the norm and absolutely ignore these attempts to derail and cover up abusive behaviour. Get back to normalising reality.
It's normal, standard and fine to look at your husband/wife/partner's devices.
Only cheaters, liars and those who've been gaslit could possibly believe otherwise.
And no, you don't think I'm coercive or abusive. And if you claim you do, you're projecting.