To think that if you go through someone else's phone messages

[Megara]

and you don't like what you read , then it is your own fault for snooping and you should under no circumstances approach the correspondants of the other person to criticize what they wrote which was never meant for your eyes. Eavesdroppers hear no good about themselves and this is the same.

Context : woman walks out on husband, a couple of months later he is in a fatal accident. . . . . . . although they were separated she is his legal next of kin so it is to her that his phone is returned. She charges it up and then goes through the messages of support which some of her family members sent to him after she'd moved out. . . . . . . . and then has the brass face to confront them about it.

Wouldn't bother me, but I don't say anything behind peoples backs that I wouldnt say to their face 🤷‍♀️

The moral here is don't message someone something behind a family member's back that you wouldn't say to their face. Just because she snooped it doesn't mean she can't confront someone about what she found.

This.

It depends on how they were to her face at the time. If they were over the top with support for me whilst messaging him with the same then I’d be annoyed, yes.

also if it now looks in hindsight they were acting as his spy and taking what I said back to him. Overall I suppose I’d be grateful I’d seen their true colours.

I try to be as fair as I can, and I have stayed in contact with family members' ex's (have I got the apostrophes in the right place?) so I don't think the family members did anything wrong.

Well, perhaps if you don’t want someone to read stuff, you should reconsider writing it in the first place

I don’t like the secrecy culture around phones

But the MN mantra is that if the woman 'accidentally' catches sight of her man's phone and doesn't like what she 'accidentally' sees it's usually a case of LTB! Love the MN hypocrisy.

Snooping is never the right thing to do, but it also doesn't mean that you have to sit on anything you find and not react to it at all.

So what matters is the message content.

If she's just angry they were staying friendly with her ex, then she's unreasonable. If the people were slagging her off or agreeing with horrible things he was saying about her, she's fair enough to confront them.

In this case she'd already left him.
No, no one was slagging her off or reporting back to him about her........ they were just being supportive as he was a nice bloke and had helped her family members out in the past .
And don't forget he's dead, so absolutely no good can come of raking up the rights and wrongs of what anyone said to him in the month after she walked out of their marital home.

you should under no circumstances approach the correspondants of the other person to criticize what they wrote which was never meant for your eyes.

Well, if I went through DH's phone (which I never have) and saw a message to his friend saying "I'm having an affair", then I would do more than criticise!

So, OP, have you been caught out?

I do agree that she was bonkers to go through the phone, let's face it, it's never going to end well, but as I said before if I was someone who had messaged him I would happily explain why and it's up to her how she deals with that.

If you said to her ‘oh yeah, what a knob he is, you’re well out of that’ and also messaged him to say ‘hope you’re ok mate’ then yes I can see why she’d feel affronted by your behaviour.

Break ups are bloody awful and those who go through it tend to need people around them who to support them. Whether they’re the one to leave or be left - it’s all pretty horrendous.

At the very least, those who decide not to take sides need to make it clear to both parties that that’s what they’re doing so it doesn’t bite them on the arse down the line, as this has for you.

She's grieving and anger is a very big part of grief.

I'd cut her some slack in this scenario.

She's dealing with the death of her husband (albeit separated at the time) and she's just found out her family didn't have her back; that's a lot to deal with in a short space of time.

Yabu. People shouldn't be two faced.

If goes both ways. Dont say something about someone that you wouldn't say to them.

What did you say about her?

"And don't forget he's dead, so absolutely no good can come of raking up the rights and wrongs of what anyone said to him in the month after she walked out of their marital home."

The people she's angry with aren't dead though. Him being dead now doesn't undo what they've done in the past that she's angry about.

This really sounds like a terrible situation for all concerned and I wouldn't direct anger towards anyone particularly.
Everyone's upset and hurting and in shock and grieving right now.

Nope, not me: although I am still on good terms with the fella my sister split from when she was 18...... he thought I might not want to see him after that but we were friends and still are. (My sis, being a reasonable human being, is fine with this!)

No, I'm friends with someone who, while not dissing the woman behind her back, thought that she'd treated her husband shabily and messaged him to give moral support. The woman has been quite nasty about her doing so, and although my friend has apologised to her, the widow has thrown her apology back in her face, forgetting all the occasions on which my friend has supported her. And this a good year after the chap's death.

I agree with you. It's like reading someone's diary. You're the agent of your own misfortune if you then find something upsetting.

I can understand if there's blatantly a reason to be suspicious and you're looking for confirmation. But a lot of people appear to feel that they are entitled to invade another person's privacy with no real justification at all beyond nosiness.