Is spying ever ok?

[YouLostMeThere]

So, my (?D)H has several times now gone into my email accounts, checked my internet history, checked through my Amazon account. And he's only admitted it when I've worked out there is no other way he could have got information and confronted him, so not sure how much he has done it historically either. As far as I know he hasn't looked at my phone (nothing exciting on there btw) although he's very interested in who I'm texting and reacts to the 'ping' before I do. Is checking up on your other half ever ok? I haven't got anything to hide, but it has caused several rows because I feel invaded and that he doesn't respect my boundaries. He also manages to get and grab hold of the wrong end of the stick and WILL NOT let go! What do people think?? I don't know if I'm being over sensitive or if this is normal or what....

IMO people who feel that snooping is A, perfectly justified and B, that the person being checked on has no need to be upset if they have nothing to hide are spectacularly missing the point.

It's not about the fact that you have nothing to hide that is the problem, the problem is that if someone else feels the need to go and check up on your texts/emails etc they clearly don't believe that you have nothing to hide, in which case your relationship is lacking in trust.

My dp can look at my phone whenever he wants. He has access to the passcode etc, similarly yesterday he was using my laptop and wanted to check his own emails so he had to log out of my email account to log into his. i am certain that when I go on the laptop in a bit it will still be logged into his email account. It would take me a matter of minutes to do a quick check of his emails before I log him out again but why on earth would I want to do that? Similarly if I found him looking through my phone I would want to know why he felt the need to.

It's not about wanting to keep things private, it's about the right to not be under constant scrutiny and mistrust. Anyone who feels the need to look through their partner's phone every few months has trust issues. And incidentally it's a bit of a false security, because if your partner knows you look through their phone then chances are that if they're going to cheat they'll just buy a new phone you don't have access to.

I agree with WannaBe. If your snooping it's because you don't fully trust. Using snooping so you can trust is a compulsion and actually eliminates trust. To trust Is to put faith in the other person and the relationship that all is well and they wouldn't hurt you. If you snoop before you can come to that conclusion then your only temporarily silencing doubts to put your mind at rest.

Trust is hard at first if your anxious, but choosing to trust leads to a calm state of mind and relationship. Choosing to snoop fuels the doubt and the fear grows, we then sabotage the relationship anyway in most cases.

I've nothing to hide yet I'd hate my DH snooping through my phone, certain texts to friends and posts on mumsnet are personal to me and I'd be furious if he read them. He deserves to be respected and have his private life too.

Thanks guys goldierocks wannaBe Moopymoddle you've totally expressed how I feel. It is soooo suffocating, and upsetting knowing that the person you love really doesn't trust you. And it kills love, and I've told him this. He says he has realised that what he is doing is wrong and that he is trying to change. He has been suffering really bad anxiety in the last few days because he is trying to alter the habits of years. I respect him for trying, but I am going to take a lot of convincing before I can trust him again (and I have told him so).

He will feel anxiety at first as through his compulsion to check he has convinced his bodies fight or flight response to activate at every doubt. I don't want to go all technical about it but that's what basically happens.

Fear is activated due to past hurt or unrealistic expectations of the relationship, the paranoid partner doesn't recognise and label it as fear as they don't understand, they act on the fear through checking and it becomes a compulsion to either silence the fear or an obsession to validate it.

It's a difficult thing to grasp as sometimes people are upto no good, you read about it on mumsnet all the time, you hear about it in other people's relationships and you see it in the media no end. If your DH keeps up with not giving into the irrational fears, his adrenalin levels should start to taper off and as the old saying goes he will "see with clear eyes rather then fear eyes". Well that's how it happened for me aftwr lots of chats with my DH and some self help online. I now feel rather ashamed of how wrapped up in things I was and how I made my DH feel.

The real problem is not being allowed any boundaries, not being allowed any personal privacy, and then being persistently accused of things I'm not doing

I really understand this, too - despite my history of snooping!

I tried checking up on XH (I wasn't very good at it) because he was abnormally secretive - and, as people later told me, was cheating. It made him very angry and he gave me all the stuff about lack of trust destroying love. In fact he gave it as my unreasonable behaviour when we divorced. That's another story.

Simultaneously, he was reading my diary and using my private thoughts against me. He followed me and had me followed. I'm the opposite of secretive but his behaviours were more of a boundary breach, in my view, than my clumsy efforts to find out who I was living with.

When postcards arrived for him, I wouldn't read the message unless he asked me to. He found it impossible to believe anybody respected basic privacy that way, let alone the wife he had cast as a possessive lunatic.

As you can see, this was a hideously dysfunctional relationship. I hope you can also see why I say there's no black-and-white answer to your title question.

As you post a little more, a picture is emerging of someone with a compulsion to find secrets where there are none. If you can ever be satisfied that he's given up - or is restricting his activities to areas you find tolerable - then there may be a future for you yet. I'm sorry to say I'm not all that optimistic. It may be that your personal level of privacy is more than he can comfortably accept, or that his level of paranoia is more than you can.

I spent more than a decade with my ex and never snooped.

Then, things changed and I knew he was lying. I checked his computer (first time ever) and found pictures of him having sex, naked women, you name it.
It helped me know for sure he was a lying cheating git, and to kick him out unaffected by his piteous whining.

Now I'm with someone else, I don't make a habit of checking up on him - haven't yet, anyway. If his behaviour changed or I found anything dodgy, I would check up again.

I think all these people saying 'oh how, awful, what a breach of trust!' either are misogynistic at their core (women should be adoring, trusting people) while men should get to slip their dicks into other women. Their choice in their lives. NOT their choice in MY life.

In this case OP - I'd say either you are doing something dodgy, or he is and is trying to catch you at fault too.

Lovespeace that's rather insulting to the op. She's said she's not doing anything dodgy, my DH wasn't either. Sometimes yes if you have reason to suspect then checking is one way of closure, but sometimes these hunches are pure paranoia and can destroy relationships. I hate how people say of we follow our gut or hunch we are usually right... not always!

I disagree in principle, moopy. Unless you know you have a history of acting out irrational fears, then a change in your feelings around something does indicate a problem. That problem is going to be along the lines of what your feelings say it is - but your feelings don't know exactly.

Our unconscious minds are constantly processing data that never reaches consciousness: the growing "gut feel" is where the interface happens; the unconscious processor's asking your conscious to provide more relevant input. Sure you can run down a lot of blind alleys, or simply be a crap detective like me, but there's very likely to be a real issue.

These days I'll go as far as to say that feeling is actually enough to end a relationship. We don't work like that, though, so we feel compelled to seek the input.

I'm not talking specifically about Lost's husband here. His 'processor' seems to have a serious malfunction. No amount of common sense is going to fix that, regrettably.

This amount of jealousy and snooping with no prior history of infidelity in this relationship is NEVER normal or ok. Get out, OP.