Do you check messages on your partner’s cell phone? Do you feel you should do this, and is your partner okay with you doing this? A 2012 study found that more than half of participants had secretly viewed their partner’s private messages, including messages exchanged on social networks and text messages. In other words, these people had checked their partner’s cell phones and social networks without their permission or knowledge.
The danger that comes with checking private messages is that you may find material that will make you feel jealous, whether in the form of thoughts, emotions or behavior. Regardless of how we experience jealousy, it has a function – protecting or preserving our bonds from people who try to steal our partner.
So what kind of information found on your partner’s cell phone can make you feel jealous? Evolutionary psychology proposes that men and women experience jealousy in different ways, and are motivated by different threats to a relationship. Men mainly become more jealous with sexual infidelity, because this infidelity presents a risk of separation. Whereas women become more jealous with emotional infidelity, as this poses a risk to their partner’s long-term commitment.
Thus, men are more likely to report jealousy in sexual cases, while women report jealousy in cases of emotional infidelity. But why check your partner’s cell phone? Why do people feel the need to check their partner’s cell phone?
A 2013 survey conducted by a cell phone insurance site found that of almost 2,400 study participants who discovered their partner was cheating, 41 percent of the time they discovered it through cell phone evidence. While the second most common way through which someone has discovered that their partner is cheating, is through social networks.
These studies reveal the reason why most people feel the need to check their partner’s cell phone. While, by experts this is sometimes considered as a good motive, since no one wants to waste time with a traitor!
