Checking phone and pm's/email

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Ok bit of a quandary i am guilty of checking my ExuBpdw phone and pm's etc at times during our R/S as i follow my gut instinct and it showed me most times i was right as to what she was telling me as opposed to other people (i found out about her Emotional affair via FB pm's to a married man early in our R/S But when i confronted her she sweet talked me round to actually apologising to her... .she carried it on for 15 months and ended up sleeping with him during a split despite all the protests against fancying him)

it also showed me many other 'truth's' with regard to her behaviour and i'm glad i did as it was a big part of me getting the strength to finally leave BUT i've read how many with Bpd do this as a control/insecure thing and i'm thinking am i... .Borderline?

[mitatsu]

Ok bit of a quandary i am guilty of checking my ExuBpdw phone and pm's etc at times during our R/S as i follow my gut instinct and it showed me most times i was right as to what she was telling me as opposed to other people (i found out about her Emotional affair via FB pm's to a married man early in our R/S But when i confronted her she sweet talked me round to actually apologising to her... .she carried it on for 15 months and ended up sleeping with him during a split despite all the protests against fancying him)

it also showed me many other 'truth's' with regard to her behaviour and i'm glad i did as it was a big part of me getting the strength to finally leave BUT i've read how many with Bpd do this as a control/insecure thing and i'm thinking am i... .Borderline?

[Confused?]

No you are not. You suspected something was up and went digging and found truth. My ex had no reason to think that I was doing anything like that. She would accuse me all the time. I work with a member of her family and I was with her almost everyday. I talked to her everytime she contacted me. Her fear of abandonment caused this. Not fact. If I was acting different and distant to her than yea I can see her being weary of cheating. But that wasn't the case. You are not BPD because u checked her phone and Facebook. You had an instinct and you were right.

[ShadowIntheNight]

No you are not. You suspected something was up and went digging and found truth. My ex had no reason to think that I was doing anything like that. She would accuse me all the time. I work with a member of her family and I was with her almost everyday. I talked to her everytime she contacted me. Her fear of abandonment caused this. Not fact. If I was acting different and distant to her than yea I can see her being weary of cheating. But that wasn't the case. You are not BPD because u checked her phone and Facebook. You had an instinct and you were right.

My ex as well. Always accused me of wanting to be with other women who were long time friends or just regular friends (she and I are women.) But she never asked to check my phone logs or my emails b/c if your gut makes you think that then it's not necessarily a wrong thing to ask to see them. I would have given her my password. She is the only person I emailed regularly. I finally got into texting in the last two years, but not that much. And as far as phone calls? her number was the one on all my broken out monthly phone statements.

I'm not sure I would classify being insecure about not trusting someone as making you BPD. If my ex came back, I wouldnt trust one word from her mouth except for maybe the determiner words "a, an or the", and even then I'd be suspect of even those words. When a person gives you cause to question their honesty and truthfulness, it only makes you foolish if you don't listen to your gut about them. It doesn't make you heroic to ignore yourself. Nor does it make you borderline to not trust them.

[antelope]

this is how my relationship actually ended: by me calling the random #s from her phone and texts, and actually talking to the other guys she was cheating on me with... .

I confronted her with all of this, she went completely silent, long story short, its been 2.5+yrs since I've even looked at her

what you did is perfectly normal, and in some ways, almost like a relief

I needed to know first-hand what was going on behind my back, no matter how ugly the truth was

yes, the truth hurt like freaking hell, but at least the picture of what I had to do became PERFECTLY CLEAR!

[mitatsu]

Funny thing is i gave her all my passwords and phone lock codes... .i had/have nothing to hide she on the other hand was secretive and always 'deleting' things but Internet History told a different tale...

[fromheeltoheal]

Ok bit of a quandary i am guilty of checking my ExuBpdw phone and pm's etc at times during our R/S as i follow my gut instinct and it showed me most times i was right as to what she was telling me as opposed to other people (i found out about her Emotional affair via FB pm's to a married man early in our R/S But when i confronted her she sweet talked me round to actually apologising to her... .she carried it on for 15 months and ended up sleeping with him during a split despite all the protests against fancying him)

it also showed me many other 'truth's' with regard to her behaviour and i'm glad i did as it was a big part of me getting the strength to finally leave BUT i've read how many with Bpd do this as a control/insecure thing and i'm thinking am i... .Borderline?

It's better to look at the behaviors than assign a label.  We get very confused in these relationships since our partner's behaviors typically don't match the words and are inconsistent and unpredictable.  And in an effort to feel better a borderline will deflect responsibility, which looks like blame, so we may end up apologizing for things that weren't our fault, a symptom of the larger issue of doubting ourselves because we just don't understand and can't make sense of the chaos.  Plus, it's common to adopt some traits of our ex when we're in the relationship.  None of that means we have a personality disorder, and again labeling yourself doesn't help.

I haven't read your story mitatsu, but from this post your ex may have a personality disorder or she may just have low integrity, for you to decide, but someone who has emotional or physical affairs and lies is not qualified to have exclusive relationships, and it is very painful to discover that once we've gotten emotionally committed and/or married them, we understand.

[raisins3142]

This topic will divide people here.  It is subjective and based upon some values, etc.

I am NOT one to say all snooping is wrong.

But there are clear cases where it is wrong and fuzzy cases.

First, I'd ask: am I seeing things correctly and not being unnaturally insecure?  is the SOs behavior so odd that it actually warrants an privacy invasion?  if the trust has eroded to this point, is it better to just walk prior to even looking?  if you are married, is it better to collect this info to help with your case?  how much will it help to be sure?  are you on the boundary here and you just can't tell if they are cheating and so you want to know before ending/confronting?

I've heard it suggested here before to talk to them about your concerns as they come up.  I did not do this because I know that almost all cheaters will lie unless presented with absolute proof (like paternity test or video of them or you walk in on them).  Also, if you suspect subterfuge, if you mention every little thing you observe, you are basically training them how to deceive you.

Also, something to keep in mind is the level of intrustion/what you have to do and whether your situation warrants it and also whether or not you are committing any crimes.

If your wife/husband is acting very oddly and the evidence/your gut points toward cheating (and you aren't nuts), then if they leave their phone at home or email open, I'd totally support snooping.

This is how most cheaters get caught these days it seems.

I would never snoop on a girlfriend that was actually acting like a normal and decent human being.

Towards then end, I got a little obsessed with catching my uBPDexgf.  It became unhealthy and like a game.

For instance, I would leave the room and purposefully check her facebook status and note that she always checked her messages as I left and then had the phone put back seemingly untouched when I returned from the bathroom etc.  I wasn't about to inform her of this (as long as I was staying) because I was gathering information, etc. 

[Mike-X]

Ok bit of a quandary i am guilty of checking my ExuBpdw phone and pm's etc at times during our R/S as i follow my gut instinct and it showed me most times i was right as to what she was telling me as opposed to other people (i found out about her Emotional affair via FB pm's to a married man early in our R/S But when i confronted her she sweet talked me round to actually apologising to her... .she carried it on for 15 months and ended up sleeping with him during a split despite all the protests against fancying him)

it also showed me many other 'truth's' with regard to her behaviour and i'm glad i did as it was a big part of me getting the strength to finally leave BUT i've read how many with Bpd do this as a control/insecure thing and i'm thinking am i... .Borderline?

Thanks for posting this. Do you meet the diagnostic criteria for BPD?

A search of the internet suggests that searching through an SOs phone and accounts is fairly common. My udxGF searched through my phone, email accounts, and Facebook accounts to find evidence that I was cheating. She claimed that she was justified because of her suspicions. She did not find any evidence of physical or emotional cheating, because I was not cheating on her. However, she interpreted lots of thing that she found as evidence of my 'interest in other women', 'willingness to cheat', and 'not being as committed to the relationship as she was'. I apologized for everything that she found so many times. I felt so much guilt and shame for things that I did innocently at the time. I felt so bad for the hurt and betrayal that she expressed. It is a part of my FOG that I still can't seem to get to lift. But again, I was totally in love with her and had no desire whatsoever to cheat on her.

I never complained about her looking through my phone or accounts. She had easy access to all of them. She knew my password on my phone, and all of my passwords for my accounts were saved on a computer that we both used. Although she had easy access to all of my accounts, she still claimed several times that my not explicitly giving all of my passwords to her suggested that I was hiding something. Of course, when I asked her why she never gave me her passwords, she just said that everything was open on her phone.

I found her snooping through my phone and accounts to be a violation of trust and disrespectful of my privacy. It was akin to looking through one's journal to me. She indiscriminately looked through messages to both male and female friends. Her claim about male friends and family members was that she was looking for evidence that I had told my friends about my love for her. I took all of this as a part of her issues with boundaries and paranoia. Again, I never complained about it when we were together (part of my boundary issues), but after she moved out, I asked her why she didn't  just ask to look through my phone and accounts together? Why look through them behind my back? Why not say something like, "Honey, I am feeling a little insecure about things. Would you mind if we sat down and looked through your phone and accounts together?"

[Clawly85]

I suppose I am guilty of the same thing. I'm not sure if this post is related to the idea of checking emails/snooping or just trying to understand the behavior.

Well, to keep my story short and sweet. My ex of 8-9 months hid his BPD and bipolar disorder from me... .red flags all over the place that I just didn't attribute to as being part of BPD. I had never even heard of BPD until after we broke up and his ex gf and best friend had to fill me in. Basically, the last month of our relationship went totally down hill. It was like within a 3 week span, honestly. My ex's behavior changed and his behavior towards me changed. Distancing himself from me, preoccupying himself with his new "career" that he created (always coming up with these unrealistic job ventures), and became very cold/aggitated/short with me - just treated me like I was "in the way" of what he wanted to do. This was very out of character for him and the behavior that I knew of him... .

Something in my gut was telling me something wasn't right. That sinking, pinging feeling at the bottom of your stomach. I couldn't figure out what it was and thought that maybe he was cheating on me. It was the only explanation. He went from making me and our relationship the center of his world to kicking me aside overnight and lost complete and total interest in me. Made no sense. ... .I ended up snooping and got ahold of his ipad one night after he fell asleep and found emails from the ex gf that he had been communicating with behind my back for the entire length of our relationship.

I let him catch me on his ipad and made him sit down. I spoke to him very calmly and confronted him about what all of this was about. He turned everything around on me and told me that I was insecure, controlling and the one with issues and that there was nothing wrong with him talking to his ex gf behind my back despite the fact that he was still financially tied to her (driving around in a car in her name, using a joint cell phone with her) and holding onto her personal belongings in his apartment that I wanted him to get rid of. I wanted all of it to stop. It was disrespectful to me and upsetting. He wouldn't stop and thought he was doing nothing wrong and made me out to be the one with the problems.

From that point on, he didnt trust me and became paranoid that I was going to go through his phone and his belongings in his apartment... .I was creating "anxiety" for him. He lied to me about everything. My entire relationship wasn't real.

I realized on my own and through therapy that sometimes you have to do things to protect yourself, even if they aren't considered "ethicial."

[sun seeker]

  Hey all

. I snooped I was correct she was cheating.  So I have a thirst for knowledge. 

[hope2727]

He told me I could look any tie and gave me his password. I never felt the need. Then one day I had a gut feeling he was cheating. I looked. He was. He freaked. I don't password anything. its always open. He could look anytime. If I won't do it in from to f you I won't do it behind your back. End discussion.

[HappyNihilist]

mitatsu, it sounds like you're concerned that such behavior on your part might possibly indicate BPD?

Most behaviors and cognitive distortions exhibited by borderlines are in no way solely the property of BPD. Most people exhibit or experience these things at times in their lives. The difference with borderlines is that these behaviors, distortions, traits, etc., are ingrained patterns that make up the borderline's personality.

Feeling insecure is a very human thing. Especially when we have a gut feeling that something's not quite right. And performing an action out of insecurity is also a very human thing. It's not good or bad, it just is. It doesn't mean there's a personality disorder there.

You were suspicious that she was lying to you, and so you snooped to see if your suspicions were correct. Plenty of people who don't have personality disorders would have done the same thing.

It's good that you're taking this opportunity to examine your own actions and motivations in the relationship, but be gentle with yourself while you do. Instead of worrying that you're disordered, look at why you acted the way you did. Look at the context of the relationship and how it affected you. The relationship obviously made you feel insecure and unsure of where you stood, and you couldn't trust your partner.

[clydegriffith]

I checked the BPDx's phones/emails only after her obessions with mine. The way i saw things is that she must think i'm doing exactly what she's doing and i was right.

[raisins3142]

Why not say something like, "Honey, I am feeling a little insecure about things. Would you mind if we sat down and looked through your phone and accounts together?"

You are looking at this from your honest viewpoint.  And also you were not acting weird, so it is apples to oranges I think.

Why not ask an actual cheater what you said above about looking together?

Because unless they are dumb, they'll either refuse and then hide the evidence and turn it back on you OR they will say "sure honey right after work tomorrow, I'm too busy now" and then they will delete everything incriminating prior.

[Mike-X]

Why not say something like, "Honey, I am feeling a little insecure about things. Would you mind if we sat down and looked through your phone and accounts together?"

You are looking at this from your honest viewpoint.  And also you were not acting weird, so it is apples to oranges I think.

Why not ask an actual cheater what you said above about looking together?

Because unless they are dumb, they'll either refuse and then hide the evidence and turn it back on you OR they will say "sure honey right after work tomorrow, I'm too busy now" and then they will delete everything incriminating prior.

I understand your interpretation, but I was not looking at it from an 'honest' point of view. Allow me to clarify. My question to her was to get her to think about her own dishonest behavior. I was not expecting to get an honest answer, and I did not push for her to even provide an answer. Up to that point her rationale seemed to be that 'the ends justified the means', so violating trust and snooping through my phone and accounts behind my back was justified because of what she claimed to have found.

What if she hadn't  found anything? Why read through emails and texts to my family and male friends that were clearly unrelated to whether I was cheating or not? I saw this as evidence of boundary issues on her part.

She seemed to feel guilt and shame for doing it too. She said many times that I got upset about it, which I now view at least in part as projections. The same with her blowing up about the things that she found and changing her arguments. I never said a negative word about any of the times that she did it (again my boundary issues). In fact, I told her that I understood why she did it and said that I was fine with it, because I had nothing to hide. I talked with her about everything that she found, over and over again. I gave her my passwords after that (even though she had access to the accounts anyway) to 'prove' that I had nothing to hide.