Should you check his phone?

By Carol Natukunda

Your boyfriend leaves you alone in the sitting room while he takes a shower. You notice his smart phone on the table. It “stares” back at you. And you were wondering who he was chatting with on WhatsApp before. There is no password lock. Besides, he is still in the shower, so there is a slim chance you will get caught in the act. You are tempted to check.

A lot of young women confess to checking their partner’s phones. The girls say it is one of those things they must do.

“If I have not known him for long, I want to see how he saved my number and the name he saved me as. I also want to know if there are other people he has saved like me,” says Elisa Ayesigwa, a university student.

“Some boys save a number under a boy’s name... say I save a number as ‘Nick’ when it is actually a girl’s number. You can only tell by looking at the chat or photos from who and where. You can also see if there are pictures of other girls in his gallery,” she says.

Rona, a bank teller, she fears that her man might be sending mobile money to other girls. That keeps her on her toes.

“If I he is always claiming to be broke and I have been singly footing most of the home bills, I want to know if there are some mobile money messages in his phone. You can also have a clue on what kind of friends he keeps and what he loves to spend on. So that next time we are paying rent and he claims brokeness again, I would know that he is just using me.”

For many others, it is the lack of trust for their partner. There is also the need to see if he cares. For instance, saving your birthday in his phone calendar, or if he chats with his friends about you and if the chat is positive or negative.

“That way, I’d know my place,” says Clare Agira, 28. “If he is cheating on you, you confront him there and then.

Men are guilty too

Most of the men we talked to say they would not waste any minute going through their partner’s phone. They say it makes it easier for them to spy on their partner’s actions.

“If she is suddenly changing her hairstyle, buying new shoes and new clothes all the time then you know  who the sponsor is,” says 36-year-old Denis Katabazi, a telecom shop operator.

For others, it is often as a last resort. “The only time I would suspect something is when she ignores a call, texts and talks in another room or acts very secretive around me, ” shrugs, Benjamin.  “It is rude to check her phone, but a phone gives you so many clues which you can later on follow up.”

A 2013 report by Daily Mail newspaper in the UK showed that contrary to popular belief, a new study looking into ‘mobile snooping’ and trust within relationships had revealed that men are twice as likely as women to check their partner’s mobile phones without their permission. Three fifths of men in relationships claimed to have snooped for “incriminating messages or activity”, compared to a third of women.

When asked to reveal if they had ever looked through a current or ex-partner’s mobile phone without their knowledge, 62% of the men taking part and 34% of female respondents admitted that they had done so.

When asked for the motivations behind wanting to check up on their partner, the majority (89%) of these respondents admitted that they had done so to see if their partner had been talking to anyone else in a romantic or sexual context, indicating signs of infidelity.

Furthermore, 52% of those asked admitted that they knew the passcode or password needed to access their partner’s phone in order to do this.

Is it worth it?

According to counselling experts, relationships are based on trust. If you have been tempted to snoop on your partner for whatever reason, it indicates that you do not trust him completely.

“If you have a reason to doubt your partner, then there is something seriously wrong and needs to be resolved at the earliest opportunity,” says Rosemary Bwire, a counselling psychologist at Uganda Christian University, Mukono.

Beatrice Nandawula, the director of The Guidance and Counselling Centre on Sir Apollo Kagwa Road, says the consequences of checking your partner’s phone can be dire when he finds out.

She tells of one couple’s fights which resulted from phone snooping. While her snooping started off innocently, it turned into something ugly.

“The very first time she looked through her boyfriend’s phone, she didn’t find anything suspicious, which made her feel a lot better. She swore to herself that she would never do it again, but a few weeks later, she did. Once she realised that she could probably look through his phone whenever she wanted without him realising it, she started snooping on a regular basis,” Nandawula narrates.

It soon became an obsession.  “The whole time she was worried about him being dishonest, but in actual sense she was the one being dishonest.”

Everything seemed okay until she was caught.

“What she didn’t realise during all her time of snooping was that one day she would find a message from a female stalker, and she would have to admit what she had done in order to talk to him about it. When she did, he was not amused. He explained he had left it unlocked because he had nothing to hide. Since then, he started locking his phone and the mistrust grew,” Nandawula narrates.

The fights and quarrels increased. “The woman was always accusing him of cheating, since he was now locking his phone. And the couple soon split because it was clear that there was no trust.”

Nandawula stresses that with snooping, it is way too easy to misinterpret what might be in the phone.

Some men say instead of snooping on their phones, it is best to eliminate all doubts by talking to him about your concerns.

“What you see is not always true. Someone might have used my phone to send and receive mobile money and you jump to conclusions,” says Albert Mukisa, a youth counsellor at St. Catherine Vocational Centre in Wakiso.

 “No matter what one might have done wrong, he or she still has the right to get mad at you for going through his phone. It is like you are going behind my back. It is just a fight waiting to happen. To keep peace, keep off the phone.”

Mukisa says some “bad boys” are able to hide their fishy ways away from their phones.

“With time, you get to know the person inside out. A phone might not be the right place to make make judgment.”

If you feel you have to keep an eye on him, then the relationship is never going to last, Bwire stresses.

“Trust is the foundation of any relationship, and if you don't have that, it’s a sign that there is something seriously wrong,” she says, adding that one should think seriously about whether you should continue with the relationship or not.