Why Do Some People Spy On Their Partner’s Smartphone?
Having a partner sneakily check your smartphone can feel like a blow to trust: “Do you think he could be cheating on you?” Most likely, the other person does not have the necessary arguments to ensure that his or her partner could be violating any of the agreements previously established in the relationship, for example, monogamy.
In fact, there is a possibility that the jealous person feels the same or even worse than the jealous person: sustaining behaviors over time that try to search for irrefutable evidence of deception is an exhausting task that leads to great amounts of suffering. . So, with good reason, we might ask Why are there people who spy on their partner’s smartphone?, even when as a result of this behavior they end up feeling worse. In this article, we will try to answer this question.
Jealousy has been present since the beginning of time; since human beings began to interact with others out of the need to survive. That primal and universal emotion, whose purpose was to inform human beings that they should make sure they had a with who (with whom to reproduce, with whom to hunt, with whom to take refuge…), lasted over time in all societies. We could, if we wanted, take a tour from Pthonus in Greek mythology – the personification of jealousy and envy, who had many wives but ended up getting rid of them all when he suspected her of adultery – to Othello, the Moorish general in Shakespeare’s play. , who searched again and again for evidence of his wife Desdemona’s deception (without success, of course).
Therefore, Jealousy is an emotion that has been with us since the beginning of time ; They are based on a historical and biological substrate with which we are burdened; and, therefore, they represent a normal experience shared by everyone. Some authors maintain that jealousy arises from the desire to be certain that another person—generally, a partner, but it can also be a child, friend, or parental figure—feels and expresses love exclusively toward one. Others make a distinction between normal jealousy and pathological jealousy, but for the purposes of this article we will leave this categorization aside.
Perhaps it may be more useful to state a point in common between several of the conceptualizations about jealousy: many authors agree that a person realizes that they are experiencing jealousy because they perceive certain physiological sensations in their own body, such as headaches, breathing, agitated and sweaty hands; also because he notices certain thoughts and beliefs that ultimately pursue the search for control. We will delve deeper into the latter to understand why there are people who spy on their partner’s smartphone.
Control: a central component of jealousy
Control is the nuclear component of jealousy. We can identify a jealous person not so much by their internal experiences, that is, their impulses, thoughts and emotions – after all, we cannot “enter” inside their mind to see what they feel – but rather by what they do. on a concrete level, that is, by how it behaves. And the behaviors that identify a jealous person are linked to the pursuit of control: they send messages to their partner to find out where they are (even when they have already told them that they would go for a walk with a friend), they express to other people that He could be being deceived (based on the establishment of hypothetical relationships and not on true facts), and also, among these manifestations, he checks the couple’s smartphone in order to find irrefutable proof of their infidelity.
Jealous people are usually classified as insecure or with low self-esteem, and although both variables could be related to jealousy, the truth is that we cannot ensure that there is a cause-effect relationship between jealousy and these characteristics. However, when we think about the relationship between jealousy and control, we can take a different perspective, perhaps a little more pragmatic, more on the side of the so that that of the whys: Why does the jealous person try check to your partner by, for example, checking your mobile phone?
Identifying the purpose for which the jealous person spies on their partner’s smartphone can help to elucidate the reason for their behavior, that is, what lies behind it. However, it is complex to provide a univocal and consistent answer to this question, since multiple factors converge in the reasons that lead a person to behave in a controlling manner.
Let’s analyze it from the following premise: a large part of the people who experience jealousy, in truth, They do not want to behave in a controlling way. As a result of conversations with their partners, people who tend to act detectively, checking their partner’s phone or calling them at times when they are not available, know exactly how the other person feels after their behavior. The partner is likely to feel harassed, upset or offended The jealous man knows it.
Jealous people, however, believe that they are just that way and they can’t do anything to change it, but deep down, they would like to be able to behave in a healthier way towards their partners. Also, why not, for themselves: as we pointed out previously, the constant search for evidence of infidelity can be very tiring. In short, the jealous person does not want to feel that way or behave that way. So why do you keep doing it?
The reason why a person spies on their partner’s smartphone may not be linked so much to the exercise of control over the partner (at least, not at first), but rather an inefficient way of regulating a very unpleasant emotion. People who tend to experience intense jealousy, recurrently and sustained over time, adopt strategies such as checking their partner’s cell phones or constantly texting in order to make sure that they are not being deceived. The moment they confirm that they are not, they experience intense relief, both mentally and physiologically. Therefore, we could argue that, ultimately, This way of spying aims to “relieve” that unregulated jealousy In other words, the behavior pursues the goal of controlling oneself and, consequently, controlling the other person.
However, as we can see, in this objective the person takes many “things ahead.” First of all, it ends up relegating to the background how the partner feels after their behaviors. The jealous person may recognize that his behaviors cause harm, but his emotion is so intense that he ends up carrying them out anyway. And, secondly, it is a strategy with many negative consequences but which is also extremely ineffective. In the short term, it may happen that he feels better after checking his partner’s smartphone and not finding anything suspicious. However, in the long term, there will always be a new situation in which to hesitate – a notification on the screen from an unknown user, an unexpected call… – and in which it will behave in the same way again.
Consult a professional to work on jealousy
It is a snowball effect that the person must stop. In general terms, accepting jealousy and reorienting it towards other actions that are more useful in the long term is a good strategy to modify behavior.
However, the best and most responsible way to work on managing the actions that one carries out every time they experience jealousy is in consultation with a psychotherapist.
