Should Couples Have Access to Each other's phone?

Should Couples Have Access To Each Other’s Phone In A Committed Relationship?

Lucas and I  asked this question on my Facebook page and opinions definitely differed. Before we give the consensus on this answer we want to give a little background on why we asked this question.

When Lucas and I first started dating back in 2007 I was still carrying some baggage. By baggage, I mean my previous boyfriend. Though I was completely done with him, I was still entertaining conversations with him. One night Lucas, who I was just dating at the time, went through my phone and saw some text messages between my previous boyfriend and myself. It was nothing too incriminating, just a couple “I miss you’s but we’ll never work” type of stuff. You know how it goes, sometimes you’re still breaking up even after you already broke up.

Now some would argue that Lucas, who I was just dating at the time, had no business going through my phone and I would agree. However, that was an argument we had to save for later. In that moment we had to deal with my wrong doings. I betrayed his trust and it became my job to fix it. In order to assure him that I was no longer talking to my previous boyfriend, I granted him an all access pass to my phone and that’s how the trust between us was restored. Today, we usually advise couples who are struggling with trust to exchange passwords to everything (email, social networks, phones) and leave that part of the relationship open but there’s often a lot of push back, so we wanted to get a general opinion on this topic.

Our fellow Facebookers weighed-in and here are their thoughts:

1. Access should only be allowed if you’re in love and in a committed relationship. HOWEVER, just because there is access granted doesn’t mean you have free range to monitor everything going on inside the phone. When your constantly looking for something bad even the smallest things will intensify.

2. Others said they firmly believe in personal privacy. They trust their mates and they don’t need passwords.

3. Others said if there is a problem with phone access being granted, it’s because they’re hiding something. There may not be cheating but there may be flirting going on in preparation of cheating.

As you can see, there is not a yes or no answer to this question. Each individual couple has to use their own discretion. However to weigh in our opinion, we feel that if the other person in the relationship needs validation because of something you have done to cause distrust, then it is absolutely your responsibility to validate them or be prepared to lose the relationship.


Lucas & CorineMarie