Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone? – Jenna’s Experience

If you suspect your husband is having an affair, is it wrong to check your husband’s phone? Does access to your husband’s phone ensure he’ll stay faithful? Jenn shares 3 reasons why checking his devices didn’t stop her husband from cheating.

If you relate and need support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Transcript: Is It Wrong To Check Your Husband’s Phone?

Anne: A member of our community we’re going to call her, Jenna is on today’s episode. She’s been on the podcast before, and today she’s going to tell her story. We’re talking about. Is it wrong to check your husband’s phone? Welcome Jenna. Why don’t you just go ahead and start.

Jenna: I discovered my husband’s addiction shortly after we were married and I was obviously devastated and completely traumatized. He had withheld things from me and lied to me. That created a distrust in our relationship. And caused me to question everything he had ever told me that I had ever experienced with him. So I just, from the beginning, could not stop looking through his computer, through his phone, my husband was constantly on his phone.

Really any device or anything that I could verify or find information. I would search into the late hours of the night and into the morning. That was just a response to my trauma. And I’ve learned since then that it’s not useful, has not helped me, and it only harmed me and caused me further pain.

Anne: I wanna contrast your story with the story of many women I’ve spoken with. Who have said I had this impression that I needed to check his phone. And I checked it and realized he was having an affair. Or I had this impression that I needed to look at his computer, and I looked at the computer and saw this. Yeah, women can really benefit from safety seeking behavior, right? So today I want to cover why we call this safety seeking behaviors.

Betrayal Trauma Recovery’s Perspective On Safety

Anne: At Betrayal Trauma Recovery, we believe women resist abuse. They resist it from the very first second they experience it. They might not know they’re experiencing it, and they might not know that what they’re doing is resisting it. But it is an effort to get to safety. And at BTR, whatever you do to get to safety is healthy. And we’ve also found that some safety seeking or some types of resistance are more effective than others. So we’re going to talk about that today.

Some addiction recovery therapists, or other therapists or support groups, will try to label wanting to check his phone as acting out. Or that you’re codependent. And that you are trying to find the truth is unhealthy. Which is just more gaslighting. You’re not codependent, you are seeking safety.

https://youtu.be/R3vXhz8MN2U

Jenna: Yes, for me, looking through his computer and phone, it was the only tool I had at the time. I didn’t have any recovery resources. And I was trying my hardest to, like you said, establish safety with the little knowledge I had. And that was the only thing I knew how to do. But they did not provide me with the safety I desperately sought. For me, there were three reasons that searching my husband’s computer was not helpful.

Number one, it didn’t solve the problem. Number two, it made me feel crazy, and I lost trust in my own intuition and self. And number three, it kept the focus on him. And prevented me from creating and establishing safety for myself.

Anne: So let’s talk about that first reason for you. Why did it not solve the problem?

Ineffectiveness Of Searching Devices

Jenna: It did not solve the problem, even if I found evidence of something while checking his phone and confronted him about it. He would deny it and my husband was gaslighting me. That was not motivation for him to change. It would just be me showing him these things, or I couldn’t find anything. And then because I was looking for cold, hard evidence to convince him. And explain to him and show him the reasons why he needs to get help and to change.

Instead of looking to myself and saying, what do I need to feel safe? I wasn’t listening to my own intuition.

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