#13: Should I Admit I Looked Through Her Phone?

I didn’t know what photo to use for this piece…so I took this one. Lol.

Hello Hayes,

Your content has made me reflect on an experience I had when I was younger. It’s made me wonder: If I had the words at the time, could I have helped myself get closure? Is closure still possible today? Is it possible to give closure to myself?

Here’s the situation: I am 14-years-old and my best friend and lifelong neighbor starts acting differently towards me. Her behavior is odd enough that I get the wise idea to look through her phone and see if my name is mentioned in her texts, that way I can understand what’s going on. I come to see many messages where she calls me super annoying, but doesn’t provide specifics of what I’ve “done”. Before this, I never dreamed of looking through a friend’s phone. I also genuinely thought no one could ever think badly about me (I was young!). 

Instead of telling her what I saw, I ask if everything is alright between us. Things unravel from there. She never told me anything specific I did that bothered her, and I never told her I looked through her texts. I was too embarrassed and felt like it would hurt my chances of figuring out what I was “doing” that was so horrible. I wanted so badly to fix things so the friendship wouldn’t end. I thought we’d grow old together. After all this, we didn’t talk for months until one day she came back to me, apologized, and asked to start over. I was hesitant but we rekindled a friendship that was never quite the same through the end of high school. 

Our friendship phased out a second time a few years later, on my terms, when we were back in our hometown after going to college. While we were hanging out, I had a familiar spidey sense and (unwisely) looked for texts again. I found her saying some really hurtful things about me to the same exact friend as the first time all those years ago. I’m not proud of this second invasion of privacy and never told her I read those texts. I just moved on with my life and went all in with my new college friends.

Years later, I was invited to her wedding because our parents are still friends. I wondered: What does she think happened to our friendship? Do I want to finally be honest about what I did? What would happen if we ever did have a conversation about all those years ago? We’ve talked about making plans a handful of times over the years, but I’ve always put it off because I know this is the conversation I’d want to have, and I know it’s a big one.

My 10-year high school reunion is coming up. Ahead of it I’m wondering, for the umpteeth time, is it finally time to have this conversation? Is it worth having this conversation?

So here I am asking for your thoughts. If I had your content all those years ago, maybe I would have had the language and courage to have the hard conversation, not internalize the rejection I felt, and get the closure I so desperately wanted.

Anyways, if you’ve read this whole thing, I will leave you with this: Please keep going! Your perspective is so important! I am cheering you on from my corner of the world and can’t wait to read your first book. 

Cheers, 

Reflecting on My Younger Self 

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Hello Reflecting on My Younger Self,

I looked through my boyfriend’s phone once when I was in high school. He was home from college, in the bathroom, and I was sitting on his bed. This was back when all we had was Facebook to stalk people, and there was one person in his photos that I just had a feeling about, a spidey sense as you put it. He assured me that my feeling was wrong, that they were just friends. I knew otherwise and instead of just leaving it, leaving him — I seized the moment to find my truth.

As soon as I found what I was looking for I knew I made a terrible mistake. Not for the reason that everyone thinks, not for the breach of trust — which yes, snooping through someone’s phone in search of evidence is a breach of trust. 

The tragedy was in what it did to me. Some people look through their partner’s phone, and when they find proof of the thing they suspect, they’re out. They’re hurt but gratified, they don’t feel bad about what they did to find their proof. I didn’t feel that satisfaction: Instead, I got the grief of what I learned, plus an overall sense of being bad. Like I needed to be punished, like I could and should accept the branding of being an “untrustworthy” person. 

When I told him what I saw, I immediately began to cry and apologize. I wanted to be loved so badly, like you did with your friend, that I was desperate to just accept the blame and move on. 

I should not have looked through his phone and you shouldn’t have looked through hers. These are true facts. But another truth is that if trust is an arm, our blows weren’t the first to break the bone. 

We all fixate on these tangible breaches of trust like snooping or cheating to the point where we often overlook the original crime. In my case, trust was broken when he liked someone else and wasn’t straight with me about it, and in yours, it’s when your friend was annoyed and didn’t just tell you what you did, if there was anything to tell in the first place. 

In our most intimate relationships, lovers or friends, we trust the other person to tell us when they’re not happy, when something needs to change, when we did something to hurt their feelings. We trust them not to let it fester.

Looking through someone’s phone is perceived as such a fatal act, that once you do it, no one cares about the reason you did. The person who hurt you can use your behavior as an excuse not to take accountability for theirs. How could you violate me like that? And they would be right to be angry. 

The problem for the naughty boundary violator, is that not only are you stabbed for what you suspected and twisted for what you saw — you are guilty. And it’s this combination of rejection and remorse that becomes the most potent recipe for self-loathing. 

I say all of this because I think it’s the self-loathing that’s keeping this story top of mind for you, all these years later. You’re holding onto so much pain for what you read and for what you did. Before we can even think about whether you want to talk with your old friend, you first need to forgive yourself. Forgive yourself for looking through her phone when you were 14, and then again a few years later. Forgive yourself not just for violating her boundaries, but for forcing yourself to drink that poisonous cocktail of rejection and remorse. For abandoning your own instincts. 

Your instincts, my love, are quite good. As are the questions you ask me in your letter: Is closure possible? Is it necessary? Can I give it to myself? 

Yes, I do think that we can give ourselves closure, and that’s what I recommend for you. To begin, we need to identify what we’re hoping to gain from this romanticized closure scenario you’re imagining. Can you picture your conversation with your past neighbor? Are you hoping that she explains why she was annoyed? That she apologizes for talking about you behind your back? That she tells you, once and for all, that you are not annoying? That you are not the things she said about you? 

You are not the things she said about you. Maybe you’re annoying sometimes, but we all are. I certainly am! (*Insert image of Brob nodding*)

The only thing I know for sure about what you were back then…is that you were right. You sensed that your friend was being strange, your instincts told you that this relationship had changed. You were right. 

You were also humbled: You learned that when something feels wrong in a relationship, you don’t need more proof than your instincts. I don’t say that to empower the paranoid or manipulative. This advice is not for those people. I say this directly to you, my love, and to anyone who has been in your shoes. You do not need cold hard evidence to prove what you feel or to begin to make changes to feel better. Feeling it is enough.

This is where your closure is found, I believe. In reframing the lesson from I did something bad to I learned something about myself. I learned my instincts are worth believing. 

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A brief word on your friend: There are some people who just get off by talking shit about others. For them, it’s a sport versus a symptom of being human. By that I mean: We’ve all complained about other people. There’s a difference though between saying: “Sally was late for dinner and it drove me nuts,” and “Sally looked like shit at dinner and I spent the whole time wanting to leave.” Is the first option the nicest thing? No. But on the scale of shit-talking it’s pretty tepid. The latter though is mean – if you’re saying that about a “friend,” then you probably shouldn’t be their friend. I don’t know what kind of shit-talking you found in her phone, but I’m sorry you found it. I’m even more sorry that you internalized it. I just want to make sure someone gives you that apology — I hope that hearing it from me, makes you need it less from her. 

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Your reunion is coming up, and you wonder, should you say something? You’re already in the process of closure and you got an apology from me, so the last thing to explore is: Do you want to be friends with her again? 

If you do, there could be merit in sitting down, as two grown adults who have had some distance, and together, remembering what happened. There could be things you’re forgetting. 

My best friend freshman year of college and I had a falling out, and 12 years later, I don’t remember why. I imagine it was both our doing. There’s a possibility that you did things to hurt this friend, too. Perhaps sitting down together, and reflecting on what happened — from a curious, non judgmental, point of view — could be an interesting exercise. 

When you talk, you could feel it out: Enough time has passed that if you said, “well what happened for me was that, when we were 14, I got the sense that you were mad at me and I looked through your phone, which I shouldn’t have done, and saw that you told someone I was annoying. Things changed from there.” But I don’t think you have to say that. It was so long ago and I’m not convinced that it really matters anymore, so long as you learned your lesson and won’t do it again.  

And if you don’t care to have a friendship, then I think you can just put this to rest. I would probably just put it to rest.  

How do you let things go, Hayes? How are you so emotionally mature while I’m out here holding onto grudges? Someone commented this on a video recently. I wish I could say that it’s always altruistic, but I can be petty too! I hold resentment just like everyone else. And when I decide to move on from something, my intentions are sometimes self-interested. It serves me to let things go, to say:

I accept that I shouldn’t have looked through her phone.

I accept that it was mean of her to talk shit about me behind my back. 

I accept that some people won’t like me.

I accept that I was wrong about our friendship. 

I forgive myself for making the same mistake twice. 

I forgive her for not being honest with me. 

I forgive myself for the parts of me that others find annoying. 

As for the words you could have used when you were younger. We can’t force someone to tell us the truth. Let’s say, instead of looking through her phone when you suspected something was up, you had said: “hey, something feels off with us — do you notice it or did I do something to upset you?” And let’s say she responds with “nothing’s wrong” and continues to ice you out? Then, if that happened, you could just give the relationship some space. Sometimes no words are necessary. It’s simple and terrifying but if someone isn’t making you feel good when you spend time with them, you might want to spend less time with them. 

As for your future, keep doing what you began to do in college. Invest in relationships that don’t ignite your spidey senses. Be with people whose phones you’re not compelled to search through. And if the desire to go digging ever comes up again, don’t. Not just out of respect for the rules or for the other person’s privacy, but for yourself. 

Yours, 

Hayes