People Are Revealing The Shocking, Relationship-Altering Stuff They've Found On Their Partners' Phones While Taking A Peek

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23-04-2025

Reddit user gotwire recently asked, "What's something you found on a partner's phone that instantly changed the relationship forever — but they never knew you saw it?" Brace for impact because manyyyy of the replies were quite brutal! We're not responsible for any trust issues you may or may not develop from this post! Let's get into it:
1. "I found a hidden folder in his phone with screenshots of other girls' Instagram stories — girls we both knew. Some were mutual friends. None of it was overtly sexual, but the captions he added to the pics were…gross. Like, 'She doesn't even know what I'd do to her,' kind of stuff. It felt violating. Not because he cheated, but because I saw a side of him that made my skin crawl, objectifying women he smiled at in real life, including people I cared about, was friends with, and with whom he interacted on a daily basis. I never said a word. Just quietly started planning my exit, and told my friends. I have not seen him since, and he deleted socials, so I have no idea what happened to him."
— itzAva_
2. "He had long text conversations and a history of phone calls lasting over an hour with his ex, whom he supposedly wasn't talking to anymore. He complained about me in some of the texts, and she encouraged him to leave me. After finding that, I was with him for over a year, but never trusted him again. He still doesn't know I saw his phone. We broke up because he couldn't control his temper. This was years ago, but it still makes me mad when I think about it. I'll never be with someone I don't trust again."
— TropicalBeaches46
3. "I found a Seeking Arrangements account. He left his email logged into my phone, and one of the most recent emails was a password reset for a Seeking Arrangements/sugar daddy account. So I clicked on it, and it took me to his profile. He was advertising himself as a sugar baby and was describing his perfect arrangement, the things he likes to do, the perfect date, etc., which was basically all the things we liked to do together and the dates that we had already gone on, so that stung. I had been with him for four years at this point and he was a super abusive and obsessive narcissistic who had done so many shitty things to me, so oddly I wasn't very shocked. I thought it was really strange and embarrassing."
"It immediately changed how I looked at him, and whatever love I had for him left was gone. He was sleeping beside me when I found it all out, but I never told him about it. I didn't want to give him the opportunity to defend himself and try to gaslight me. So I just waited a few weeks and broke up with him without excessive explanation or citing anything specific. It was a very powerful step for me at the time. It's been almost eight years now, and I couldn't be happier that I left that relationship."
— moon_disco
4. "Notes keeping track of how long since we last fought, when to pick the next one if we hadn't had one by then, and potential things to pick a fight about. She didn't believe in a relationship going more than four weeks without a fight. Also, I found a list of my passwords she'd managed to uncover."
— admles
5. "Been together since 2017. Had a gut feeling to check his phone, but he was always guarded when it came to it. He fell asleep one day with YouTube open, so I looked through his Instagram. For six months, he was in a group chat with two other people where they sent each other videos of themselves using the restroom in diapers and exchanged feet pics — all for amounts of money that never exceeded $10. No idea how to even approach this."
— FishermanDelicious26
6. "My ex told me not to worry about these girlfriends of his in our friend group. These women were overly friendly to me, like super nice, but you could tell it wasn't genuine. My intuition is usually right, but I ignored it until I had to use his computer one day. I looked through this weird folder with a suspicious name, and in the folder were hundreds of nudes and videos of them together or just the women alone. He didn't know I saw all of it. I packed my bags and left, never returned, and blocked him."
— anon______eyes61111
7. "I went through his (27M at the time) texts and discovered that he had been in a secret relationship with our high school biology teacher for almost a decade. We had only been together for two of those years, but I read those texts, and he instantly became a stranger in my mind. We lasted about three more months before my distrust evolved into cyclical toxicity, and we ended it."
— emburd182
8. "A picture of them with a coworker of the opposite gender, hugging closely. The picture was sent in a group chat. Folks were commenting about how great they looked together, what a cute couple, etc. Not one comment from my ex about me or our relationship. We were together for five years."
— Themindsofmoira
9. "The amount of porn in his files. Hours and hours of paid-for, specific types of videos. Meanwhile, we barely had sex. I loved him so much, but I never thought of him the same when I learned that he was attracted to something I would never be."
— SickCambos
10. "I saw a message to his friend confessing that he was saving up money to be able to leave me and move out of our apartment together before he would let me know he wanted to break up with me."
— Emily47289566
11. "After a year of remaining moderately stoic, I confided in her about some emotional torment I was experiencing and broke down and cried in front of her. I found texts to her friend a few hours later about how 'psycho' and emotional I was. That was the last time I ever showed any feeling, and I broke up with her six months later."
— Intergalactic_Lion
12. "I had a sneaking suspicion after we started becoming less intimate. I found out that my ex was messaging hundreds of other women flirty things and some full-on sexual requests on social media as early as September. We started dating in August, so that all began only a month into our relationship. Seeing those messages sent me into a full-blown panic attack, to the point where I had to go to the ER because my heart rate was through the roof. I loved him more than anything. I eventually learned he was also cheating on me with sex workers. It did a number on my self-esteem and fundamentally changed me as a person and my perception of love and relationships."
— AutomaticExtension30
13. "We had been together for almost two years. We were on vacation with my parents, and my phone had died, so I asked to borrow his to look something up online that my mom had been wanting. Right as his phone left his hands, a message popped up from 'my love' in Arabic. He knew I was bilingual, but I guess he forgot that Arabic is one of the six languages I speak. The messages were a mix of English and Arabic, and the moment I saw the message, I opened the text thread, and my heart dropped to my stomach. The messages went back almost the entire time we were together. I marked the message as unread and got out of the app. I was so enraged, I remember wishing he had just slept with her instead, because seeing those messages burned so bad. I never saw him the same way again, and it took me years to get over him."
"We ended things about a month later, and he had to explain to his mother why we weren't together. She messaged me later and apologized. I told her what I saw, and she promised she'd never mention it, but she knew who the girl was and hates her to this day, even though they didn't end up together. His parents still send me happy holiday messages 10 years later."
— Physical-Rule-6776
14. "When I was around 18 or 19, I went to the Apple store with my then-boyfriend to get him a new phone. We had been together around five months at this point. While at the Apple store, the tech helping us was having trouble moving over my boyfriend's data from his old phone to his new phone (the estimated time was around six or so hours), and the tech asked if he had a lot of pictures. My ex told them he had around 16,000 pictures. He opened the app while I was standing at an angle behind him, and I don't think he knew I could see. Out of those 16,000 pictures, at least 11,000 were nudes of random girls. His porn addiction eventually ruined our relationship."
— spicypisces320
15. "His mom texted him, and a notification popped up on his TV. I had to see it after I saw she was talking about me, saying not-so-great things, because she was mad I set a boundary around what amount of drinking I'm comfortable with my 4-year-old being around before we choose to leave gatherings. She abuses alcohol and got really drunk and really mad when I set that boundary. But I saw that he really stuck up for me and called her out on being wrong. He said some really caring things about me, and it really pushed me to see how much he's come to trust me, and how far he's come with his own drinking. He's grown to value not hurting other people by indulging in his own vices, and it showed me how much he's changed and how much therapy has been helping him."
— lifeincolour_
MoMo Productions / Getty Images
18. "He took a picture of one of my journal entries where I was seriously questioning our relationship and saved it on his phone. I don't journal at all anymore since he apparently reads it."
— CCwoops
19. "A couple of months into dating a girl, I was sitting in the passenger seat of her car, waiting for her to come back from running inside her house, when I saw a text come through on her phone that said, 'Happy anniversary, baby. Can't wait to see you tonight!' So, yeah, that ended."
— lutlowt
20. "He was discussing my skills in bed in the 'fellas' group chat without any sense of respect towards me."
— californiabarbie
21. "My ex shared pics of my dick in a group chat with her friends. There were also other dicks in there — I'm assuming their boyfriends'. I never said anything, but I slowly stopped making time for her, and she eventually broke up with me after she caught me avoiding her."
— Throwawayray4567
22. "Multiple texts to his brother stating he debated breaking up with me at different times throughout the past year. I had no inkling he was feeling that way. I instantly lost faith in the relationship, and we broke up shortly after."
— Bongofromouterspace
23. "His secret Reddit account, where I found out he was sexting women from dirty Snapchat subreddits like 30 minutes after taking my virginity."
— wildflowerhonies
And here are some wholesome ones so you don't totally lose faith in love and humanity:
24. "A few years ago, I was adding some items to the Notes app grocery list on my wife's phone. The app opened to the most recent list, which was a copy of her wedding vows with the promises she made to me (things like supporting my dreams, being my partner in our adventures). Beside each one was a list of ideas to match, including some things we had done recently. We were going through a rough patch then, and seeing that list doubled my resolve to work through it."
— timothywilliams2017
25. "His messenger chats with my mom. He often jokes with my mom and always asks about me, what I was like as a kid, why I am so full of energy, and how to take care of me. My mom had cancer and passed away in 2023. Their last messages to each other were him assuring her he'd take care of me the way she wanted him to."
— Chispiken
26. "A folder with pictures of me, but not pictures on dates or anything — mostly pictures of me making silly faces or sleeping or eating. It showed me that he values me being comfortable and just existing more than being dolled up and perfect constantly."
— ohmybubbles
27. "His notes app had a list of stuff about me — favourite movies, flowers I'd like to get, shoe size, anything and everything. There were subdivisions like potential gifts to buy, what to do if I was angry at him, and stuff about my seasonal depression and what helps. It was almost three pages long and titled 'My love.' I fell in love more. It showed he was serious about me and willing to put in effort."
— Desperate-Exit692
28. "My fiancé and I have a really chill relationship. We respect that phones are private, so we don't snoop but use each other's phones all the time. I asked about something, and he told me to look it up and passed me his phone. I went to Google and it opened his last tab. He was looking at engagement rings. I clicked on another tab and searched on that instead to try to hide that I'd seen it. I never confessed I'd seen it, but Christ. I knew I wanted to spend my life with him early on, and we'd had casual conversations, but I'm a natural sceptic. Seeing that solidified in my little worried brain that he wasn't lying when he said he loved me."
— Bubbly_North_2180
29. And finally: "Not his phone, but my late husband's tablet. A year after he died, I was clearing his tablet of stuff, and saw he had a Twitter account. I was reading through his posts, and hit one that had me in tears for the rest of the day. He had responded to some thread about keeping women in their place, or some such garbage. My husband had posted a long rant about how being married for 35 years to a woman who never tired of learning, who never let things stop her, who stayed interested in new things, was the best thing in his life, and that a smart, thinking woman kept his life interesting and exciting. I always knew he felt this way, but seeing him say this to a total internet stranger, in a forum he thought I would never see, was just kind of overwhelming for a few days."
"We were friends for 45 years, best friends for 43 years, and married for 37 years. He died three and a half years ago, and the hole in my life is just as big as the day he died. I'm not languishing or yearning to follow him anytime soon, but I miss him tremendously."
Be honest: Have you ever gone through a partner's phone? Have you ever found something on there that completely changed the course of your relationship? Tell us in the comments or share anonymously using this form.