Alix B. Golden started her life as a Carolina Girl, but matured into a Georgia Peach. This freelancer dishes on sex, relationships and dating often revealing more than she should about her own life. Read more from her at A Brown Girl.

When you’re in a relationship, there is some kind of implied trust that entitles you to a certain amount of privacy. That means your mate doesn’t expect to have her pockets picked through, or her text messages checked. She doesn’t expect you to go through her friend’s list and ask who such and such is. She expects to be able to leave the house without you calling 15 times an hour asking what time she’ll be home.

I believe that if you ever feel the need to do any of the above mentioned things then there is a problem. The problem could be with the person doing the checking. Or it could be that your mate is sneaky as hell.

Either way, it’s not a healthy situation and there is a serious need for some couples counseling. Or maybe it’s time to call the relationship quits.

I’ve done my fair share of snooping. I had two girlfriends that I felt the need to check up on. A lot.

My first girlfriend lied to me once about where she was. From that point on, I started checking behind her.

With the next girl, I checked behind her because she cheated with me. In the back of my mind, I knew that there was a possibility she could cheat on me. And she did.

I think the most extreme thing I’ve ever done was hack into my girlfriend’s email and set it up so that I would get a copy of every email she got forwarded to my inbox. That was how I discovered she was saving phone numbers of her dates under the names of her friends, so I wouldn’t notice. Sigh.

That was a few years back, though. I learned from those situations that if you look for something, then you will find it.

Now, if I get tempted to do anything like that, I know that it’s time for me to take inventory of my relationship. Doing all of that checking drove me crazy and made me completely paranoid. I advise against it. The bad thing is that I have friends that have done much, much worse.

So I ask, how much privacy should your mate expect? Do you snoop? Have you been snooped on? What’s the worst situation of snooping you’ve ever experienced?

Subscribe: We’ve got a weekly eblast.
Twitter: Oh, yeah. We tweet the news, too, so follow us.
Facebook: Become a fan of our page.
YouTube: Videos, too.