Their phone is unlocked on the table. Do you look?
The phone buzzes. Your partner is in the shower. The message preview sits there, glowing, exactly at the angle of your eyeline. You are not a snooper — obviously — but your eyes have already read the first line, because that is what eyes do.
The interesting moral question is not the accidental glance. It is the swipe that could follow it.
Looking through a partner's phone without asking — where do you stand?
Surveys on this are a comedy of self-report: large majorities call it a violation, sizeable minorities admit doing it anyway, and the overlap between the two groups is not small.
Defenders of the peek argue that trust is precisely the thing being verified. Critics reply that a search can only ever find guilt — because if you find nothing, you'll simply conclude they're careful.