Are Men Naturally Snoopy?

That's the question a female friend of mine posed over drinks the other day. Are men genetically predisposed to snoop? Several months earlier, she had caught her boyfriend signing on to her myspace account and reading her email. He confessed (I can only imagine what a tender scene that must have been) and she forgave him, but now she suspects that he's been going through her purse and her cellphone when she's not around.

Of course, she has cheated on him in the past so their accounts are fairly balanced. One can just as easily imagine him asking one of his female friends over drinks: are woman naturally inclined to cheat?

I can't speak on behalf of my gender, but in the interests of a better understanding between the sexes I will share with you, Gentle Readers, two stories from my own life in which I did not take what was said to me by my significant other at face value, and what I learned.

During my last year of college I was dating M., a pretty, slender 19-year-old of Filipino descent. M. was a women's studies major, which I regarded at the time as being to white upper middle class women what basket weaving was to athletes. Our year-long relationship was tempestuous and punctuated with periodic break-ups, usually driven by political disagreements.

M. told me one day that her ex-boyfriend N. was leaving town for a job in New York and that she wanted to take him out to dinner. I said fine. When I saw her after that evening, however, I knew, just knew that she had cheated on me.

I also knew that she would never admit to cheating, but she did keep a journal in her desk drawer. I waited until she had gone to class and turned to the date in question. I read:

N. came over. We made love. It was nice.

I was fuming, but what could I do? Evidence obtained by illegal search is inadmissable in the court of human relations, so I resorted to another tactic.

"M," I said, "we have to talk. N and I have a few friends in common, and one of my friends tells me that N bragged about nailing you. He referred to you as a slut but said you were a pretty good lay. I have to know if anything happened."

M. blanched. "No, David, nothing......"

"OK, " I said, touching her shoulder. "I believe you. I want you to know that. I think it would be best to end my friendship with N's friend, though. You're more important to me. I believe you and trust you."

Her voice quivered, "I love you, David."

After three days of playing cat and mouse, M. confessed. She sent me flowers and letters and called me constantly and in the end I did take her back. What I had done to her was every bit as deceitful as what she had done to me and so our accounts balanced. I should note that the next three months were the best of our relationship.

In 1995 I started seeing Kinga, a Polish undergraduate. For our third date, I wrote her a paper on Plato's Republic that netted an A+ and she slept with me. She never stayed over, however---as she explained it, she lived with her parents and they were on the conservative side.

The thing that had me puzzled, however, was that the male name on the caller ID differed from her surname. I asked her about the name on the caller ID and without missing a beat she spit out:

"He's my adopted father. My parents are divorced."

"You told me once that your parents were still together."

"Shit.....you caught me."

It transpired that she had been living with a man the last three years and that the relationship was on the outs. We tried to make something work but the magic was gone.

On the question of whether or not men are natural snoops, I would have to answer that if a self-respecting man gets to the point where he's going through his girlfriend's purse and checking her email, he had best end the relationship. The Spying Cuckold is an archetype that has been mined for laughs throughout western literature and is every bit as ridiculous in real life.