Breaking Free from Narcissistic Abuse

The Real Reason You Can't Stop Snooping on Your Narcissistic Partner

• Kerry McAvoy, Ph.D. • Season 4 • Episode 269

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A YouTube viewer asks: What about someone's makeup drives them to snoop instead of simply addressing the red flags?

In this episode, Dr. Kerry digs deeper into a question raised in the February 19, 2026, Fan Mail segment, Feeling the Urge to Snoop on Your Partner? Here's What It's Really Telling You. Learn why victims of narcissistic abuse feel compelled to hunt for proof and why it never brings the relief you're looking for.

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Kerry Kerr McAvoy, Ph.D, a retired psychologist & author, is an expert on cultivating healthy relationships and deconstructing narcissism. 

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Dr. Kerry McAvoy:

I actually found out that I'm a snooper. I'm taking a look at, into my own psyche at what was pushing me to do that behavior when I was stuck. Someone contacted me to say, "Hey, he's having an affair on you with me." Once I found out that was happening, boy, it, it just set off a whole chain of reactions inside of me and made me feel extremely shaky. I felt anxious, stirred up and anxious. Snooping creates this sense that you only feel safe as long as you're searching. There's this jolt of finding something. It's a hit. Same thing you get when you get a real big win, like a jackpot at the lottery. It's like . That jolt feeling can unfortunately become addictive. What drives some people to snoop and others don't, even when they're facing the same exact situation? Is there a character defect in the individuals that snoop? A listener recently asked what specific personality traits or past experiences drive some of us to snoop, whereas others of us don't? And you know, this hit really hard because I actually found out that I'm a snooper. So I guess I'm taking a look at, into my own psyche at what was- pushing me to do that behavior when I was stuck. You know, what causes us to wanna know not only who we're in a relationship with, but why and what are they doing that we become sort of the hunter, the gatherer of information in this situation? So let's do a deep dive into what causes some of us to snoop. Now, this comes out of a recent episode that I did on February 19th. I had a segment called Feeling the Urge to Snoop on Your Partner? Here's What It's Really Telling You, in which I gave suggestions of what to do different. So this is kind of a similar but different take. What we're gonna do here is look at the background of why some of us feel the compulsion to look into the background of other people, whereas others of us just don't. And I know this is a common problem with victims of narcissistic abuse, that the amount of gaslighting and deception is so severe that we just know we don't have the whole picture. For some of us, it creates such an itch to know that we then begin to start combing through everything that we possibly can, pictures and seeing if we can break into that person's mobile devices and computers and all sorts of stuff to see what else that we can discover that will somehow maybe solve the dilemma of answering some of the unanswerable questions in these relationships. But let's get into why. Is there any research into this, and what is it telling us about what happens in the electronic surveillance world of romantic relationships? Well, there actually was. Dr. Michelle Drouin in 2014 had a study called Interpersonal Electronic Surveillance in Romantic Relationships, and she found that people with an anxious attachment style were more likely to engage in snooping, that these people use snooping as sort of a regulation strategy. In other words, they're activated, feeling very anxious and stirred up, and they're attempting to soothe the fears that they're feeling. Uh, she considered this a maladaptive r- regulation strategy, in other words, one that doesn't work well. And also she, and was identifying the fear was a fear of abandonment. But unfortunately, this is what the study found, is that snooping rarely alleviates the anxiety. Instead, it tends to decrease relationship satisfaction and increase the likelihood of future monitoring. And I found that to be exactly the case in my situation. I, I had been in a long-term marriage before the troubled relationship, and in that marriage I never snooped once. I just I, whatever he told me I believed was true. And, and plus, I was married to a guy that, you know, he just was honest as the day was long. He just really never gave me any kind of concern about anything. Even the way he handled his phone was so casual. Like, no big deal. I knew that there was literally nothing on it that I would find that's interesting. It just didn't cross my mind. But I remember feeling so much cognitive dissonance in that relationship with my ex that I knew there was a whole lot that he wasn't telling me. Once I found out, and I, I found out because someone contacted me to say, "Hey, he's having an affair on you with me." Once I found out that was happening, boy, it, it just set off a whole chain of reactions inside of me and made me feel extremely shaky. I felt like if I didn't know that, and I didn't know it, I had no clue, what else didn't I know? And I think, I think the feeling of realizing that there was a lot that I didn't know that I didn't know was so troubling that it really made me anxious. Stirred up and anxious. So here are some reasons why people who get into that pattern, and it is, it's an addictive pattern. Once you do it, you wanna do it again, and you wanna do it again. It becomes really easy to kinda override any hesitation of doing it. You start to find yourself doing it with greater frequency. But here are some reasons why some of us snoop. It gives you the illusion of control. You think you're developing a safety net, that if you can figure out what the truth is, then you won't be blindsided or gaslit by your partner. The problem is, is that these individuals, if they are hiding things on you, they're so good at this that there is stuff you're just never gonna find out. So you're kind of lulling yourself into this sense of possible false security. It's a- not actually gonna happen. You probably will never know all that there is to know about that relationship. When we were seeking help with my ex's excessive acting out in the marriage, counselor, who was also somebody who had done this himself, said, "Kerry, you're never gonna know all that there is to know. This is like the Titanic and you seeing the top of the iceberg. You just see the top, but there's a whole lot down below that you're never gonna fully, ever maybe uncover or be aware of." So it's an illusion of control. It's not real control. It's an illusion. The second reason is confirmation bias. Often, believe it or not, the person who's snooping isn't looking for the truth. They're looking for evidence to support a fear they already have. That's how it felt to me. I already knew he was up to no good I wanted to find proof that he was up to no good. So I wasn't trying to find proof that he was being faithful. I wanted to find proof to confirm my suspicion that he wasn't being faithful. So this becomes a feedback loop that you can only feel safe as long as you're searching. Do you see how, how it works? Because you suspect there's something wrong, and you're searching for it, and then you find it, then you wanna search more for it because you can only feel safe as long as you know. It's weird. I know that that's difficult to even make it make sense, but I, I understand when I read this. Yeah, I thought, "Yep, this is exactly how it feels." It creates this sense that you only feel safe as long as you're searching, so you're looking for confirmation constantly, which puts you on that drive to look for more. And here's the other thing. It- snooping, believe it or not, is a passive-aggressive way of handling anxiety. Instead of you saying to yourself or saying to the partner in the relationship, "I don't like how I'm feeling in this relationship. You're leaving me feeling insecure," or, "I don't like how I'm feeling in this relationship. I need to do something about it." Instead of facing the reality of what really is, we're just delaying it, and we're putting it into the effort of the acting out instead of facing the reality and dealing with the potential rejection or the lie in real time. And then there's this jolt of finding something. It's a hit. It's a neurochemical hit. It's a dopamine, cortisol kind of like, um, same thing y- you get when you get a real big win, like a jackpot at the lottery. It's like it is so electrifying that it in itself, that jolt feeling, can unfortunately become addictive 'cause you just know that it's out there, so you wanna itch it until you can find it. So here are some things. If you're struggling with this, here are some healthier suggestions. Instead of you doing this behavior, instead of saying, "Hey, I think you're cheating," start to say to yourself, "Hey, I've noticed in myself a spike in my own insecurity, and I'm really struggling to feel connected to you. Can we talk about it?" So think about approaching your partner with naming the feeling that's driving the fear, not actually the fear. The fear would be say, "Hey, I think you're doing something wrong." That's the fear. But the feeling would be, "Hey, I'm feeling like there's a separation or a disconnection between us," or, "I'm starting to feel like you're drifting, and when you've done that before, usually something's up, and it's really making me feel uncomfortable and edgy. Can we talk about it?" If your partner can't do that or won't do that or gaslights you or attacks you, you already know this relationship is not a good relationship. It's toxic So that's suggestion number one. Suggestion number two is use the 24-hour wait rule. So whenever you feel the urge to snoop, commit to yourself that you're gonna wait a minimum of 24 hours, and instead of doing the snooping, in that w- window of time, start doing other things like journaling about what you're afraid of losing. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to move the brain out of that hijacked survival mode, the activated mode. We're trying to get it back into the thinking, the planning mode that gives you back more of your control. That's number two. Number three is shift from snooping to becoming more transparent. Shift from thinking, "I'm gonna catch you," to, "This is what I need to do to feel safe." So healthy relationships live on agreed-upon transparency, like open phone policies with mutual consent rather than snooping through somebody's phone in the middle of the night. See what you can do to sort of live in more of that overtly open style of relationship. Can you imagine, for example, in a, in a more healthier relationship where you'd say, "Hey, the way you're using the phone lately reminds me of somebody that cheated on me. It's really activating me. Do you mind if we sat down together, swapped phones with each other, and then we just kinda could look through each other's phone and, and, you know, may- maybe make each other feel better?" You know, so something like that. Something that's more open. Again, unhealthy people are not gonna be okay with that. They're gonna, especially somebody with something to hide, they're gonna push back, they're gonna accuse you of being paranoid, they're gonna s- tell you you're ridiculous. That in itself is information that this is not a safe, healthy relationship. But in a healthy relationship where there's a lot of understanding, a lot of safety, a lot of openness, this is something that partners should and can be able to hear. And then the last step, this is the number four, focus on your self-regulation instead of, uh, focusing on trying to find the evidence that somehow is gonna fix things, give you the, the proof that you need to be able to take the next step. That's what I was looking for, the proof that I needed to tell me I needed to get out, the proof that I needed to tell me that he's lying to me about working and getting better that he actually is not. Instead, I needed to recognize that evidence was never gonna give me that kind of security. I needed to instead look at what I could do to ground myself living in a situation that was chronically unsafe, and I needed to disconnect from whether or not he was acting out to starting to take care of myself in a situation that was chronically unsafe. And I know that sounds crazy 'cause people would say, "Well, leave." Yes, but I wasn't to the place of being ready to leave. I didn't have enough lined up, plus he scared me. There's a lot that goes into leaving. So if you're in a place where you, you know that this is just not safe, you know your partner's doing things that are not right or healthy for that relationship, focus on you and let go of trying to control them. I know that's easier said than done, but that's the way out of this. Start to find what you can do to self-soothe and ground yourself to be able to tolerate the discomfort of the uncertainty that you're living in. So thank you for pushing back on me and asking me to take a look at myself and at other people who have habits of snooping. And if you have a question you'd like to have me answer on air, please send it to me by email at clients@kerrymcavoyphd.com. That's C-L-I-E-N-T-S @kerrymcavoyphd.com. Or I've included a link here in the video description or the show notes. Just use that and it'll take you to the form where you can fill that out and then leave that. And thank you so much for the trust. This was a fun one. As much it was uncomfortable, I really appreciated asking me to dig deeper on a topic that I've already covered. So I deeply appreciate that.

It's 2:

00 AM again and you're replaying that whole conversation over and you're wondering to yourself, "Was it really that bad? Or maybe I'm just being dramatic." So you start to draft that I'm sorry text again because the guilt that you're feeling or the confusion you're experiencing is just unbearable. And you know this loop because you've been there before, but I want you to know that you're not alone I'm Dr. Kerry McAvoy. I'm a retired psychologist, and for 25 years I've been helping people untangle exactly what toxic relationships do to your mind, how they create the confusion, the self-doubt, and that trauma bond that keeps pulling you back in. Here's the truth. Recovery isn't about getting more information. It's about having the right support in the exact moment you need it. That's why I've created Reclaim You. It's a private, always available coaching app built from my work and my content organized into an extensive library that you can actually use when you're triggered. Inside it, you'll get five-minute lessons when your brain can't handle a deep dive, check-ins that meet you exactly where you are, whether you're feeling strong, shattered, or numb. Boundary scripts that help you say no without over-explaining. Grounding tools that work fast when you're activated, and progress tracking so you can see proof you're healing even on days when it feels like you're not. There's no appointments, no waiting, no judgment, just practical support right when you need it. Reclaim You, real help in real time right in your pocket, and it's a coaching support, not therapy or emergency care. Learn more at studio.com/drkerry. So start your healing today and reclaim you.

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