When you’re meeting your significant other’s family for the first time, it’s normal they might be a little bit nosy. After all, you’re a complete stranger to them. Maybe that’s why people don’t get along well with their in-laws. In fact, only 27% of couples say they get along with their in-laws.

When they act like this boyfriend’s mother, it’s easy to understand that statistic. This woman asked the internet whether she was being a jerk for not saying much about herself to her boyfriend’s parents and getting mad at his mother when she tried to get some info the old-fashioned way: by snooping inside her phone.

Going through someone’s phone is a serious violation of privacy

Image credits:Teona Swift (Not the actual photo)

But that didn’t stop this mother from trying to access her son’s girlfriend’s phone

Image credits:macniak (Not the actual photo)

Image credits:throwaway4928583

Secrecy and privacy are two different things

The misunderstanding in this situation also arose from a miscommunication between the mother and the girlfriend. The two understand the boundaries of privacy differently. The girlfriend, as she claims, is a private person in general: “The more someone digs and pushes, the less I want to share out of instinct,” she explained in her post. The mother, in turn, wants to know more about her and believes she is being secretive.

What’s the difference between being secretive and being private? The answer lies in the definitions behind ‘privacy’ and ‘secrecy.’ A secret is something a person withholds from others out of fear of consequences. Being private is about creating safety for yourself or others.

“Privacy involves the use of healthy boundaries, while secrecy replaces a boundary with a wall of some kind,” Vicki Tidwell Palmer, LCSW, writes for HuffPost. “It could be a wall of silence, avoidance, anger, defensiveness, or some other means of blocking communication.”

And it’s not just about the girlfriend’s job either. The boyfriend’s parents would probably understand that if they had known she works with classified information. Either way, it’s understandable why the woman got upset. A stranger snooping around on your phone would probably make a lot of people mad.

Image credits:Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 (Not the actual photo)

Not having a social media presence is rare for young people, but it’s not unheard of

Other than being secretive about her job, the boyfriend’s mother seemed to be more concerned with the fact that the woman didn’t have a digital footprint. She made a fair point when she said it’s strange someone under 30 is not on social media. In fact, only 4% of the world’s population doesn’t use social media.

And the boyfriend’s mother isn’t the only one who finds this suspicious. For example, many people in the UK wouldn’t go on a date with a person if they couldn’t find them on social media. 54% of 18 to 24-year-olds say they look up their future date online before they go on a date with them.

Dr. Alex Jones, a senior lecturer in Psychology at Swansea University, told Dazed that the fact someone is not on social media already tells you things about their personality. “We already know that usage of social media apps like Instagram are correlated with narcissism and body image variables, and not always in a good way.”

“More usage can be detrimental to self-perception, and those who are more narcissistic spend more time on social media apps. A lower use or lack of social media is probably associated with a certain kind of personality and they are most probably less vain and less narcissistic.”

Life on social media isn’t real, after all. People can curate their profiles and feeds, and they don’t necessarily reflect what kind of person they are. According to Viva Mental Health, “Just like anything else, everyone’s relationship with this part of society is going to look a little bit different and we shouldn’t assume that someone wants their life documented on social media.”

Image credits:dole777 (Not the actual photo)

The girlfriend explained the reasons behind her secretiveness

The majority of the commenters agreed: the mother was way out of line

Others thought the girlfriend did this to herself by not preparing a cover story about what her job is

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