It’s Tempting To Put Your Boyfriend’s Fidelity To The Test, But Should You?

Most young women have wondered if their boyfriend would cheat on them if given the chance. If another pretty girl approached him and started flirting with him, how would he respond? Would he be nice but direct about already having a girlfriend, or would he flirt back – or worse, pretend to be single?

Questions like these dart around in the minds of many of us. It’s sadly not crazy to be worried about it, either – one study found that 46% of respondents admitted to having an affair before. And with a new story about a female celebrity being cheated on coming out practically every few weeks, it’s normal to start wondering if you’re safe.

Cue the endless TikTok accounts run by young women who offer their services to fellow ladies: They’ll send your boyfriend a flirty DM, and you’ll be able to see how he responds. You get to put your boyfriend’s fidelity through the ultimate test to see just how much of a keeper he is. And it’s totally tempting to participate – it’s straightforward and gets you the answers you’re looking for without having to do much yourself. Plus, how else will you know? 

And while the curiosity is understandable, and for some women, this worked out, is it really the best course of action to test your boyfriend’s fidelity?

What Are the Potential Outcomes?

It’s normal to get caught up in a trend and hand off your boyfriend’s handle to a girl on TikTok, but it’s important to understand that this decision is one that leads to a myriad of outcomes – some of them incredibly hurtful and surprising – that you’d have to be prepared for.

One outcome is that he doesn’t engage at all, or that he lets her know he has a girlfriend – obviously the ideal outcome that you’d be hoping for. Another outcome is that he wouldn’t totally shut her down, taking her compliments but not engaging much further. Yet another outcome is that he flirts back, and maybe even denies that he’s already taken when she point-blank asks. And possibly the worst outcome is that he attempts to meet up with her – which sadly has happened in many of these types of TikToks.

Confronting Him Could Lead to Other Issues

Say you catch him in the act – he responds to her, returns the compliments, and carries on a conversation that’s close enough to cheating. Just from his response, you’re confident that, if given the opportunity, he’d be unfaithful. The next step would probably be to confront him about it and tell him about your plan to catch him red-handed.

The issue is that, even if you’re justified in being upset about the way he responded to what he thought was a real DM from another girl, he could easily get defensive and accuse you of tricking and trapping him, without ever having to address his inappropriate conversation with another woman.

This causes an important, possibly relationship-changing conversation to get lost in a circle of blame rather than focusing on the real issue at hand: his unacceptable behavior.

Ask Yourself Why You Think He’d Cheat

Being that cheating is hardly uncommon, it’s normal to have worries about it ever happening to you. But before you give these worries any real merit, to the point where you decide to enlist another woman to test your boyfriend’s fidelity, ask yourself why you think your boyfriend would cheat – and be totally honest with yourself.

Do you worry that he’ll cheat on you, less because of anything he’s actually done, and more because you’ve been cheated on before by an ex? Or maybe your parents weren’t faithful to one another, and so you’ve always been worried about the same thing happening to you? Or could you possibly struggle with low self-esteem that leaves you feeling unlovable?

When there’s a lack of trust, no “test” will make the relationship a healthy one to stay in.

Or maybe, being cheated on wasn’t something you truly worried about until you were with your current boyfriend, and it’s his odd actions that have made you begin to wonder. Maybe he’s weirdly possessive of his phone, or “forgets” to tell you he’ll be staying out late, or constantly likes pictures of Instagram bikini models, or goes out with a mysterious “friend” from work a little too often. 

It’s important to be clear on why exactly you’re worried about your boyfriend cheating on you – is it based on his actions, or your own insecurities that have nothing to do with him or anything that’s actually happened in the relationship?

If You Actually Think He’d Cheat, It’s Not a Good Relationship To Be In

If you genuinely believe, with good reason, that your boyfriend would cheat on you, does it actually matter how he would respond to a fake DM? The reality is that even if he didn’t respond to her, you’d still have that question in the back of your mind. His passing this particular “test” might let you rest easy for a while, but the suspicion will eventually creep back up because you don’t truly trust him.

Without trust, a relationship won’t be able to thrive and grow deep. And if that lack of trust isn’t due to your own issues that existed well before the relationship, but due to your boyfriend’s character or behavior, no “test” will make the relationship a healthy one to stay in. If you really believe he’d do something like this to you, it may be best to call it quits on the relationship – we all deserve a relationship that doesn’t cause us to question, scheme, and test.

Closing Thoughts

It’s understandable to want to enlist the help of a girl on TikTok to make sure our boyfriend isn’t running around on us, but we should take our desire to test him at all as a sign that something isn’t right – either with ourselves, with him, or with the relationship in general. 

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