Should I Loyalty Test My Boyfriend or Girlfriend?

You've asked, and they said there's nothing going on. The trouble is that "nothing" is exactly what they'd say either way. So the idea of a loyalty test starts to look reasonable: let someone else send the message, watch what comes back, and finally have an answer that doesn't depend on their word.

That's not a petty thing to want. Wanting to stop guessing is about as human as it gets.

Short answer: we would not. A loyalty test does not show what your partner is doing. It shows how they react to a situation someone built for them, on one day. A "fail" can be provoked, a "pass" proves little, and if the test is discovered you are the one who lied. If your worry is specific, check the specific thing. If it is general, a test will not settle it.

Below: what a loyalty test is, what it really measures, how to read a "pass" and a "fail", the risks the sales pages leave out, the fake-profile and legal questions, and what gets you closer to an answer.

What a loyalty test is

The name covers three different setups.

The companies selling these tests say on their own sites that testers reach people through Instagram messages, Messenger, texts, video calls and dating apps. Their pages list reasons to buy one. The ones we read listed no reasons not to.

What a test actually measures

A test shows how your partner answered one stranger, once. It shows whether they were polite, curious or flattered that day. And it shows how persistent the tester was allowed to be.

The list of things it leaves untouched is longer, and it contains everything you came for:

• Whether they have ever cheated.

• Whether they would have looked for it themselves.

• What they do when nobody is prompting them.

• Whether they are on a dating app.

• Why you felt the need to test.

The difference matters. A test manufactures a situation. It tells you about that situation. What you actually want to know is whether something is already happening, and a test does not look there.

What "pass" and "fail" really mean

Each result comes with a conclusion that feels obvious, and with other explanations that fit just as well.

Say the tester writes on a Tuesday evening and gets "haha thanks, who's this?" in return. Is that curiosity, politeness, or the first step of something? You'll read it three times and see a different answer each time. The test was supposed to end the guessing, and it has handed you one more thing to guess about.

A paid tester has one job: to get a response worth reporting. The more they insist, the less the response says about your partner and the more it says about the script.

The risks nobody selling one mentions

This is the less comfortable part.

It gets discovered. Your partner learns you paid a stranger, or invented one, to deceive them. That is now the problem in the relationship.

A false "fail". You act on a reaction that was engineered.

A false "pass". You relax about something a test never examined.

It does not end the doubt. This is our view, not a measured fact: a test that never looked at what caused the doubt is unlikely to quiet it, and it is easy to see why someone who tested once would be tempted to test again.

A stranger now knows your private life. You gave a company your partner's name, accounts and your suspicions.

The platform's rules. Fake accounts break the terms of the apps they run on.

On that last point, Tinder is explicit: it "doesn't allow users to impersonate, or misrepresent affiliation, connection or association with, any person or entity". A fake profile made to test someone is exactly that.

"Should I make a fake profile to catch my boyfriend?"

No, for the same reasons, plus three of its own.

• You are the one writing. You know what would tempt them, and you will use it. That makes the result less meaningful, not more.

• You cannot un-know it. Whatever they answer, you read it as their partner and as the stranger at once.

• Accounts get banned. A profile under a false identity breaks the app's rules, and the app can remove it. For what gives such a profile away, see our guide to the red flags of a fake dating profile.

Stories of fake profiles that "caught" someone travel well online. The ones where it proved nothing, or ended the relationship over a polite reply, are not the ones that go viral.

Is a loyalty test legal?

This is general information, not legal advice, and it varies by place.

Is messaging someone under a false name a crime? Often not by itself. It can become one when it is used to harass, defraud, or impersonate a real person.

Is it "entirely legal", as sellers say? We saw that claim made without a source, and without any mention of differences between states or countries.

Does it break platform rules? Yes, where the platform bans fake or misleading accounts.

Can the result be used in a divorce? Ask a lawyer. Evidence obtained by deception can hurt the person who obtained it.

If you are thinking about this in the context of a separation, speak to a lawyer first.

What to do instead

Start by naming what you are afraid of. The answer changes the next step.

The difference between a test and a check is simple. A test provokes a behavior. A check looks at something that already exists. If it's a girlfriend you're worried about, the first row has its own guide: ways to check if she's on dating apps.

The one thing CheatEye can check for you

CheatEye answers one narrow question: is there a dating profile. It checks whether a profile matching your partner exists on Tinder, from a first name, an age, a gender and a location, with an optional photo, and the search can be extended to Bumble, Hinge, Happn and OkCupid as an option. When a profile is found, you see what the profile says, the photos on it, when it was last active and where. It costs from $17.90 and runs without contacting your partner or creating any fake account. To see the other ways of checking first, read our guide to whether a husband is on dating sites.

It can't tell you how they would react to a stranger, see Instagram messages, texts or any conversation, search by phone number or email, or show a live location. And it can't measure loyalty. Nothing does.

Most people considering a loyalty test are worried about Instagram or texts, and for that we are no help. A profile that comes up is not proof of an affair, and a search that finds nothing does not prove there is no profile. If one comes up and he says it's old, we cover telling a forgotten profile from an active one.

If dating apps are your concern, run a search on CheatEye, or see is my boyfriend on dating apps.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do loyalty tests work? They produce a result. What the result means is the problem: it shows a reaction to a staged approach, on one occasion.

How accurate is a loyalty test? There is nothing to be accurate about. No test can measure what a person does when unprompted.

Will my partner find out about a loyalty test? They can. A tester can't write from an account your partner already knows, so the message has to come out of nowhere, quite possibly from a profile with no history. It is easy to see why that would look odd. If it comes out, the deception is yours to explain.

Is a loyalty test the same as entrapment? Entrapment is a legal term about police conduct. In everyday language, yes: the test creates the temptation it then reports on.

Is it wrong to loyalty test someone? It means deceiving a person to find out whether they deceive you. We think most people would take being tested as a breach of trust, and it's not hard to understand why.

What if he passes the loyalty test? The doubt usually stays, because the test did not look at what caused it.

What is a better way to find out if my boyfriend is cheating? Decide what exactly you fear, check the part that can be checked, and talk about the rest. The ways to do that checking yourself are in our guide to finding hidden dating profiles with free methods.