A Peek Into the Soul

Men are sometimes closed books. We’ve been programmed at nearly a genetic level to conceal our emotions, as if showing how we feel will give away some weakness for others to exploit. This occasionally makes it difficult for women, and on occasion other men, to really understand what’s going on in our minds. I say occasionally other men because just like we can’t show our own emotions, we can’t show interest in another man’s emotional state either.

But there’s a loophole. A shortcut if you will. If you truly want to see what matters most to a man, the one place you can look is his cell phone. I know, it may sound silly, but a little known fact about men is that they like the idea of keeping readily available those things that matter most. If you scan through the pictures he has taken with his camera phone, you will discover the things he holds most dear.

Now, some of it may be no surprise. A new father’s phone will be littered with baby pictures. A car enthusiast will have pictures of engines and paint jobs. But the really informative stuff is the stuff with staying power. The photos that were taken at some distant point in the past are the indicators of emotional attachment. A man will typically cycle through his pictures on a fairly regular basis, deleting those that are repetitious or poor quality, as well as those that have lost their value. I recently had a purge of a Christmas photo of an uncle wearing a leopard print Dr. Seuss hat. It was funny at the time, and perhaps could have been used against him later, but I just decided I didn’t really care that much about it anymore.

If a photo is still in there, it means that the owner regularly looks at it and makes a conscious decision to hold onto it. Now unfortunately we can’t definitively determine why he has these photos. But it can be a way to confirm that things you thought he had lost interest in or never had interest in are in fact matters of great importance to him.