She woke up at 4 am with a bad feeling and checked her boyfriend’s phone for the first time — she found 1:30 am texts calling his 'best friend' baby
'I never thought I had to look into it because I have male friends,' Brittany Schmitt said
Pet names are often an intimate part of romantic relationships, usually reserved for the person you love, but one woman found out that her boyfriend was calling someone else “baby.” On Emma Willmann's (@emmawillmann) "GAYDHD" podcast, Brittany Schmitt spoke about how "God woke her up" at 4 a.m., so she could uncover what her boyfriend had been doing behind her back. She went through his phone for the first time and saw his chats with the woman he claimed to be his "best friend." The video was posted on October 2, 2026, and it has 554,000 views, 3870 likes, and 192 comments so far.
Platonic friends
Schmitt revealed that three weeks after her dog passed away, she woke up at four in the morning with a pit in her stomach. "I jolted, and I was like, 'Something's wrong.'" It was a feeling she had never experienced before, and she just knew she had to go through her boyfriend's phone. He was out all night and was texting his girl best friend till 1:30 a.m. Schmitt needed to see if her gut feeling was right, so she went through his phone. She had never done it before because she trusted him. She explained, "I never thought I had to look into it because I have male friends, and I have platonic male friendships...so there's no need to."
'Baby, not babe'
Willmann asked if she knew the girl, to which Schmitt responded that she "knew of her." As she read the text messages, her eyes were stuck on one word: "baby." He called his best friend "baby," and Schmitt could not get past it. He was saying things like, "Baby, you don't seem happy. What can I do to help you?" "I miss you. I want to see you. Come up here next time," and "I'll invest in your business." Schmitt emphasized, "He's saying 'baby,' not 'babe.' There's a big difference. Santino is one of my best friends, and he calls me 'babe' all the time. Baby is very different," to which Willmann agreed.
Jealous over pet names
People have pet names for their partners and close friends, but they're usually not the same. A 2025 survey by The Black Tux revealed that "babe/baby" is the most common pet name for both men (25.6%) and women (24.5%) in the country. A 2025 YouGov survey found that the majority of respondents (20%) used "babe" for their romantic partner, and "baby" was used by 10%.
A BustedHalo survey also found that 79% of respondents expressed jealousy about their romantic partner's friendship with someone of the opposite sex, mainly because they thought their partner was "emotionally closer" to their friend than to them. "Baby" and "babe" are clearly terms of endearment for a significant other, which is why Schmitt felt off when her boyfriend used the term for his "best friend."
Even babe is too much
People shared similar instances where they had a bad feeling something was wrong, and it ended up being true. @ames.grigg wrote, "I had a dream that my ex was dating a mutual friend shortly after our breakup. I asked her about it, and I was right. She didn’t believe how I knew." @izzy_loh added, "If a dude ever has a female 'best friend,' that’s the girl that got away. Never accept that."
You can follow Emma Willmann (@emmawillmann) on Instagram for more interviews.
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