Do you have a feeling in your gut that’s something wrong in your relationship? That maybe, just maybe, your partner’s being unfaithful? If you do, then you have a decision to make and several options to choose from.

First, think about how sure you are of their infidelity. If you aren’t sure at all, then option 1 – confronting them right now, without wasting any time – is completely out of the question. Doing so could ruin the relationship because it’d highlight, rightly or wrongly, that you don’t trust your partner.

The second option: ignore your suspicions, assume they’re unfounded and that they always will be, that nothing’s going on, and continue as normal. This option’s one many people take, either to avoid being confronted with an ugly truth – that their lover’s doing some extra ‘loving’ behind their backs – or because they fear they’re being unfair to their partners by being suspicious of them and doubtful of their devotedness.

Third option: do something to help eradicate your suspicions – find out either way what’s going on, if your partner’s cheating on you or if they’re being faithful.

Okay, let’s assume option three is the one for you. You want to find out the truth and don’t want to simply ignore your gut instinct and continue on as normal. What methods of investigation, ways of discovering the facts, are there at your disposal?

1. The simplest way (often considered the first step), and something you might have already begun doing, is looking for obvious signs of potential betrayal. Your partner smells of a fragrance, perfume or after-shave you don’t recognize. They’ve been leaving the house for work half an hour earlier than they’ve ever done before, for no apparent reason. They don’t seem to enjoy sex with you as they used to, or choose to avoid it completely whenever they can. Keep an eye out for these surface signs of potential infidelity – in a way, looking for them and recording them in your mind or on paper can be considered harmless, it’s free information there to be noticed…if only you’ll look.

2. After the obvious potential signs of cheating dry up, or when you feel you’re at a dead end looking for and analyzing them, more forthright, headstrong action may be called for. Some people, at this point, reach straight for the Yellow Pages, thumbing right to the private investigator section. That’s one option, sure, but there are things you can do yourself before calling in a third party.

First, you could try setting a trap. It may sound a little primeval, like catching a wild animal, but really it’s more like a test. These tests can take many forms. For example, arrange a “trip,” say you’re going away for a couple days to visit your folks, or friends, and use that time to keep track of some of the things your partner does. You don’t necessarily need to sit outside in the car with a pair of binoculars 24/7, just pay attention to key times when your partner would – if you were home – do certain things, like leave the house for work, come home, etc. You’d be surprised how many cheaters embrace these rare, private opportunities to further their affairs and indulge in some extra-marital ‘relations’.

There are also subtler ways of testing your partner’s fidelity and faithfulness. One of them’s called the ‘gossip’ test. It involves bringing up the topic of cheating using a fictional third party, such as one of your work colleagues or friends. Mention, without hinting at your suspicion of them in the slightest, that your friend (or whoever you’ve chosen to use for this test) confided in you that they’re cheating on their partner.

Most people are, to some degree or another – even if it’s just to maintain conversation – interested in a little gossip, especially if it involves a subject as juicy as infidelity. But when cheaters hear the topic of cheating brought up, they tend to silently panic – a rush of nerves sweeps their consciousness. Have they been rumbled? Is this a test? Am I reacting like a non-cheater would to this kind of chat? Keep a close watch on how YOUR partner reacts…it could provide a telling insight into their current state of mind, how they feel about cheating, and whether or not – when you boil it right down – you can trust them to not cheat on you.

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An unfaithful husband, cheating wife, any kind of disloyal partner, is an ugly prospect. And that feeling of being betrayed by someone we thought we could trust more than anyone else is one of the worst. People who discover their partners have been unfaithful to them go through a hurricane of different emotions – anger, sadness, shame, dejection, sometimes even relief. It’s a grieving process, not of a person that’s died, but of a relationship and level of trust that’s instantly disintegrated. In short, it sucks.

But before you can begin “grieve” that loss of trust, or simply throw caution to the wind and ditch your partner for good, you need to make absolutely sure your reaction will be 100% warranted. You need to know without doubt whether your lover has, in fact, double-crossed you by looking for, finding, and partaking in, an affair.

The only guaranteed way of knowing this, aside from finding damning physical evidence or seeing the affair with your own eyes (both pretty rare), is by hearing a confession straight from the horse’s mouth, by communicating your suspicions with your partner and listening to what they have to say – however heartbreaking or relieving their response might be. But before you take that big step, there are a few simpler and smaller steps you can take to make the whole process, the whole “investigation” and confrontation of your partner, easier and more factually accurate.

The first thing you should do is look for some of the most common signs/groups of signs people produce when they cheat. I’ve listed 3 of them below. Read over and think about each and carefully consider if they apply to you, your partner and your relationship.

Sex is almost always an integral part of a happy and healthy relationship between two people. So when one of the two, regardless of whether it’s the guy or the girl, begins to cheat, it doesn’t come as any surprise that changes in the way they feel about having sex with their partner can be brought about. There are two main ways these changes can manifest themselves. When the cheater initially begins their affair, they may – out of guilt and in an effort to avoid the newly formed affair being rumbled – actually increase the amount of attention they pay their real partners in bed. Conversely, and usually a little while after the affair has begun, the cheater may appear to have a loss of sex drive. They, for some reason, seem to not want to be intimate with you as much as they used to. Once again, this can be attributed to guilt, but more often it’s to do with a fear they’ll reveal their infidelity through they way they behave before, during and after having sex with you.

When people cheat, they invariably change their behaviour and/or habits in some way, small or large. The reason they cannot avoid these alterations is because, no matter how infrequently or secretly they see the person they’re having an affair with, they MUST – at some point or another – go out of their way to do so (and thereby break or change habits and behaviour). So, look for recent and pronounced modifications in the times they come home/leave the house (and whether the changed times ‘repeat’ weekly), increased usage of the phone or computer for no obvious/innocent reason, and other differences in the way your partner acts and behaves. You know your partner’s old habits and ways of living better than anyone, so draw from that knowledge to compare how they might have changed them and to decide if the changes are to be taken as possible indications of betrayal.

Lastly, there’s the group of infidelity indicators that don’t fit in any other box or under any other title. They’re the things you notice, question and cannot innocently explain away. They’re the things you spot but almost choose to forget because you’re so unsure of what they may or may not mean and whether, ultimately, they are true signs that your partner is cheating on you with someone else. Here are just a couple of miscellaneous indications of infidelity:

A. Your partner no longer seems to get angry with you when in the past they always seemed to be picking a fight or getting worked up over any tiny issue. Cheaters often ‘let their partners off’ because they want as little confrontation (which could lead to a discovery on your part) as possible.

B. She or he frequently shifts the focus onto you. Cheaters often asks their partners more questions about how their day went, how they’re feeling, etc, again, to shift the attention away from them and their guilt.

Remember, when you suspect your partner may be cheating, always take the smaller steps – by looking for the kinds of subtle signs listed above – before taking the biggest step of all: confronting them. Doing so will give you the very best chance of a happy, or at least a more manageable, final outcome.

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These days it’s easier than ever to communicate with people – we’ve got high-speed internet connections (wireless & otherwise), mobile phones, pagers, fax machines. We can talk at the touch of a button, across cities, countries, the entire world. Furthermore, communication through these digital protocols is almost instant, fairly cheap and – if you want it to be – completely private and hidden.

While advancements in digital communication are, on the whole, a great thing, they do have their down sides. One disadvantage is that cheating husbands, wives (or, for that matter, girlfriends or boyfriends) can communicate with their private lovers away from the prying eyes and ears of their trusting partners. It happens every day: thousands upon thousands of text messages are sent by disloyal men and women to those they’re sleeping with behind their real partners’ backs.

Back in the day, the only way a guy or girl could arrange a clandestine meeting would be over a hard-line (either a house phone or a payphone). That meant the cheater would either have to make risky calls from the home of their unsuspecting spouses, or secretly take a trip to a local call box and do it from there. Both of these methods of communication could often be spotted by the betrayed party quite easily.

But that’s now a thing of the past. It’s now a cinch for a cheater to send messages to their secret lovers from work, a locked bathroom, even from under the bed covers while their current, faithful partner sleeps quietly and 100% unaware of what’s going on just 6 inches away from them.

It’s true; things are easier for cheaters these days…but not that easy. Just as all others kinds of cheats – be it a card shark, a conman or a computer hacker – leave signs of their dishonesty behind, so do disloyal partners. And looking for the right signs, in the right places, is the absolute best way of knowing for sure if you can trust your partner.

Okay, you know now how easy it is for cheaters to communicate with their secret partners using digital communication. But what are the signs, the indications, the clues of this kind of activity? Let’s take a look:

1. Computers offer cheaters a multitude of communication methods, including: email, instant messenger programs, chat rooms and forums. Although it can be difficult to tell what your partner’s doing online without actually looking over their shoulder (tricky!), there are indications you can look for more easily. One is an increased amount of time spent at the computer for no apparent reason, perhaps when you’re in bed or before you get up. Another is your partner quickly turning off the computer monitor or turning it away from you when you enter the room.

Also, try checking the internet browsing history of the computer your partner uses most often. Sometimes there are web pages, chat room locations or other signs that your partner has been taking part in internet infidelity to be found there. Other times, you’ll find that the browser history has been freshly deleted – this, as you can imagine, could be equally suspicious.

2. As mentioned earlier, mobile/cellular phones make quick and private communication easy. If you feel comfortable doing so, checking your partner’s phone’s call history, address book and text message archive can provide you with a wealth of telling information. Bear in mind, though, that cheating partner’s – in an effort to remain uncaught – often keep their phones on their person most of the time. If your partner used to leave their phone lying around, but now never seems to do so, you must ask yourself why.

3. Last but not least, don’t forget or ignore the “old” style methods of cheater communication. Many cheaters still use house phones to call their secret lovers. Check your itemized phone bill for calls to local numbers you don’t recognize and that aren’t in your phone book. Also, pay attention to how your partner reacts when you walk into the room when they’re on the phone. It’s difficult to mask panic and surprise when the partner you’re cheating on walks into the room while you’re chatting to your secret significant other. Quick hang-ups could be a sign your partner’s being disloyal over the phone and, perhaps, elsewhere.

By keeping your eyes peeled and ears open, you can sidestep the advantages new methods of communication offer cheaters and, hopefully, discover what’s really going on.

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