“Cheating is the ultimate betrayal but I’m not stupid, I know the signs” or so says the husband. To which I decree: “Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full.”
We all have intuition. We all have experience, either personal or observed, with the cheating experience. And yet, 67% of indiscretions were not discovered in the last two years of a marriage. But why? There is no easy way to talk or write about the subject but there are relationship triggers that warrant exploration into whether your wife is cheating.
Here are six of them.
1. Communication Hide-and-Seek: Does she seem to have her cell phone on her person more often now? Are her cell phone text or call logs mysteriously clean? Do you notice that your Internet cookies are clean. For the non-geek translation, when you use the Internet, do you notice that you’re now having to type in e-mail or social media passwords that were ‘saved’ before. These may be signs that she is communicating with someone via these mechanisms and erasing her tracks along the way.
2. Distance in the Bedroom: Although women can often resort to infidelity when they feel like intimacy is lacking in the bedroom, once they do the deed, they can actually shut down or stop trying in the bedroom. For starters, women do have a stronger emotional tie to someone they’ve had a physical relationship with and now their mind may be on that person. For seconds, when women are fed up with their partner not touching them and they cheat on them as a result, any prior desire or plea for passion is replaced with anger and then indifference. “You didn’t want to touch me and I thought it was me. Now I have someone who loves touching me all over,”says the wife to herself as she ignores the husband that used to ignore her.
3. Increased Interest in Your Schedule and Whereabouts: Is there a newfound interest in where you are or where you’re going? Even several days or weeks out? Does your wife inquire once and follow-up later? Why might she be doing that? Could it be that she has places to be?
4. An Increase in ‘Nitpicking’ or ‘Nagging’: It is a fact of infidelity that when women are unhappy and strays as a result, they will get a little braver and more frustrated when they put their wife hat back on. “Why am I here” or “I really want to see Mark” may go through her mind whilst she tears you a new one over something that wouldn’t have bothered her as much before. Some wives want the combativeness to test your fire (read: the one they thought was lacking in the first place) or to have you put the issues on the table.
5. ‘As Good As It Get’s’ Syndrome: Is she more openly contemplative of where she is in her life? Does she talk of regret or disappointment in those trips you never took or the house you never bought? Are there comments about how you don’t have sex as much as you used to? More succinctly put, is there a newfound resentment or hurt that the marriage or your life together isn’t what was originally advertised or desired?
6. Eye Contact Gone: Bottom line here, is she making eye contact less? When you talk, do you see her eyes trailing off? Does she look down more? Women, moreso than men, have regret and disappointment in cheating, even when they believe their reasons for doing so to be valid. This will show in their ability (or inability) to look you right in the eye like they used to.
These are not the only signs but they’re the big ones. The number of wives that have cheated on their spouse has increased 45% in the last 20 years. The amount that have not but said they would if they thought they could get away with it is 13%. Simply put, women have more expectations and confidence than they had in the past and that is driving them to demand more. If they can’t get it the traditional way, they may just assess the situation and decide to get it via different route. How might you see it coming?
Would you know if your spouse is cheating?
- The Down Side Of Spying On A Cheating Spouse
- 10 Tell-Tale Signs He Is Cheating
- Technology And Divorce: Finding Out His Secrets
- 7 Signs: Here’s Proof You Are Dating A Cheater
My counselor told me (paraphrasing) that unhappy/stressed women have lower interest in sex because it doesn’t make them feel better (and often makes them feel worse). The opposite is true for men, unhappy/stressed man + sex = happier/less stressed, even if their actual situation is unchanged.
That my wife was unhappy was not a secret to me. I just didn’t seem to be able to find anything that I could do about it. My ex-wife didn’t really understand just how dead our bedroom was and just how disinterested I felt she was. I didn’t keep a spreadsheet, but I knew my batting average was embarrislingly low. Too low to be explained by busy lives with kids. The funny (not funny ha-ha at the time) part was when she started having affairs (two that I can prove), our sex life actually picked up. She was generally happier, her libido was up, and because she didn’t understand just how little sex we actually had, we had more because she was concerned that I would suspect that she wasn’t interested.
Then there’s the new skills and attention to details. Mostly subtle, but after a bit, she couldn’t remember where she learned what. Granny panties traded for thong. She couldn’t have them and keep them from me without drawing suspiscion. Shaving just enough to wear a swim suit, the day of wearing only became a purposeful trim that is only for one purpose.
For me, actual proof came when one of the guys she was with confessed to his wife and she preceded to burn the world down. Once I knew what to look for, evidence was easy to gather. Of course, it took me a bit to figure out that nobody cared about the evidence. It’s a no fault world.
I knew it was all over when she didn’t come clean about the second guy. She got caught for the first one, claimed it was over, but didn’t understand that I knew all about the current guy.
I know that men get the bad rap for extramarital stuff, but honestly I know more couples where the opposite is true. If you think about it, there aren’t that many vamp secretaries anymore and all of the guys can be with just the one girl, so if truth is told, it’s probably closer to even. To me, the difference is in how we deal with it. For that woman that caught her husband having an affair with several women, my ex-wife being one of them, she screamed from the highest tower. For me and most of the other men I know, it was more of a “well I guess you don’t want to be married to me anymore, I guess we’ll split the sheets, you can have the picture that your mom gave us”. The screaming didn’t come until we started discussing child custody arrangements and alimony expectations.