Being cheated on during a serious relationship can be an utterly soul-destroying experience and it can take you years to rebuild any sort of trust with future potential partners.
But is there a way to tell that this could be happening to us, before our hearts are ripped into a million pieces? Apparently there is.
Who better to fill us in on the four tell-tale signs of cheating, then those who have suffered the indignity of having their partner being unfaithful during their relationship?
Sharing their wisdom on Quora, these people could indeed help you find out if your S.O. could be playing away from home…
Hunch
First up, the ‘hunch’.
Okay, so admittedly this is a bit of shot in the dark. But a hunch or ‘gut feeling’ can be very indicative of the fact that something is definitely wrong, even if all seems well.
As one woman recounted:
He had never even so much as looked at another girl when we were dating, but not 8 months into our marriage, I caught him cheating. Also strangely, I never actually suspected anything. I just had a gut feeling. And that’s how I know he’s cheating on me, when he does. I just get a weird feeling when I look at him.
Body Language
It’s fair to say that someone’s body language can be a dead giveaway when they’re trying to withhold any important information that they don’t really want anyone else to know.
So it’s no real surprise that this can go hand-in-hand with infidelity. Even a seemingly harmless Facebook photo can paint a thousand words, just as this writer learnt about his wife.
They said:
There was a guy with his hand on my wife’s shoulder, which is, under circumstances, innocent enough since a bunch of people have their hands on someone else’s shoulder. But I’m the only person who knows my wife will go to great lengths to not be touched by anyone she is not close to (a very limited circle of me, her parents, and her best friend). I’m not a paranoid / jealous type. But, knowing my wife, this was an immediate red flag. Over the next week I went over her chats and emails (we never kept passwords from each other). The guy from the photo was one of three on/off lovers she had at the moment.
Two Phones
If you have two phones, you’re either cheating or a drug dealer, probably. So it’s definitely enough to get alarm bells ringing, just as this writer knows all too well.
They wrote:
My boyfriend had two phones (battery). He was always very protective about his phones (he would even take them to the washroom) – RED FLAG! On the day he was supposed to leave, he left one phone outside while having a shower. I was just generally browsing through it and found romantic messenger exchanges between him and his ‘friend’. I told him to leave and never to return. He persisted and begged for a chance. I gave him that chance.
And they’re still together to this very day, somehow.
Cold & Distant
Long distance relationships can be hard at the best of times, even working just a few days a week away from home can be a strain on any relationship, and lead to that mutual affection you had for each other to seriously wane.
This woman felt her partner was getting more distant as he worked in a different state and simply thought she needed to ‘try harder’ when he was back, but she really didn’t need to bother. This is probably the most heart-breaking tale of the bunch.
She said:
His out of state business wasn’t ending and I started to notice that although every weekend he took clothes to Minnesota he didn’t bring as many back. One Saturday morning he went to get a haircut. I was hanging his clothes up in his closet, like a ‘good little wife’, and noticed his opened briefcase. Lying on top of his open briefcase was what looked like a card in a blank envelope. My first thought was ‘OH he must have bought me a card,’ I really did think that, sad. Inside the ‘evil witch’ had written a rather lengthy note about how wonderful he was and how wonderful last night was and blah blah blah. The killer for me was she signed it ‘Happy Anniversary, Love D’. Anniversary.
Don’t say we didn’t warn you…
