A private investigator has revealed the sneaky trick cheaters are using to get away with having an affair.
Paul Evans, from London‘s I-Spy Detectives, says partners are becoming increasingly devious with the ways they’re being unfaithful – and one lesser-known method is accessible on nearly every phone.
Paul, who works for the UK-based private detective agency, told Metro newspaperthat many people are now using shared calendar apps to plan meet-ups with aparamour.
Where a cheater may have scheduled a ‘doctor’s appointment’ or ‘coffee catch-up’, these may really be codes for illicit arrangements.
Analysing cheaters’ phones has led the detective to uncover countless adulteries – all hidden in plain sight.
‘On the surface, it looks like a harmless dentist appointment or a work meeting, but when you dig deeper, those calendar entries are often a cover for something else,’ he told the outlet.
Such arrangements may seem like normal plans, but upon closer inspection, can reveal patterns that link back to adulterous meetings.
Paul said he’d even caught cheaters pretending to have a ‘team lunch’ or ‘client call’, all while cheating on their unsuspecting partner.
A private investigator has revealed one of the many sneaky tricks used by cheaters to get away with having an affair. Stock image
Though it’s easy to delete text messages, scrubbing calendar evidence is not as simple, and may mean easily discoverable slip-ups from cheaters, available on email calendars.
Paul explained: ‘They can sit there for months without raising suspicion, especially if the partner never checks.
‘That’s where we see a lot of deception happening. They know most people won’t think twice about a notification that looks work-related.’
That being said, Paul urged partners not to jump the gun too soon and emphasised that scheduled events do not always equate to illicit activity.
However, he said that changes in behaviour or habits’always give a cheater away in the end’.
The detective added that habits and repeated patterns such as often ‘working late’ on a certain day with no calls, emails or alternative explanation, can be worth questioning.
He recommended that suspicious partners ask questions directly, rather than resorting immediately to phone snooping.
Paul isn’t the first to lift the lid on those methods used by cheaters to cover their adultery.
Paul Jones of ARF Investigators has warned that there is another tell-tale sign often overlooked by suspicious spouses.
Even something as unlikely as a toothbrush could hold information that incriminates an adulterous partner, the investigator, who has more than a decade of experience catching love rats, told The Mirror.
It’s rare to actually catch a cheater red-handed, but cautious parties should watch closely for ‘small clues’ lurking in ‘innocent’ places.
These could be as seemingly insignificant as ‘spending more time at work, picking up a new hobby or taking more pride in their appearance’, he explained.
Proving infidelity is about gathering ‘data’, and this could even be in something as little as monitoring tooth-brushing habits.
Paul recalled one case of a mother who had suspected her husband was cheating on her.
At the time, she had installed a smart electric toothbrush app in the hopes of encouraging her children to improve their brushing habits.
The app, which was used by everyone in the family, tracked every single session of dental care.
‘Over time, the client noticed their partner’s brushing history was being logged at odd times, times when they were supposedly at work,’ Paul explained.
‘At first, it didn’t seem like much, brushing late in the morning on Fridays didn’t raise immediate red flags.’
Monitoring the app, the mother could see that her husband had been brushing his teeth at home during periods that he’d been claiming he was at work.
It revealed that he had been brushing his teeth later in the mornings on Fridays, a time when he was supposed to be out the house.
In reality, her husband hadn’t worked a single Friday in three months, and had been having an affair with one of his work colleagues in their family home.
Knowing the whole house would be out on Fridays, her husband had secretly been inviting his mistress over, all the while pretending he was at work.
In recent years, people have become increasingly concerned about the concept of ‘micro-cheating’.
Micro-cheating is a term popularised by Australian psychologist Melanie Schilling, andrefers to ‘behaviours that lead someone to question their partner’s emotional or physical commitment to the relationship.’
On their own, these behaviours sound fairly innocent.
But over time, they can become a ‘slippery slope’ to a full-blown affair, according to Abby Medcalf, a psychologist and author in Berkeley, California.
‘It’s cheating if your partner doesn’t like it, or doesn’t know about it, or wouldn’t like it if they knew about it,’ she said.
According to Marriage.com, between 10 and 25 per cent of couples cheat (depending on which gender is answering and what survey/study/statistic you read).
Of these, somewhere near 20 per cent will never reveal the affair to their partner.
While some affairs are spur-of-the-moment, most begin with smallindiscretions, known as micro-cheating.
Amid the proliferation of technology, micro-cheating usually happens online these days, according to Ms Medcalf.
Typically, this would involve your partner texting or DM-ing someone via social media.
However, other key signs could include liking a co-worker’s photo on social media, or even checking in on Slack more often than usual.
