It’s your worst nightmare. You’ve suspected for some time that your spouse is cheating on you. Other than your gut instinct, you’re still not certain. Is it in your head, this suspicion? Or are you picking up signs he or she may not notice they’re conveying? While the fear of a cheating spouse might linger, you can’t walk through life gripped by anxiety and sadness. You must act to either uncover their deceptions or to prove the baselessness of your suspicions. But how?

There are several ways to tell if your partner is cheating and several more ways to catch them. Here you’ll learn a few tricks to catch your spouse in the act. How to tell if your partner is cheating? It’s a common question, one with no simple answers. However, if you allow your intuition to guide you while you follow a few techniques, you might discover the unpleasant truth.

  • Keep an Eye Out for Telltale Signs

Cheating spouses aren’t going to advertise their infidelity. Most will pretend as if everything is fine with your relationship. However, their behaviors will change. Since you know your spouse better than most people, you will sooner or later pick up on these changes. If your intuition suspects infidelity, you shouldn’t dismiss it. Even if you’re wrong, it’s better to do away with those suspicions than to allow them to linger—and fester.

A need for privacy or increased privacy could be one of the signs your partner is cheating should take seriously, especially if they didn’t want or need privacy until recently. Pay attention to their level of affection toward you. Has it changed? Are they cold now, distant? Combined with their need for privacy, this might provide evidence that your spouse has found affection and attention elsewhere.

You should also ask yourself if they’re behaving in a sneaky manner? If you’ve noticed they keep their phones close to them, lock their phones or frequently change their passwords, this might be a sign that they’re trying to keep information away from you. Also, pay attention to their texting habits? Do they primarily text when they’re seated away from you, in another room, late at night in bed? Such behavior might imply that they’re trying to keep you in the dark about some conversations.

Their secretive use of their phone and texting might also extend to computers. Pay attention to their behavior when they’re on the computer. If they’re trying to shield the screen from you, or if they only interact with the computer when you’re not near enough to see the screen, this should raise red flags.

Personality is another crucial element to observe. Do you find that your spouse, once rational or calm and collected, now seems irritable or ready to pick fights? If so, it’s possible that they’re creating a barrier between you and them. This distancing could be the product of a growing affection for someone else. It might also be the first step to eventually breaking with you altogether.

When people wonder how to catch a cheating spouse, they should also pay attention to their partner’s time away from home. Focus on their work schedule. If they’re suddenly accumulating frequent overtime, or if they’re work-related trips have become more frequent, these might be signs. It’s possible that they’re not spending time at work. Instead, they might use work as an excuse to get away from you and spend more time with someone else.

Behavior is critical. You must learn to spot and understand any changes, no matter how subtle. Some spouses lose interest in sex altogether. They might no longer feel attracted to you or they might be getting it somewhere else. Some spouses might even try to overcompensate and become more sexually active with you to hide the notion that they’re also enjoying it elsewhere.

You should also pay attention to their affection. Not all cheating partners become cold and withdraw from you. Some might even pick up on your suspicions. If that’s the case, it’s possible that they’ll manipulate you by playing to your trust.

Simply put, you must conceal your anxiety, heartbreak, and suspicion as best you can. If your partner picks up on your suspicions, they may further alter their behavior to try to “convince” you that they’re loyal to you. The downside to this scenario is your suspicion could teach them how to be sneakier.

Whatever you suspect, play it cool. If you give them any reason to justify their behavior, they might increase their focus and attention on the other person. Your behavior could, in turn, affect theirs, pushing them farther away from you. In some scenarios, they might even cite your suspicious behavior as a reason for cheating on you in the first place.

  • How to Catch a Cheating Spouse

If you rely solely on your suspicions and interpreting your partner’s behavior, you might end up discovering little. This could have detrimental effects on your mental well-being. Just because you pick up on some of the behavior mentioned above, it’s possible that you’re misinterpreting it. Paying attention to your spouse alone won’t provide solid evidence that they’re cheating.

You may have to get creative. Fortunately for you, we live in the digital age, where it’s relatively easy to spy on someone’s phone. If you struggle with the ethics of this tactic, keep in mind that it could help you collect evidence to support your suspicions, or even to dismiss them. Reverse phone lookup is one tactic you could use. These services—usually subscription based—tell you who owns a phone number. You simply sign up for the service and input a phone number. Then they’ll provide you with everything you need to know about that number. The most important information they’ll provide is who owns the phone.

You could also use a phone spy app. These apps allow you to spy on someone’s phone, whether it’s an iphone, an android, or another brand of cell phone. Fully concealed, these apps record every activity that occurs on a cell phone. They can record incoming and outgoing phone calls, text messages, activity on browsers or popular apps—such as Facebook—and they can even record and log GPS coordinates, showing you every location that phone has visited.

By using high-tech services and apps to collect information on your partner, you could confirm your fears—or you might even disconfirm them. Either way, using technology to supplement your intuition could, in the end, provide peace of mind. If you do catch your partner cheating, however, you’ll find yourself facing tough choices. If that’s the case, we’re sorry you had to experience it—and we wish you the best of luck.