Flowers, candy, card may seem innocent, but they know better

It was Bill Posey’s first year as a private investigator, and he was pointing his video camera at a man and a woman lying in bed.

At 3 a.m., Posey was standing in the doorway of a house he didn’t own, watching the couple sleep. They were married, but not to one another.

For what seemed like an eternity, Posey aimed his video camera at the bed, struggling for a clear shot of the man’s face. Finally, the man rolled onto his elbow, then his back.

At that moment, Posey’s video camera captured the biggest prize among detectives: the money shot.

“I knew I had his face,” Posey said.

Valentine’s Day heightens threat of infidelity. Learn the signs of love gone bad

Valentine’s Day. Doesn’t the very mention of it warm your heart with visions of champagne, roaring fires and sweet sentiments?

Not when your loved one’s sweet on somebody else.

The association between Valentine’s Day and love makes the holiday a peak time for infidelity, said Ruth Houston, author of Is He Cheating on You? — 829 Telltale Signs and operator of the Web site www.InfidelityAdvice.com. And that makes it an ideal time to catch a cheating mate, she said.

With a bit of detective work, a case of a cheating heart can be cracked on Feb. 14

The wife had a feeling her husband was up to no good. On Valentine’s Day, she hired James Gonzalez, private investigator, to follow him.

Gonzalez trailed the husband from his real estate office to his first appointment – lunch with a woman, which might have been innocuous had he not tenderly given her a box containing jewelry. From there, the man headed for a second appointment – another meal, another woman, another gift.

On Valentine’s Day, expectations from loved ones can soar.

Aside from delicate roses, sparkling jewels or a lavish meal, men and women crave affection and appreciation on the romantic holiday. But what a predicament for cheaters, who can’t be in two places at once.

Private investigators say the week of Valentine’s Day is one of their busiest.

“It’s a phenomenon. Every year at this time, we get an inordinate amount of requests for spousal surveillance,” said private investigator Mark Ford, “because Valentine’s Day is that one time of the year when it’s required to recognize your sweetheart. That complicates things when you’ve got a wife and a lover or vice versa.”

There are boyfriends or girlfriends who have sex with someone outside their current long-term relationship, and then there are cheaters. Cheaters are those so emotionally attached to another person — be it a close friend or everyday acquaintance — they distance themselves from their current partner.

It’s no newsflash: many people cheat. But you don’t have to take your clothes off for another or even touch someone outside your relationship to be unfaithful. I’m talking about “emotional infidelity,” an idea alien to me until recent conversations with some female friends who are in this psychological mess.

After discussing it with them, I opened the debate about emotional cheating to several guy friends, who were left utterly confused.

We’re taking a closer look at how and why some say it’s become more common than ever to find that the person in a marriage who is unfaithful is not the man.

Local private eyes showed us photos of real people in real affairs.

“It’s very real,” said Jeff Moore with Blue Moon Investigations. “We see it every day.”

Each picture shows a spouse cheating on the person to whom they pledged their eternal devotion.

“It just seems that wherever they seem to find time to have a rendezvous, they seem to hook up,” said Moore.

You’ve pledged your love to each other, written mash notes and insisted this time it’s for real. Welcome to the world of broken hearts, where all those promises get blown away in the blink of an infidelity.

If you’re in that boat, Pam Seatle has details on how you can stay afloat during the mutiny and the high tech help that’s available for those tracking a cheating heart. To see her report, click the video links.

Emotional affairs often involve deep friendship and intimacy as well as sexuality, which can lead to real problems if they cause another relationship to form. Tracing and proving this sort of infidelity can be extremely difficult, however.

Emotional affairs are a type of infidelity that usually does not begin with physical intimacy or sex. In fact, by definition, this type of cheating begins with the emotions. Many people assume that cheating must involve physical intimacy, but this type of infidelity can also lead to broken relationships.

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‘Like going on a scavenger hunt when you don’t know what you’re looking for’

Jeff Means spends 10-hour days staring at a TV screen, editing surveillance videotape shot by his investigators.

The Hazel Green private investigator and founder of Sound Mind Investigations has a marker board in his office filled with a long list of ready-to-be-edited surveillance tapes.

Means and his six-person staff are often hired by individuals in the North Alabama area hoping to win child custody or find out if their spouse is cheating.

While the general perception of the fast-growing field of private investigation is that it’s nonstop excitement, local private investigators like Means say that much of the work is tedious.

A recent series on The Today Show underscores what many already know - infidelity is a major problem today and the Internet seems to be making the problem worse. However, despite what cheaters believe, the Internet is not a safe haven for affairs.

Recently, The Today Show hosted a three-part series on “Cheating: The Business of Infidelity.” The show revealed that Americans are more than ever worried about cheating in their relationships and especially their marriages. The show revealed some shocking statistics: 65% of couples have had, are having, or plan to have an adulterous affair, meaning that nearly 40 million married adults are affected by infidelity directly. Moreover, 15% of wives and 20% of husbands have cheated, according to research done for the series. This makes infidelity investigations a $400 million market, as couples turn to attorneys and private investigators to get answers.

What Makes the Internet Attractive to Cheaters?

The Internet, it seems, is just making the problem worse. Studies have shown the 18 million people in the United States use matchmaking services online, and it is estimated that 12% of matchmaker service users are married. There are even services that offer cheaters a safe place online. Meet2cheat (http://www.meet2cheat.com) promises users
“organized love affairs.” The web site claims “Over the years we have grown into one of the largest personals agencies.” DiscreetAdventures (http://www.discreetadventures.com) allows users to “meet other like minded adults who are either unsatisfied with their current relationship, or just looking for a little extra excitement in their lives.” Affairmatch (http://www.affairmatch.com/) is another popular site, advertising itself as “America’s discreet sanctuary for lonely wives and cheating husbands.” These websites and others like them are completely legal - and are quickly growing on the Internet. A search for the term “married personals” in Google yields over 30 relevant results in the first few pages for those who are “Married but Looking.”

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