“Photos From The Wedding”: 66 Women Spill The Tea About How They Found Out About Their Partners’ Affairs

Hindsight is 20/20, and it’s usually easy to spot the relationship warning signs after you’ve already found out about your significant other’s infidelity. However, when you’re in the midst of things, everything isn’t as clear-cut. You often want to give your partner the benefit of the doubt. What’s more, you look for alternative explanations for their odd behavior.

Broadly speaking, what you should look for are incredibly quick changes in your partner’s behavior. Sure, they might be caused by stress at work, health issues, or personal problems, too. But they also closely correlate with physical and emotional affairs, feeling guilty, wanting to impress new people, and sneaking around trying not to get caught.

For example, your soulmate might suddenly start taking more of an interest in their appearance, including exercising more, changing their diet, and focusing more on personal style and hygiene. Or they might start spending more time away from home and “working late.”

Other worrying signs include sudden changes in communication, lying, avoidant behavior, and changes in your intimate life in either direction. These are all indicators that something could be wrong in your relationship. To be clear, these behavior shifts do not necessarily mean that your partner is cheating: there could be other issues at play here. That being said, you owe it to yourself and them to have an open and honest conversation about any problems you’re dealing with. There is no alternative to good communication if you want a healthy relationship.

Attitude changes to watch for include sudden low self-esteem, a desire for more thrills, more negativity, being highly critical of you, and getting super defensive whenever someone mentions affairs.

Another huge red flag is if your significant other starts accusing you of cheating. According to relationship expert and infidelity coach Caroline Madden, LMFT, this is a classic case of projection and gaslighting.

Being accused puts you on the defensive, so you don’t even consider that your partner might be the one who’s cheating on you. What’s more, your partner creates the illusion that they are against infidelity.

That being said, “it could also be a genuine reaction to them realizing that since they got away with cheating, you probably could too,” Glamour magazine writes.

We know these are emotionally hard-hitting stories. However, if you’re willing to share your experiences, the comments section at the bottom of this post is all yours. Tell us whether you’ve ever been cheated on, how you found out, and what happened next.

In the meantime, share your healthy relationship advice and suspicious red flags, too, so your fellow Pandas can watch for positive and negative behavior patterns.