One of the most common themes we work on with our clients that are in active relationships is what to do if their significant other is cheating on them, and how to tell if they actually are.
I was working with someone earlier today who came to me asking, “Adrian, is my girlfriend cheating on me? I have these suspicions that I can’t seem to shake, but at the same time I don’t actually know for sure…”
After all these years working with individuals one on one and helping them navigate through these crises, there are various signs that I’ve taken note of when it turns out that someone is cheating.
I wanted to write this article for you today outlining what signs to keep an eye out for, so that you can get a better idea of how to approach the situation and find solutions.
We have made it our mission to help individuals find happiness in love, and to provide you with the most effective communication tools and relevant techniques to be together in healthy, stable, and long lasting relationships. So without further ado, let’s take a look at how to figure out if your girlfriend is cheating on you!
I got an email from Jeremy the other day with the subject line “Is she cheating on me?” He had written that he was convinced that his partner was cheating on him but he hadn’t found any concrete proof.
He had gone through her phone when she wasn’t looking, he had read her emails, and he had scoured her social media platforms looking for proof. He was suspicious of one colleague in general, because he had noticed that his girlfriend had gotten very close to this guy.
Because he hadn’t found any proof, he wanted to reach out and see if there was any way to tell for sure that someone is cheating on you through their behavior or their actions.
So I actually wanted to write this article to help you learn how to pinpoint the signs of a cheating girlfriend, but also to tell you that in many of these cases, the person actually is NOT cheating.
The issue is very often rooted in a deep wound that has not healed, that a person projects on their current partner. In other words, it is not uncommon for people to make their current partners pay the price for an ex’s mistakes.
In Jeremy’s case, after we discussed his relationship and his past at length, it came to light that his ex fiancée cheated on him just months before the wedding. She lied and made him think that he was crazy for having his suspicions, but when the truth came out he was absolutely crushed.
Now that he was dating someone new, Rachel, he was still feeling the pain of what happened in his last relationship. The trauma he endured was making him doubt his current relationship and he was putting up walls to protect himself from getting hurt again.
On a subconscious level, he felt that if he saw it coming or if he already knew that she was cheating on him, then he was protected against enduring the same kind of shock and hurt that he experienced with his ex.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The point of me telling you this story is to bring us to this very important question:
“Why do I think my girlfriend is cheating on me?”
It’s very important to determine if these feelings are stemming from fact, or from personal insecurities. So the first step will always be to do some introspection. It is very normal to feel insecure and vulnerable – especially after someone has caused you pain and broken your trust.
An easy way to explore what’s going on here is to explore how you’ve felt in all your relationships – have you always been suspicious that your partner is being unfaithful, or is it just this once?
While you have no concrete proof that your girlfriend is cheating on you, it’s good to give her the benefit of the doubt. Suspicions and accusations (especially if they end up being false accusations) can really erode away the foundation of the relationship and can actually put you in danger of breaking up.
Again, this is a very common phenomenon. So many people want to believe the worst when they’ve seen the worst happen so many times.
When you’re exposed to cheating, whether it’s something that happened to you in a past relationship, or if you see it happening to someone you are very close to, it is perfectly natural that you would start to think, “Wait is my girlfriend cheating on me?”
So I want to warn you against trying to incriminate your girlfriend for cheating because you can end up sabotaging the relationship.
Take some time to really explore where these feelings are coming from, and if you know that you have a reason to feel insecure that doesn’t necessarily have to do with your current partner, it’s going to be crucial that you begin working on trusting yourself and building your self confidence.
This is imperative in order to get rid of any lingering insecurities that could plant seeds of doubt in your mind that shouldn’t be there.
When someone is cheated on in the past, it is a shock that can easily become destructive towards future relationships. After experiencing cheating, a person can start to doubt themselves and think, “Why did this happen to me? Am I not good enough? Am I not attractive enough? Am I not fun enough?” And so on and so forth.
The aftermath of a cheating girlfriend is not easy and the wound can take a long time to heal. But that’s not the only reason why a person might suspect “My girlfriend is cheating on me.”
Sometimes it’s because they doubt themselves and what they bring to the table. It’s not uncommon for someone who is struggling with personal insecurities to subconsciously feel that they’re not good enough to deserve or keep the person they’re with, so their partner will surely look for someone else at one point or another.
If you feel that this might be the case for you, the best thing that you can do is to start working on personal development and restoring a sense of wellbeing so that you can begin to boost your self confidence.
The more confident you feel about yourself, the easier it will be to ward off these suspicions and stop wracking your brain with thoughts like “Is my girlfriend cheating on me?!”
Now I know you still want to learn what signs to keep an eye out for if this person actually is cheating on you, so let’s take a look.
Surviving infidelity in your relationship: The road to success
As I began saying above, there are a couple indicators to bear in mind when you’re wondering, “Is she cheating on me.” If something isn’t sitting right with you and your gut is telling you that there is something off about your girlfriend’s behavior, I don’t want you to ignore your instinct.
It is just very important to be able to recognize if there is actually something going on, or if you are in essence being haunted by the ghost of something that happened in the past.
The most common sign that someone is cheating is when there is a complete change in their behavior over a very short period of time.
A lot of people don’t know how to handle their guilt and the element of secrecy that has suddenly come into their lives when they’re being unfaithful to their partner, so their behavior can start to show that something is off.
It should also be noted that although it is a red flag, not all shifts in behavior automatically signify that a person is cheating on you.
Sometimes people have a great deal of difficulty dealing with their emotions when things are especially challenging at work, when they’re struggling with a personal issue within their family, or sometimes even when they’re dealing with an illness.
I encourage you to keep your eyes open and pay attention to whether or not your partner’s shift in behavior is paired with my next point…
Another sign to be on the lookout for is whether or not your partner seems to be significantly less interested in you, from one day to the next. Were you the center of her universe and then one day, out of the blue, she started to become distant and cold?
Did she suddenly go from being madly in love with you to just going through the motions?
When this happens, it’s often combined with a sudden need for secrecy. Perhaps the reason you’re thinking, “My girlfriend is cheating on me is because she has started to hide her phone from you, or perhaps she’s even changed her lock code.
Maybe she’s been on her phone a lot more than usual lately, and she’s keeping you from seeing the screen…
How to know when a relationship is over : The 7 telltale signs
As this article comes to a close, I want you to know that each situation is entirely unique, and if you still feel that the person you love is cheating on you, we are here to help. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us for one on one coaching to help you analyze the situation, and define concrete, longterm solutions.
By asking you targeted questions, we can zero in on what exactly is going on here, and you can have the answer to your burning questions.
It’s important to pay attention to where your suspicions might be coming from – whether it’s an internal issue that is stemming from a painful experience you had endured in the past or a lack of self confidence, or if it’s stemming from fact.
This is the best way to figure out the answer to “Is my girlfriend cheating on me or am I paranoid?”
I know how unnerving all of this can be, but you’re not alone. Join the Happily Committed Project and learn how to clear up your doubts or transform your relationship in a meaningful and dignified way.
And before I go I want to leave you with one last thought. Even if it turns out that your girlfriend has cheated, it does not mean that your relationship is doomed to fail. Sometimes when something like this happens, it actually serves as a powerful catalyst for positive change in the relationship.
In other words, it’s like an electroshock that makes you spring into motion and repair and reinforce the relationship. In many of these cases, this type of shock can actually transform a relationship and make it better than ever before.
It might sound funny to you now, but I’ve had many clients come back to me and say that they’re happy that their relationship had to go through some a trying period because it helped them to create a new foundation.
If you have any questions for us at all, please don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments section below and it would be our pleasure to respond to you.
Wishing you all the very best in life and love,
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I found this because my girlfriend of 4 in and half years started behavior started changing everything we used kiss and have sex regularly now we barely have sex and she rarely kissed me and everything I used to do to make her laugh and smile annoys her and makes her angry she spends all of her time on her computer and phone every time I start sneaking up for a surprise kiss or hug she quickly closes her phone and gulps one night she went to her room early I went to check on her and she was on her phone and and when I playfully jumped on the bed she set her phone face down and gulped and walked into her bathroom to take a shower I grabbed her phone and saw she had multiple meet up site tabs up you know the kind that pops up on pornsites I looked through her history to see what kind of freaky stuff shes been looking at and all it was a whole history wall of those sites am I being paranoid or am I justified
I have been in a relationship for 7 years. Multiple times I have caught my fiancé talking to someone online sexually. Each of the first times was with a guy she had a fling with before we got together. She was okay with him having a gf and child at home. Now she says they are random accounts. She says she is to insecure to open up to me. Around Christmas last year she had a different group of friends. I worked all day Sunday. 9-9. She worked 7-11 that morning. She never could message me until I was on my way home to tell me she was going to sleep. Prior she acts all clingy and messaged me all the time. Even now she is back to I miss you and love you all the time. She has admitted to me she thought the guy was cute but only after she cut communication with him because she felt I didn’t like him. All her friends she talks about, she says they cheat and she is okay with it to my understanding. She is very light on details about a night they went to eat at a buffet. She said they went once but then another time says they went twice. She then covers it up by saying they only hung out twice. With this being said, she also makes sure I know that she didn’t dress up because she knew I would feel a certain way, but to me that makes me even more suspicious because then it’s easier to hide a makeup smudge or stain on nice clothing. She also came back late. I was asleep. She admitted to me that she does things when I’m not home she doesn’t know why but only months after I asked her and told her I would like to join. I feel that she is just telling me what I want to hear. Since I said it was okay to do this that she now admitted to that to make me feel better about why she was so distant. She also blamed not wanting sex on birth control even tho we are 7 years in a relationship she was on it. She also told me she was diagnosed with adhd as a child but again 7 years into a relationship that to me seems pretty weird. Im broken thinking about the situation after 7 years. Now she wants to do things with me so much and says she appreciates me every 5 minutes. So clingy. I need help, my gut tells me she cheated simply because the Sunday’s I was at work she did what she did.
My ex cheated me because she was unhappy with herself, you know, getting 30, 2 kids and prime of your life was in your teens..
But it was not the first time she sought excitement outside of the relationship. She’d been chatting, Snapchat.. When I noticed and checked, ultimately it was pretty innocent, nothing to worry about. I noticed because of the exact same signs above.. Hiding phone, she was very horny out of the usuall and sexting me like crazy. I never made much out of it as I understood she was bored (at home all the time..) and sought that ‘validation’ she was still hot.
So coming back to the real cheating, same signs, obsessed with phone, taking it everywhere, secrecy.. Angry when I said anything about it.. She nearly looked after the kids anymore.. She was trying to make me feel bad for her circumstances and that it was my fault – I really took it on me and tried everything to ‘make things better’ but it never was good enough. Though there were good moments aswell, because the other guy sometimes had a concience (and I knew him from the past and seemed to be ‘my best friend’ to her) so when he pointed out the facts to her like ‘you have 2 kids and a man that loves you..’ she started building up stories of lies and once she attacked me so when I’d defend, she went to him playing the victim! It only got worse.. All of a sudden we seemed to have broken up somehow (she claimed I broke up specifically.. That’s not true of course). So she told him, told her friends, posted on fb.. Al while living in my house on my job earnings and making me the bad guy and while I was suffering imensly! The drop came when one day I came home, she was overly nice, made some dinner.. Then asked if I could babysit and she’d go to the club ‘with her friend’! Obviously I blew up and gave 3 days to get out. Without much she left (and left the kids, but that was my demand) to live with him and his mother.. 3 months later she was pregnant already.. I have a lot on the insights on what she was telling him when it all happened because In the best interest of the kids and they earn a mother (who am I to stand in between?) so I’ve put the past behind and worked on building a relationship with him, of course she didn’t like that because she was scared of the truth coming out. As part of that journey he told me everything.. So now I am sure she is not straight in the head (for making up a fictional story and believing it herself..). Now I’ve cut every communication with both of them, limiting to what was decided in court (for the kids). Because, the lying, stealing, childish behavior never stopped eg. Lying about not receiving child support while the kids were living with me or lying to the judge (oh that was funny) . I know their relationship is bound to fail as it was build on lies, deceit and cheating from the start and both of them run away from problems rather than facing them, obviously. Ok, this was maybe a bit much… Now how I handle relationships now is as stated here above, as I am traumatised and was broken emotionally to the ground, but that have me the opportunity to rebuild based on core values and principles so I’d never be destabilised like that ever again. Not that I don’t let anyone close or not put myself out vurnerable but I’ve established a good relationship with ‘my gut’ and common sense! Yes, my current girlfriend is hot and talks on Snapchat with other guys, triggering me lightning fast to think she is cheating.. But there’s no signs like stated above and it requires strenght of me not to put these feelings on her (my trauma, my responsibility). And above that I learned to be happy with myself, I don’t need a partner to be happy. And my girlfriend is in my life (and kids life) because I want to, not need to. Finaly if there would be signs and proof of cheating, she’d be out of my life so fast, her head would still be spinning months later. Hope this helps you guys 😊