Intimacy Issues Point to Higher Risk of Cheating

If your significant other has a tendency to hide his or her feelings, avoid intimacy and change the subject whenever the topic of moving in or marriage comes up, you might want to watch out.

According to a new study from the Université de Montreal, he or she is at a higher risk of cheating on you.

The probability of one person being unfaithful in a relationship ranges between 40 and 76 per cent, according to some studies, said Genevieve Beaulieu-Pelletier, a PhD student at the university. (The numbers drop significantly for couples in long-term marriages.)

"It's very high," Beaulieu-Pelletier said. "These numbers indicate that, even if we get married with the best of intentions, things don't always turn out the way we plan.

"What interests me about infidelity is why people are willing to conduct themselves in ways that could be very damaging to themselves and to their relationship."

David Duchovny Cheating on Wife Before Separation

It seems actor David Duchovny was involved with tennis coach Edit Parkay even before announcing separation from wife Tea Leoni.

Tmz.com reports Parkay saying: 'We have a very, very close friendship. He is in great shape. He is a wonderful man. He's very intelligent, very kind and good man.'

When she was asked if she was romantically involved with Duchovny, she said: 'I don't want to say anything that might hurt David. I am not going to deny it. I don't know what our relationship means to him.'

Is A-Rod Connected to Madonna's Divorce Announcement?

The corpse of Madonna and Guy Ritchie's failed marriage is not even cold, but speculation is already surfacing about the Material Girl's latest romantic entanglement. Hours after Madonna's rep confirmed her client's impending divorce from Guy Ritchie, Us Weekly is quoting a source who claims the singer and Alex Rodriguez are "definitely romantic."

Madonna's divorce rumours kicked into high gear earlier this summer, when gossip swirled that the Queen of Pop may have offered the New York Yankees slugger a closer-than-average peek at her cone bra. Her rep, Liz Rosenberg, dutifully shot down the rumours, telling People magazine: "Madonna and Alex have the same manager, Guy Oseary. They have met. They know each other and Madonna took her kids to a Yankees game last week. There's really not anything to comment on beyond that."

Wife Avoids Jail for Putting Glass in Husband's Lunch

A vengeful wife who tried to harm her cheating husband by sprinkling crushed glass on his lunches has avoided a jail term.

Hobart Centrelink manager Lynette Quessy, 50, who is back living with her husband, was sentenced today in the state's Supreme Court to a suspended nine-month jail term by Justice Shan Tennent.

Quessy pleaded guilty just before going to trial last month to one count of administering a poison and four counts of attempting to administer a poison.

The court was told she had used a meat tenderiser to ground up glass from a fluorescent tube in her kitchen and it was kept on the top shelf of a pantry until needed.

Then, blended with butter, the glass was served five times in sandwiches and a biscuit treat over two months to November 2007.

Her husband's affair after 20 years of marriage was discovered three years earlier, in 2004.

However, they remained living together in separate rooms of their Hobart home for the sake of their children.

INDIA'S FEMALE DETECTIVES TRACK DOWN INTERNET CHEATS

However splendid everything appeared about his daughter's prospective husband, something in the pit of her father's stomach told him that something was wrong. The groom-to-be seemed upright and deeply religious – which was important to the Sikh family – but still, there was something amiss.
Eventually, the anxious father turned to the professionals. He called a private detective, Taralika Lahiri, and asked her to look into the young man's background. It was just as well he did. "We took the job and sent our people. To our horror we discovered that the man was living with his wife and two daughters. He was already married," said Ms Lahiri. "He had proposed to the girl at the same time. The young man was looking to get some dowry. He was cheating the father and the daughter in order to get money."
When approached to take on a case – be it by a man or woman wanting information about a prospective partner, or a suspicious spouse or an anxious parent – the routine of Ms Lahiri and other matrimonial specialists is similar. They will spend several weeks obtaining as much information as they can about that person, speak to their friends and discreetly follow them. If someone is found to be cheating or lying, they will use digital cameras and video and audio recorders to make sure theyhave incontrovertible proof. With that information in hand, they will return to the person who hired them and break the bad news. "They often feel sad, but they feel that they have saved [themselves] before marriage," said Ms Lahiri. "In the long term they feel good."
"When people meet over our site, we strongly recommend a private detective to get all the background when you have a potential bride living in, say, Bangalore and a groom living in Hyderabad," Shaadi.Com's founder, Anupam Mittal, told The Washington Post. "Our country and culture is changing at warp speeds. We are dispersed all over our own country and all over the world. The private detective has now become just another part of India's vast wedding industrial complex."
Another factor adding to the demand for private detectives is the soaring level of dowries given to the family of the groom by the bride's parents. While technically illegal since 1961, experts say the size of dowries and their acceptance by society has in fact grown. So ingrained is the system, that dowry prices are now almost fixed, depending on a prospective husband's salary and career potential.

Lonely Hearts Cheat Wanted a Refund

A cheating husband told a court he was £3,000 out of pocket after his “lonely hearts” affair and wanted it back.

Married Geoffrey Fitch, 60, said he showered Gillian Mitchell, 53, with jewellery, took her to the theatre and on trips abroad.

He claimed she then cheated on him. But he was refused his claim for a refund by a judge at Lewes County Court who told him: “It’s easy to be wise with hindsight.”

Health and safety consultant Fitch had a two-year fling with the divorced mother of three but two weeks after they started living together it ended with Fitch accusing Mrs Mitchell of cheating.

Mr Fitch told the court: “If Mrs Mitchell was struggling to make ends meet I would not be demanding money she promised to repay.

“However, I am not prepared to be out of pocket while numerous other men are enjoying her affections.

“While we were together she continued to visit websites Girlsdateforfree, Loopylove and Friends Reunited Dating.

“I do not see why I should pay Mrs Mitchell’s bills while she is spreading her affections around.”

Meg Ryan Opens Up About Infidelity

Meg Ryan doesn't want to be your sweetheart anymore. After eight years of silence, the blonde actress candidly opens up to In Style magazine and dispels the myths about her celebrity marriage to Dennis Quaid, their shocking divorce, and being labeled "America's Sweetheart."

After eight years of keeping quiet, she divulges what the public never knew about her life with Quaid and confesses to some of the deep issues that broke up what seemed to the world to be the perfect Hollywood marriage. "Dennis was not faithful to me for a very long time, and that was very painful. I found out more about that after I was divorced."

In the aftermath of her divorce and the public outcry over her affair with actor Russell Crowe, the actresss opted for some time out of the spotlight to recover from her wounds and to find her footing again. Her film roles have been sparse as has her time in the public eye, and Ryan admits she has liked it that way.

Ryan says that her being dubbed "America's Sweetheart" more than 20 years ago was frustrating and stifling at times. "It's an old-fashioned idea, so anachronistic. I understood it was a compliment about being lovable, and it felt nice ... but it also felt, after a time, like ideas were being projected onto me that had nothing to do with me. The girl next door to what? I never felt like a very conventional person," she confides to the magazine.

How Our Brains Keep Us From Straying

In the pursuit of happily-ever-after, the odds seem to be stacked against us.

Men and women reap huge benefits when they stick around with a good partner -- staying happier and healthier, living longer and passing along more genes. But the sticking-around part is a challenge. We don't get long-term relationship payoffs right away. And until then -- between the once-upon-a-time and the happily-ever-after -- plenty of temptations can beckon.

Not that it's wrong to shop around before settling down. But there always will be enticing alternative mates -- whether heart-grabbing or merely eye-catching. So researchers wonder: With so many attractive alternatives, how do humans manage to maintain relationships at all?

The brain appears to have some tricks up its neural sleeve. A new line of research is exploring how automatic psychological mechanisms kick into action when the eye starts to wander, helping resist temptation and strengthening the relationship -- even without us being aware of it.

Here's a sample from some recently published experiments (all on heterosexual men and women in committed monogamous relationships) that show how our brain keeps us connected to -- and, yes, even happy with -- the old ball and chain.

COLUMBUS INVESTIGATOR CATCHES CHEATING SPOUSES

Brad Kelly, a private investigator who has spied on thousands of cheating spouses, says its not just men who sneak around on their spouses.
Kelly has busted everyone, from a newlywed to a man who has been married for 35 years, 10TV's Maureen Kocot reported.
According to Kelly, when suspicious spouses see the proof caught on videotape, they always ask the same question, "Why?"
"A lot of it, they're saying they don't get enough attention at home - the spouse is not talking to them anymore - and they're constantly finding ways to be out of the house," Kelly said.
Marriage counselors warn that relationships can diminish as gradually as grains of sans through an hourglass, Kocot reported.
"We often give our marriages the leftovers in life," said Robert Mathis, a counselor. "We give it a quick weekend here or there if we're lucky."
Mathis calls it the "closeness distance dance." The more distance that takes place in the marriage, the more likely a partner will turn to an outsider to fill the emotional void.
"It takes two people to do that dance, not just one," Mathis said.
Kelly said that there are signs of a cheating spouse. Either their sex life has dwindled or their spouse is never home.
"By the time they come to us, the suspicion is so great that they know they just need to see it," Kelly said.
Another red flag for suspicious spouses is an excuse to slip away on the holidays, especially Christmas and New Year's.
For a reality check to find out where spouses are in the closeness distance dance," counselors suggest taking a week's vacation alone to find out very quickly how much conversation takes place.

STRAYING MATE? HIS GENES MAY BE TO BLAME

Men are more likely to be devoted and loyal husbands when they lack a particular variant of a gene that influences brain activity, researchers reported this week.

The finding is striking because it not only links the gene variant, or allele, with the risk of marital discord and divorce, but also appears to predict whether women involved with these men are likely to say their partners are emotionally close and available, or distant and disagreeable, according to the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


Two of every five men carry the allele, according to the report.

"Men with two copies of the allele had twice the risk of experiencing marital dysfunction, with a threat of divorce during the last year, compared to men carrying one or no copies," said Hasse Walum, a behavioral geneticist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who led the study.

"Women married to men with one or two copies of the allele scored lower on average on how satisfied they were with the relationship compared to women married to men with no copies."


About 15% of the men without the allele reported serious marital discord in the past year, compared with 34% of men with two copies of the allele. The allele that Walum and a team of scientists studied in a sample of more than 1,000 heterosexual couples regulates the activity of a hormone in the brain known as vasopressin. It dictates how and where vasopressin receptors are situated in the brain.

Japan's New Professional Seducers

Case 1: Mr A and Kyoko

3.30pm. Mr A is outside a bank in a busy part of Ikebukuro, a faintly seedy area of Tokyo, waiting for his date. He beams as she teeters across the road on high heels. Kyoko, 20, is half his age. She has a mane of black hair, sloe eyes, a fetching smile and a cute giggle. Her blouse is open to reveal her cleavage and she has on a short skirt and sheer black tights. Mr A is a bald 40-year-old salesman in a crumpled grey suit and glasses.

Mr A met Kyoko by chance in the street; the first time she asked him for directions, then they bumped into each other again, and since then they have been exchanging flirtatious texts.

They stop off at a cigarette machine, then go to a cheap basement restaurant for spaghetti. He has bought her moisturiser and cleanser. She giggles coyly: “Next time, why don’t you give me a ring?” At 4.30 they’re outside a pawnbroker’s, looking at rings. Their shoulders touch, then they reach for each other’s hands.

They head for north Ikebukuro, an area of love hotels with velvet-covered walls, mirrored ceilings and sexy videos that rent rooms for two-hour periods. At 4.45 they go into one. They take a picture of the two of them on her mobile. At 6.07 they leave. At the station Mr A gives Kyoko a furtive goodbye kiss. Next time, he says, he’ll take her somewhere nice – a hot-spring resort maybe, or Tokyo Disneyland. Then he goes back to the office and, later, home to his wife.

Mr A doesn’t know that a team of private investigators is recording his every move. The boss, the ebullient Mr Tomiya, lurks behind a lamppost on the other side of the road and takes photographs as Kyoko meets Mr A. Tomiya’s equipment includes a packet of cigarettes and a pen, both of which are actually cameras. Shimizu, a heavy-set man with a bullet head and cropped hair, carries a black bag. It contains a camera with which he films continuously through a tiny hole in the bag. A third man acts as a lookout. They follow the couple down the street, dodging the crowds and sprinting across red lights, keeping far enough behind so as not to arouse suspicion but close enough so that Shimizu can film.

Mr A, who has been married for 20 years and has a son of 19 at university, is prone to violence and beats his wife. She confided in a male friend, whom she then fell for, but when she suggested divorce to Mr A, he simply hit her. In desperation she turned to the internet, where she found Tomiya and his company, GNC.

Netizens Wreak Havoc On Cheating Husband

Ever since his extramarital affair was exposed, Beijinger Wang Fei's life has been a living hell.

He does not even know the thousands of people who are making him pay for his deed.

It all started with the diary Wang's wife, Jiang Yan, left online before leaping to her death from their 24th floor apartment last December.

Jiang wrote of her misery after discovering her husband's adultery two months earlier.

Once word of that got out, the cyber-hunt for her cheating husband began.

Wang, in his 20s, soon found himself on top of a "most-wanted list" on the Internet. Net users sniffed out and placed his photos, addresses and phone numbers on major portals for all to see and abuse.

Expletives were painted on the door of his parents' home, accusing them of killing Wang's wife. Strangers contacted the company where Wang and his lover worked. The company later suspended the couple and they were reportedly forced to resign.

Half a year later, Wang still cannot find work. Most employers turn the man away, said his lawyer, Zhang Yanfeng.

"This has seriously hindered my life," Wang said.

The Beijinger is just one of many suffering the onslaught of the cyber-manhunt. The Internet phenomenon is known in Chinese as "renrou sousuo", or "the search for human flesh".

The cyber-manhunt usually starts with thousands of individuals on the Net self-mobilizing with one goal in mind - digging out the personal information of targeted individuals.

Has Technology Made It Impossible to Have an Affair?

What could be more family-friendly than a Nintendo Wii, a games console replete with motion-sensing technology and gleaming white purity? Just look at the marketing; the families bounding around the living room, gurning with unbridled joy as they compete with each other at video tennis and baseball.

The message is clear; a Wii is the new social hub, it coaxes gloomy teenagers out of their bedrooms and weans them off Grand Theft Auto. Wii players don't buy trench coats and shoot up the local burger bar. A Wii does not warp fragile young minds. In the Wii family, if little Johnny gets tetchy he can always give Daddy a working over on electronic boxing, no harm done. Wii stands for wholesome, healthy family values. It's even got brain training and fitness applications.

So the recent stories about the man in the United States who reportedly filed for divorce, citing his Wii as a catalyst for his wife's infidelity, would have had Nintendo's marketing Svengalis frothing at the mouth.

Returning from a blood-and-guts deployment in Iraq, the unnamed soldier is said to have plugged in his console, no doubt for some light relief, and uncovered evidence that while he was fighting the insurgency, his wife had been conducting her own secret manoeuvres. You see, a Wii has a gizmo that allows a player to store his or her personal profile, called a Mii. The soldier discovered that his wife's Mii had spent long evenings virtual bowling with another Mii. When he confronted her, she admitted that the mystery Mii was actually a lover. It probably never entered her mind that the games console could be anything but inert.

However, as more and more philanderers are discovering, modern technology has an increasingly unpleasant ability to trip us up, even the whiter-than-white Wii.

Long Deployments Can Fray Faithful Times

The crowd starts to build around 11 p.m. at the Big Apple. It's still early, in singles time.

Women wear low-cut shirts; guys wear short-sleeved shirts that showcase their muscles.

They eye each other, buy a drink and approach.

The scene is a part of American culture.

But here, about a mile from the entrance to Fort Bragg, there's baggage attached to the pickup game. At every table, it's a safe bet that someone has a connection to the Army. That might mean a husband or wife overseas.

The atmosphere -- good-looking people and absent spouses -- creates a place where people will be tempted to cheat. It's up to individuals to decide whether they'll act on those temptations, patrons say.

Infidelity isn't new to our society. It isn't new to our city. And it isn't new to the Army. But as many Soldiers and their families deal with multiple deployments, maintaining a military marriage is getting more difficult.

Despite the Army's efforts to provide therapy and programs, cheating continues. But therapists, chaplains and other experts say it isn't more prevalent in the Army than in any other segment of our community.

"We can look at it as an Army command issue," said Dr. Jerry Powell, a retired Army chaplain who runs a family life center off post, "but it really comes down to a husband-and-wife issue."

Those issues vary, depending on the husbands and wives.

In the Web of a Political Sex Scandal

The latest sex scandal to rock the Capitol has the usual elements -- salacious e-mails and marital infidelity -- but it is also a cautionary tale of take-no-prisoners political warfare, fought in the messy, even lawless, world of the blogosphere.

It began with a few e-mails posted on a western New York Web site, www.politicsny.net, that allegedly documented affairs between Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, D-Buffalo, and women who were described as Capitol interns. The initial blog post came with a threat -- "Everyday we will publish another e-mail if Hoyt has not resigned the race."

Hoyt admitted Tuesday to "breaking my marriage vows," according to The Buffalo News. But he insists that he has broken no laws or the Assembly's rules banning fraternization between lawmakers and interns. The revelation brought quick action from the Assembly Ethics Committee, which launched an investigation less than 24 hours after the story broke.

State records show that the women believed to have been involved were not interns during the alleged romances, according to the News.

At the center of this story is Joseph Illuzzi, the man who posted the e-mails that started the storm.

Lawyer's Affair Costs $1.5 Million

A Mississippi attorney must pay $1.5 million for having an affair with a former client's wife.

Affirming a jury verdict in Rankin County Circuit Court, the Supreme Court of Mississippi found Ronald Henry Pierce liable to his former client, Ernest Allan Cook, who, along with his wife Kathleen Shorkey Cook, had hired Pierce to represent them and their son in a medical malpractice action.

The appellate court found Pierce, a solo practitioner, liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract and alienation of affection.

Pierce began having an affair with Kathleen Cook in September 2000 after her husband had moved to California to pursue a film career. Ernest Cook discovered the affair and hired a private investigator.

So What Did You Do Last Night? The Economics of Infidelity

Anyone married to an unhappy 55-year-old man who lives in the city could think about being suspicious that their husband may be having an affair.

Likewise, for anyone married to an unhappy 45-year-old woman who doesn't have a college education and regularly skips church may need to raise the question, according to a recently released University of New Hampshire study.

Those composite descriptions are based on a slew of demographic and economic factors that determine the likelihood someone will have an affair, the study found.

Bruce Elmslie, an economics professor at the UNH Whittemore School of Business and Economics, and Edinaldo Tebaldi, assistant professor of economics at Bryant University, jointly compiled the study, titled "So What Did You Do Last Night? The Economics of Infidelity."

Caught Cheating? What's Next?

Elizabeth Blackney says her heart goes out to Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. John Edwards, because she's been there, too.

Blackney was just 22 and pregnant when she found out in 1995 her husband had been having an extramarital affair.

"It occurred to me that I hadn't seen the phone bill come in the mail for a while," says the now 36-year-old mother in Bend, Oregon. A quick call to the phone company confirmed that her husband had requested the bills be sent to a post office box that she was unaware of.

After Blackney had the bills rerouted to their home address, she discovered what he was hiding: a long-distance relationship with another woman. When Blackney called the woman's number to investigate, she found out that her husband not only had a mistress, but that he'd told the other woman that Blackney had died in childbirth.

Are Men or Women More Likely to Cheat?

John Edwards was supposed to be one of the good guys – he seemed like the kind of husband who’d clean up around the house and take his wife to chemo. But it turns out he was yet another married man lying about an affair (with Rielle Hunter, a woman who produced his campaign videos) and he only came clean after being cornered by the media. His wife, Elizabeth Edwards, already knew about his mistress when the news broke and she has stuck by his side throughout the scandal. Why is it that we so often hear about high profile men cheating, but we rarely hear about women doing so? Perhaps it’s because societal structure combined with differing motivations for infidelity mean it’s simply easier for men to cheat.

Despite knowing that men stray, not to mention the oft-repeated statistic that most marriages end in divorce, women still put time and energy into making relationships work, especially when compared with men. There’s no doubt that dudes today are more invested in their relationships than they were in cavemen times, but their commitment doesn’t create mega-hits like Sex and the City, a show about four women talking about men, or reading articles like “The Secret Girlfriend Weapon,” which details psychological tricks to improve your couple bond, or “How To Emerge From a Fight More in Love,” actual articles from Cosmopolitan.com, whose print version is the top-seller on newsstands. By putting so much of their time and energy into the fairy-tale idea that relationships can be perfect, women set themselves up to be disappointed–or to at least look like big losers–when their man has an affair.

A-Rod: Marriage Over, Affairs Claims Irrelevant

Alex Rodriguez said he agrees with his wife on two things: Their marriage is over, and she's a good mother to their two daughters. But A-Rod said allegations of infidelity shouldn't bear on their divorce.

The New York Yankees' All-Star third baseman said in papers filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court that his five-year marriage to Cynthia Rodriguez is "irretrievably broken." But because Florida is a no-fault divorce state, Rodriguez contends that his wife's claims of affairs are "immaterial and impertinent."

In her divorce petition filed July 7, Cynthia Rodriguez accused her husband of "marital misconduct" including infidelity. She didn't mention any names, but A-Rod has been linked to pop superstar Madonna — both deny an affair — and a number of other women. A New York tabloid once labeled him "Stray-Rod."