I ran across an article on the Forbes website a couple of months back titled “How to Track a Cheating Spouse”, which was written by Brian Caulfield and dated April 14, 2010.
In the article, Brian provides a concise and focused commentary (as Forbes writers always seem to do quite effectively) on several of the technological advances that are available for tracking the whereabouts and wanderings of someone else.
And who might that “someone else” be?
For Love … or Money
Certainly, your boss might well be interested in monitoring your movements on the job. That desire on the part of bosses everywhere goes a long way in explaining why the technology mentioned here had originally been developed.
But you don’t really care how your co-workers spend their Sunday afternoons or what the FedEx delivery guy does on his days off. What your interest would be is in what your partner (girlfriend, boyfriend, wife or husband, as the case may be) is up to when you’re not around to “supervise”.
“Cheating in relationships” is a common occurrence and can result in your losing that relationship altogether. And that’s true even if it is only you who is cheating or only your partner cheating. On this dance floor, it only takes one partner to tango on out the door.
So, not surprisingly, a sizeable percentage of people will do a bit of “relationship spying” if the opportunity presents itself. That’s basic human nature. What has evolved is just how much you can spy on your partner (and vice-versa) if you use the latest technology.
“Can” vs. “Should”
But just because you can do something doesn’t make it a smart idea to then do it. For example, at least one country has enough nuclear weapons to kill every man, woman and child on the planet several times over, but that hardly makes it a good idea to do it.
Is it a good idea to track your partner? Prior to the adoption of the “no-fault divorce” laws, it was (if you wanted out yourself) since “fault” that could be proven (with 8 x 10 glossies, for example) was taken into account in deciding how to divide the property and future income. It could make a very big difference.
But that was then and this is now. And nowadays, it’s hard to come up with many good reasons for tracking your partner. But there are good reasons why not to.
For example, some technologies may be illegal in some jurisdictions (unless you’re the government or someone important who has plenty of political clout). Just what you need … an unfaithful spouse and a prison term.
Second, anytime you track someone, you run the risk of detection by the person being tracked. And that creates a serious but separate problem for you: she is quite likely to dump you on the spot for having tried to track her … even if she was being a good girl and had nothing to hide.
Partly, she’ll be pissed that you don’t trust her. And partly, she’ll realize that you’re very insecure and women tend to find very insecure men to be a whole lot less desirable than they find confident men to be.
It’s the Principle of the Thing
I would certainly dump my partner on the spot the first time I caught her trying to track me. Relationships are built on trust and tracking someone indicates your lack of trust.
I’ve also found out the hard way that women who are insecure enough to try and track your moves tend to have and cause many more problems in time if you stay with them. And the same holds in reverse … if I were a woman and I caught a guy trying to track me, he would be history. He’d get no second chances, no matter what.
It may be true (as former radio jock Tom Leykis frequently observed) that you get the best sex from the “psycho bitches from Hell”. And I’ve heard women say (about a particular guy of ill repute they were shagging) that “Sure, he’s criminally insane … but it’s the best sex I’ve ever had!”
But in the longer run, it just isn’t worth it. I know … I’ve overstayed with several unbalanced women. These days, I’m gone at the first sign of craziness, and that includes women who would try to put a key logger on my computer, for example, or put hidden cameras in my house.
I’ve got a strict “zero tolerance” policy and have never since regretted it.
The Big Picture
It’d be very difficult to track your partner 24-7 in any case, so ultimately, all you can really know for certain about her is how well she treats you when you and she are together. And ultimately, that’s all that really matters to me.
If she treats me great whenever we’re together, that’s all I need to know when deciding whether to keep her around. Whatever she does when she’s not around is not affecting me negatively and therefore I just don’t worry about it any more. So if she did get a bit on the side a few times but it has no effect on how she treats me, then so be it. I’d chalk it up to human nature.
But if she treats me like crap whenever we’re together, that’s also all I need to know when deciding whether to keep her around. I’m not interested in staying with women who treat me like crap, so I’ll end the relationship. It doesn’t matter whether she’d been unfaithful or not, as I don’t tolerate people mistreating me (even if they had been faithful).
Why worry about stuff that might be? Focus on what you do experience with her. And if she really is starting to tire of you and to look for your replacement, you’ll be able sense this (if you pay attention) in the subtle changes in how she behaves toward you when she is around you.
That’s the better source for taking your cues.
Stay tuned,
Mack Doppler
