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What are the things you should watch out for?
By Kurtis Condra — Written on Jun 19, 2022
An investigator hired to catch cheating spouses is revealing some of the valuable lessons she has learned through her work.
Alison Harris, a 54-year-old woman based in Oxfordshire, England, charges clients $87 an hour for a range of services from exposing cheaters to tracking down missing people.
As a private investigator, she has noticed several tell-tale signs of cheating.
Through her company, Miss AM Investigating, Harris has learned a lot about what we should be looking out for if we have concerns about partners' fidelity.
"The obvious one is if they suddenly start taking an interest in themselves, how they look, perhaps they change how they look, lose weight, and start going to the gym," Harris notes.
"Another sign is if they carry their phone everywhere. That's a huge red flag."
She adds that you should watch out for any new hobbies that appear out of nowhere, especially if they never showed interest in it before.
"It can be any sudden change, and I think you do realize," Harris says.
Men aren't the only cheaters.
Harris says she has also been hired by men who believe their female partners are cheating. In fact, she says her clients are a pretty even split between men and women.
Overall, she notes that anyone should reach out to a private investigator if they notice suspicious changes.
"It’s better than just sitting there wondering and making yourself really miserable and doubting everything. It’s better to know and then you can make good decisions," she says.
In fact, Harris thinks that most of her clients already know the truth about their cheating partners and just need professional confirmation.
"They may have confronted their partner and been told ‘oh, you’re stupid, you’re just imagining it.’ I actually give them a definitive answer and they can then move on from that.” Harris said.
While her motives are good, sometimes Harris' clients are not very well-intentioned.
She recalled one sinister plot in which a man approached her to find his ex-fiance. He claimed he wanted to get his engagement ring back, alleging that it was a family heirloom.
But Harris was suspicious.
"There was just something about him that didn't sit well with me so I said that I was too busy and that I wouldn't be able to do it," she explains.
"Then a couple of weeks later, the police contacted me as he wanted me to find her so he could kill her."
Even with this risk factor, and the fact that the job can sometimes involve a lot of sitting around waiting for a lead, Harris says the satisfaction is amazing.
She doesn't do it for money or to string people along. Instead, her goal is to give people closure with something that has been eating at them for a long time.
Kurtis Condra is a writer for YourTango based in San Francisco, California covering human interest topics, celebrity-focused news and pop culture deep dives. When not reading his editorial content, you can follow his poetic journey on Instagram.