"Is my girlfriend or boyfriend cheating on me?"
This is the absolute, number one relationship question of all time. If you go to Google and type in “Is my wife,” or “Is my husband,” Google will finish your sentence with “Cheating on me”. Sometimes, you don’t even get past the “my”!
Unfortunately, science can’t provide a definitive answer to the question of cheating. It can, however, give us the tools to spot deception.
Dr. Paul Ekman, University of California Medical School emeritus psychology professor, has published something called the Facial Action Coding System—FACS—which successfully detects deception close to 90 percent of the time. Dr. Ekman says that the biggest indicators of lying come from the face, not the body—liars don’t actually fidget more than truthful people, despite what you may have heard.
Some of Ekman’s biggest signs of deception are blinking, dilated pupils, an avoidance of eye contact, and someone who is simply acting differently than usual. Of course, these don’t guarantee a liar, but they are grounds for suspicion.
If you’re suspicious after a few conversations, bring out your inner sleuth and start asking friends what they think—they’ll often know more than you do. Watch out for changes in social media, email, and phone usage, too—if these goes way up, and your partner seems guarded about them, something might be up.
Look out for all of these signs, and you’ll likely find out if your boyfriend or girlfriend is cheating on you.
