I was going to post this on the thread of a new, potentially betrayed spouse in SAA, but upon further consideration I decided it might be too much of a threadjack for there; and anyway, I thought the question might be of more general interest:

In my unscientific, anecdotal sampling, it seems to me that new BSs are only very rarely advised, by the vets here, of the option to consider private investigators among their possible options for gathering/confirming info.

Why is this?

Please don't misunderstand me: I am NOT at all against trying to compile & put out all the best possible advice on how people can do their own snooping. PIs obviously aren't as flexible as "in-house" snooping that can be expanded/adjusted/tweaked by the suspicious BS any time it's necessary, without delay & without extra cost. So I'm by no means against helping these BSs re: how to do it the best they can.

I admit, I'm partial to PIs because it was one that busted and helped to end my affair, and thus contributed unintentionally to keeping my marriage from being ruined & my life from going over a cliff. And I'm from a mostly upper-middle class community where most folks could afford a PI if they wanted one. I realize that that's not the case & is not an attractive option for lots of people from a financial standpoint.

I also appreciate the idea of "outsourcing" the snooping because I am a total technophobe -- if it weren't for my wife, the clock on our DVD Player would always read "12:00" (and I'm such a behind-the-curve technophobe that I almost typed "VCR" there instead of DVD, no joke). There are lots of us out here. We walk among you. Seems to me that trying to master technology under such circumstances, while maybe empowering to some BSs, might just add to the stress for other BSs, at a time when the last thing they want or need is extra stress.

So IMO I think we should just remind them that it's an option to outsource the snooping. Im not saying we should recommend PIs over self-snooping, just that we should mention them as an alternative.

What say ye?

I SOOO agree. If folks can afford it, a PI is usually the best way to go. A PI can often get the total goods in one day, along with pictures, etc.

Hey GloveOil.

I'm pretty sure you are talking about my thread. I hadn't really considered a PI until now.

My concern with a PI is that they may not be able to find any evidence. If my wife agrees to a poly I would have a ~93% chance of the truth.

Actually I wasn't.

In todays newspaper. Article about female PI gathers recon, if H goes to (bars, I guess) she attempts to "pick them up."

This agency (I will not post link), says they have a very successful rate. Both in guilty and helping the innocent.

They say they can get a "feel" for spouses likelyhood of instigating and A, even if they do not make a "date" with spouse.

This sounds really dangerous, but is catching on in popularity-
If the target spouse is disinterested in the contact, this would give some BS's some sort of encouragement, I think.

I know this is not POJA nor RO, but it would be rather tempting thought.

This sounds crazy... but I wonder if anyone here has thought about this type of snooping-- direct face to face set up?

I have heard people making profiles and attempting to contact certain people online..
....but nothing this involved.

Thanks, barbiecat. Interesting.

I haven't seen the article, but the tactic sounds a little fringe-y to me.

My supposition is that one affair at a time is all that most WSs can manage or want to manage. Unfortunately, as a (F)WS, I speak from (wretched) experience on this. I was emotionally involved with my OW -- the kind of infatuation where the WS think's he's "in love". ( ) Even in the worst depths of my affair, no way would I have been ripe for some sort of "entrapment"-style approach aimed just at discovering whether I was generally susceptible to affairs or bar pickups.

Maybe that approach would work to snag the 'Tiger Woods', will-pick-up-anything-in-a-skirt type of cheaters, but I don't think that's how most affairs are. Rather, I think most affairs proceed from improper emotional attachments that form 1-on-1, in workplaces, churches, teachers' lounges, etc. Maybe the affairees go to bars once the affair is on, but usually that's not where they met in the first place.

So if a PI tries to lure a target to the bar & he declines, because he'd rather meet his affair partner (not the PI), then the exercise would result in a "false negative" -- and any encouragement thus given to the BS would be false encouragement, and the money spent by the suspecting BS would be wasted.

Rather, the PIs I would have in mind to recommend would be those that presume the suspected WS is having an affair, and scope out all of that person's conduct, communications & whereabouts in order to establish with whom, along with details of when, where, etc. This approach will also often prove effective at flushing out cases where the WS is having multiple affairs, with less risk of returning "false negative" readings.

bump

ITA with GO. This is what I was thinking too. This would have been a waste of money for me, because one thing I DID notice before I found out about the A, was that my WH no longer checked other woman out. I didn't know what that was about, but now I do. This type of PI could catch the spouse who goes out looking for "tail" and doesn't follow the majority.