By CAROLYN SUSMAN
Cox News Service
Monday, August 15, 2005

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Well, it was about time.

Were we really supposed to believe that the reason Jen and Brad split was that she didn’t want to have his babies?

Get real.

When Jennifer Aniston finally let her truth be known, she was honest: Brad Pitt “emotionally exited” the marriage months ago when he met Angelina Jolie.

Although Aniston chooses to believe there was no sexual relationship when her husband first met Jolie, she told Vanity Fair that he just wasn’t there for her anymore.

He was gone emotionally. He didn’t even attend the final taping of “Friends,” her long-running sitcom.

There’s a term for that kind of fracture — emotional infidelity.

Miami Beach psychotherapist M. Gary Neuman even wrote a book on the subject in 2002, “Emotional Infidelity” (Random House.)

“When we think ‘affair’ we think sex,” Neuman has said. “But an emotional affair can be just as dangerous to a marriage. When a spouse places his or her primary emotional needs in the hands of someone outside the marriage, it breaks the bond of marriage just as adultery does.”

Those fun e-mails you send to your friends and not your spouse? That could be emotional infidelity, even if the e-mail goes to someone you’re not emotionally involved with.

Why? Because, Neuman believes, you’re directing a special energy elsewhere that should go toward spicing up your marriage.

And you could also be opening the door to a romp on an African beach, which is where Pitt and Jolie eventually ended up.

But heck. The Internet has made emotional infidelity a daily occurrence for some because of easy access and relative secrecy. And so has the workplace — whether it’s an office or movie set. People have lots of opportunities to seek emotional comfort from the person at the next desk or from someone who shows up online at the same time each day.

With today’s technology, you can be “chatting” online with someone and using a Web cam while your spouse is in the kitchen dicing celery.

No big deal? Or is it?

“It was for me,” says Susan (not her real name) of West Palm Beach.

“I noticed we were talking less and less, especially about important issues. And he was spending more and more time on the computer and away from home.”

Eventually, she found copies of messages between her husband and his online “lover.” He swore they never met in person, but it was still devastating.

“He was telling her about me and I couldn’t take it,” she says.

Even though her husband said there had been no physical contact, that didn’t matter to her. She felt betrayed.

Like Brad Pitt, her husband was directing his emotional needs toward someone else and being less available to help and support his wife.

That’s the classic definition of an emotional affair, says Dr. Deborah Layton-Tholl, a psychologist.

“The person is making a decision to change their primary relationship, going from the spouse to someone else.

“The emotional affairs don’t have to become physical. If it’s interfering with the primary relationship, you can categorize it as an affair that can do harm. The other person in the marriage is feeling they’re being rejected.”

And secrecy is a magic ingredient in this mix, the way it would be with any affair.

That’s why author and therapist Neuman — who is also a rabbi — tells his wife of 18 years about everyone he meets or talks with. The couple have set specific rules to avoid falling into the emotional affair trap.

“You really do have to draw the line and talk about it openly with your spouse, what you are comfortable and uncomfortable with,” he says.

It’s hard to keep a marriage going, especially when there are difficulties. But when all the conversation at home is about bills, kids and money, and all the fun, fascinating stuff is being directed outside your relationship, you are cheating and your marriage is in trouble, Neuman says, whether or not there is any sex going on.

“It’s much more about what’s in the heart than the sex.” he points out.

Carolyn Susman writes for the Palm Beach Post.

Aug. 11 (Bloomberg) — One in 25 dads may unknowingly be raising another man’s child, according to a study by British researchers published in next month’s issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

Researchers at John Moores University in Liverpool, England based their findings on a review of medical and social science research spanning more than 50 years. They determined that rates of paternal discrepancy, or PD, where a father is not the biological parent of his child, range from 0.8 percent to as much as 30 percent, with a median of 3.7 percent.

PD is generally a result of unprotected sex and multiple partners and typically associated with a woman having an affair outside marriage. The number of cases recorded is rising because of an increase in situations in which genetic discrepancies can be detected such as organ donation, male infertility treatment, screening for diseases and DNA profiling during police, judicial and emergency investigations, researchers said.

“Our approach to PD cannot be simply to ignore this difficult issue but must be informed by what best protects the health of those affected,” the study’s lead author Mark Bellis of the John Moores University’s Center for Public Health said in the study.

Finding out that a child being raised as biological progeny is actually sired by another man can affect the father’s health, the child’s, his partner’s and the biological parent’s health, Bellis said.

The number of paternity testing in North America and Europe has been soaring. The rates more than doubled to 310,490 between 1991 and 2001 in the U.S., according to the study.

Fathers unsure whether a child is their own may visit a clinic or order a testing kit via the internet, and provide samples such as cheek swabs, hair follicles from themselves and the child in question.

“Given developing roles for individual’s genetics in decisions made by health services, private services, for example insurance, and even in personal lifestyle decisions, the dearth of intelligence on how and when PD should be exposed urgently needs addressing,” Bellis said in the study.

About a third of pregnancies are unplanned, and about one in five women in long-term relationships has had an affair in the U.K., according to the study.

What if you could log on to a web site, type in a guys name and immediately find out if he’s cheated on his wife, girlfriend or significant other before you date, marry or otherwise commit to him? By logging on to a new web site, www.DontDateHimGirl.com, any woman can! Created by women in Miami, the innovative site allows users to post pictures and ‘cheat sheets of alleged philandering men in cyberspace for all to see. The information goes directly into a search engine that can be accessed, free of
charge, by any woman, anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Today, cheating is rampant. According to statistics published in 2003 by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, 22% of all men cheat.

Dr. Scott Haltzman, a noted psychiatrist estimates those statistics to be even higher. According to Dr. Haltzman, by age 45, two out of every five married men, or 40%, have had at least one affair.

An Internet site, USMarriageLaws.com, touts even more alarming cheating stats. According to the site, 85% of women who feel they have a cheating spouse are correct and 70% of women don’t know about their husband’s affairs.

What’s a woman to do when faced with these sobering statistics? By typing a guy’s name into the database on DontDateHimGirl.com, a woman can pull up a man’s picture and cheat sheet. Who has he cheated on in the past? Is he cheating now? DontDateHimGirl.com helps women find answers before they make a big mistake–dating a cheater.

‘This site is changing the way women date. It’s revolutionizing the dating game and giving women an advantage they’ve never had before, said Tasha Joseph, spokesperson for the Web site. Think about this. You’re a woman about to go on a date with a guy. It takes a second to type the man’s name into the search engine and find out if he’s been reported for cheating by another woman. Is that man a cheater? Find out by logging on to DontDateHimGirl.com.

The site also features informative articles and a forum for women to vent their frustrations, exchange stories and find support. An advice column, ‘Ask Your Girl’, gives women solid advice on matters of the heart. Registered members can also reserve a copy of the forthcoming novel, ‘How to Catch a Cheating Man’, a hilarious look at what can happen when a man gets caught cheating on a woman.

Membership is free when you register online at www.DontDateHimGirl.com. Men can also post their side of the story free of charge on the site.

NEW YORK – 79-year-old monsignor named as other man in divorce case denies rumors

A Roman Catholic monsignor named in court papers as “the other man” in a divorce case resigned Thursday as rector of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the New York archdiocese said.

Cardinal Edward Egan accepted Msgr. Eugene Clark’s resignation from the key church position despite the 79-year-old Clark’s denials that he has been carrying on an affair with his 46-year-old private secretary, the church said.

“He offered his resignation for the good of Saint Patrick’s and the archdiocese,” the statement said. “He will not be celebrating Mass or the sacraments publicly until this matter has been resolved.”

August 12, 2005

LONDON: It is a wise child who knows his own father, as Homer has it. But in Britain, Shakespeare’s aphorism may be more pertinent: it is a wise father who knows his own child.

Research suggests that, as cases of teenage pregnancies, sexual infidelity and multiple partners increase, one in 25 fathers could unknowingly be raising another man’s child.

With improvements in genetic testing, thousands of fathers every year are discovering that “their” child is someone else’s. A study by scientists from Liverpool John Moores University concludes that 4per cent of all men are unwittingly bringing up a child they have not fathered.

Of the men who demand a paternity test because they suspect infidelity, one in four have their suspicions confirmed.

The team gives warning that the trend, known as “paternal discrepancy”, poses serious implications for the future of the family.

Paternity tests have also featured in high-profile disputes involving celebrities and politicians.

This year, David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, learned that he was not the father of the latest child of his former lover, Kimberly Quinn.

Actor Liz Hurley won child support for her son Damian after tests proved that Steve Bing, a millionaire television producer, was his father.

Recent scientific advances have resulted in a boom in the use of DNA profiling and genetic testing, which is relied on in areas such as organ donation and criminal investigations.

They are also being used by a growing number of men keen to have access to a child or to disprove a claim for child support made against them.

An estimated 10,000 paternity tests are carried out each year. While many of the checks are conducted under the scrutiny of the Child Support Agency or the courts, there are an increasing number of internet DNA-testing services available.

The researchers, led by Mark Bellis, of the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool, analysed a wide range of international studies, looking at estimates of paternal discrepancy between 1950 and last year.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, show that rates of cases where a father was not the biological father of his child ranged from 1per cent in some studies to as many as 30per cent. Experts generally agree that the rate was below 10per cent.

“For any father, identifying that the child they are raising as their biological progeny is actually sired by another man can have substantial health consequences,” the researchers said.

“Such knowledge can also destroy families, affecting the health of the child and mother as well as that of any man who is ultimately identified as the biological parent.”

Suspected infidelity, as a result of a man finding out that a child is not his own, can lead to domestic violence.

Genetic tests can be carried out using hair or a mouth swab sent to laboratories by post.

The researchers said in a society where services and life decisions were increasingly influenced by genetics, this difficult issue could not be ignored.

The Times

Cheating may not mean just sneaking in and out of the hotel. Your husband’s friend has just phoned again-for the third time this week. While you’re slaving away in the kitchen or putting the kid to bed, you hear them laughing on the telephone and your hackles rise. Are you being unreasonable and petty, as you know they are only friends and nothing more?

Not really. When your spouse starts keeping others company and his interest is diverted elsewhere, it is perfectly normal to feel betrayed in some way. Infidelity is not necessarily only sexual – it can be emotional too and yes, this can make a marriage suffer. A strong emotional connection between your spouse and a friend/colleague, with whom lots of emotional intimacies are shared, will eventually drive a wedge between spouses, whether there is a sexual relationship between them or not. Very strong emotional attachments elsewhere could be very dangerous for your relationship or marriage. Is there much to choose between emotional infidelity and sexual infidelity or is one worse than the other?

Technology is the kiss of death for illicit romance. In this era of camera phones, e-mail, text messaging and bugging devices, are we having the final fling, asks Prem Paul Ninan.

These are troubled times for unfaithful couples. Living in an age where technology has taken control of every part of the lives of people, relationships too have come to be defined by it. However, individuals across the globe who have flirted with technology in an attempt to cheat their better halves (always better when being cheated by the other, and who, these days, don’t always have to be married to one) have discovered soon enough that it is becoming increasingly difficult to cheat technology. True, technology has made it a lot easier for many to have relationships with people other than their spouses or partners, and to be quite discreet about it too. But sooner or later, very often, the same technology that helped one maintain a clandestine relationship for a while turns into the very evidence that brings about the downfall of the affair. Like a carnivore turning on its captors!

Commonly used media

Take mobile phones and the internet for instance – probably the most widely used media used by unfaithful partners for illicit affairs. The relative permanence of data stored by the use of software, is the basis for suspicious spouses-turned-sleuths to turn the heat on their partners. People use software because it gives them a sense of privacy and a feeling that they may actually be able to pull off something (no pun intended).

Consider the mobile phone. The benefits of text messaging, for instance, are many. There are many instances in which a person, while talking to his partner on the mobile phone, receives a message from someone he might not have ever met before, but with whom he has been carrying on a distance affair. The person is able to view the message and even dash off a quick salacious reply to his or her lover, only to return to the beloved’s call, without the unsuspecting partner even realising anything might have transpired.

Once the affair is on in full flow, however, it’s hard to keep your partner from being suspicious. There was a case in which a man carelessly left his mobile phone in his car and to his misfortune, his girlfriend saw a message coming in from his lover. She even went through a deleted items’ folder he did not know existed, and extracted more incriminating messages.

While most lovers are undoubtedly cautious in deleting ‘private’ messages, there is no telling when they might slip up. Ashwin Mohan, a wellness consultant, says that a friend of his who was in a dual relationship, once inadvertently sent a message intended for his lover, to his intended instead. He had hell to pay after that. Pradiksha Oommen, a third year BA student, says her friend once left her mobile phone with her boyfriend, so she could visit the loo. At that point, a message came in from her boyfriend’s male friend with whom she had been communicating for some time. Not bothering to confirm the nature of their friendship, the jealous boyfriend furiously broke off the affair.

The camera phone

Then, you also have today many mobile phones coming with built-in cameras and recording devices. These can be switched on quite casually without the unsuspecting unfaithful even knowing a thing. How one goes about this is one’s own affair, but there’s no denying that once recorded, it is quite an incriminating piece of evidence. You also have small digital voice recorders that can virtually be hidden in the hand. Atin Gupta, a marketing executive, says that one of his friends, who once got suspicious, got a girlfriend of his girlfriend to record a telephonic conversation she once had with her lover. With this evidence in hand, he confronted his one-time girlfriend, who, after an initial denial, finally gave in.

Detective agencies

Private detective agencies commonly use such recording devices to track the activities of cheating individuals, in infidelity cases. However, Puneet Kumar, executive director of the Globe Detective Agency in Bangalore, says that his agency primarily relies on physical surveillance in such cases. “Most affairs of an illicit nature are generally physical, involving sex, and only sometimes get emotional. In order to keep track of a person’s activities, the agent’s physical presence is critical, and no device can replace this.� The detective service usually sends two agents, who carry basic cameras, on the track of the suspected cheater.

The agents prepare detailed reports of the victim’s movements and take photos only if there is absolutely no risk involved. Bugging devices can only be planted if the affair is going on in one’s own house, in which case the spouse is made to plant the device. “Otherwise, there is no telling where the affair may be taking place. It could be anywhere – hotels, cars, the workplace.�

Come now to the internet, which is also extensively used by unfaithfuls. While chat rooms have allowed illicit affairs to mushroom manifold, through the hidden identity it provides people, there are dozens of spyware programmes being developed that allow people to sneak view the suspected cyber relationships of their partners. Software programmes like Spector, developed by Spectorsoft in the US, are able to record such activities in detail. The programme operates like a quick-clicking camera, taking pictures every few seconds of whatever appears on the screen. The pictures can be played back in a slide-show fashion, like a jerky 20’s film. Prashanth Ninan, former manager, IT infrastructure at Altivo Information Technologies Pvt Ltd, Bangalore, says that there are even key-logging software programmes, that record every single key typed, including the spaces! This means, that with a little bit of effort, even an amateur can hack into the e-mail accounts of his or her partner. And what makes these softwares so attractive is that they are generally not very expensive and can therefore be sneaked into the home computer quite easily.

Credit card bills

But it’s not all about software either. There have been so many small technological advancements that have allowed couples to spy on each other fairly easily. For instance, credit card bills provide suspecting individuals ample fodder, especially with unusual gifts, restaurants, travel or unspecified charges. Unexplained bank statements, detailed phone bills containing data on unusually long calls made to certain unknown numbers, even the receipts that are billed from shopping centres, regarding unusual purchases made, can be recovered by a prowling cuckold on his partner’s trail. For some, the snooping around can become almost an obsession, as one such individual in the US candidly admitted, after spying on his wife’s cyber indulgences.

And if you think that such snooping around is confined abroad, you’re quite mistaken. Puneet says that his agency gets about 15 to 20 cases of infidelity a month, in Bangalore. A majority of the complainants are men, he says. But is it morally wrong to spy on one’s partner, using technological aids? Prashanth definitely thinks so. “It is a despicable thing to do, and anyone who does so is not worth being in a relationship,� he says. “Most people who do so are not married, but are usually in live-in affairs and are not willing to commit anyway.� Atin, who is going to be married in December, feels the same. So does Deepa Priyadarshini, who is into corporate communications. Both feel that trust should be the basis of any relationship, and that misgivings about any extra affair could always be handled at the personal level.

Whatever may be the view, it is clear that technology has made snooping a lot easier, and affairs a lot more challenging!

FIDELITY CHECK

Signs that your partner may be cheating on you:

Sudden increase in time away from home

Decreased sexual interest

He or she is often distracted and day dreaming

He or she is often unavailable at work

He or she attends more work functions alone

Cell phone calls are not returned in timely fashion

He or she leaves house or goes to other rooms to talk on the

telephone

He or she uses the computer alone and secretly

He or she asks about your schedule more often than usual

Mileage on car is high when only short distance errands are run

Clothes smell of perfume, massage oil residue and sex

Clothes contain makeup or lipstick smudges

He or she gets the laundry done independently

Viagra usage increases