It is a terrible feeling to wake up one day and think, just maybe your partner is being unfaithful. At first your natural tendency is to just dismiss your suspicions but those thoughts in the back of your mind just won't go away, no matter how much denial you throw at them until you get some solid answers.

It may begin with a noticeable difference in your partner's behaviour that seems out of the ordinary or hard to explain. An unexplained increase in after hours business meetings or interstate trips when previously there have been none or very few, is something that is easily overlooked but can be an early sign of things going wrong between you and your other half.

Emotional distance between people can be normal due to the stresses of modern lifestyle demands, but when someone else has entered the relationship you know nothing about, this can be a sign of things not quite right.

Little things like the slight or even strong scent of an unfamiliar perfume or fragrance on their clothes, could be something to raise the alarm bells.

There could be unexplained high numbers of calls to and from a number on your spouse's phone bill that may require some investigation. One of the worst things you can do to your relationship is to go and confront them when all you have are suspicions.

The thought of your other half feeling betrayed when you love them deeply and perhaps have forgotten to show it as much as you used to do, can be detrimental to your relationship, when clearly there where no real grounds for the suspicion in reality.

So what do you do, hire a private investigator to follow them like you see in the movies? Well yes, they do really exist and there is a lot of work for these types of professionals in our modern age of "no one stays together anymore, celebrity on again off again influenced relationships". This however is something that could cost a significant amount of money and it may not be necessary if you are familiar with the less expensive alternatives.

Many a cheating husband or wife have been found out by doing some very stupid things like posting love letters on things like Twitter and Facebook. Logging into their social networking sites is not that hard to do, if they have their username and password saved in the browser, like most people tend to do. This can be an easy to catch out someone who you suspect is cheating on you.

This type of snooping can be especially easy to do if there is a third party that you are familiar with. Your husbands secretary or personal assistant can be tracked down on Facebook or Twitter very easily, just by searching for them by name. This can be effective for the careless one in the relationship even if it isn't your partner.

But even the most clandestine affair is usually procured with a solid history of phone and text messages to the new love interest. Here is where low cost services that allow you do a reverse cell phone lookup on one of the commercial directories can be very helpful indeed.

For a few dollars you can trace those unrecognised numbers on your spouse's phone bill and either expose their shenanigans or set your mind at ease with knowing that it is just your sneaking suspicions that are misguided. The cost of a private investigator could run into thousands of dollars when you consider you are going to have to pay them by the hour.

Staking out your partner's work and monitoring what they are doing behind closed office doors with spy cams is another method employed by the suspicious partners of cheating lovers. These types devices can be difficult to install and the costs of even a do-it-yourself setup can run into hundreds of dollars.

So what is the best place to start with all of this? By far the cheapest and often the most revealing piece of detective work you can virtually do by yourself is by getting that phone bill and recording commonly dialled or received numbers.

Look for abnormalities such as very long calls or a high amount of short calls. Put these down on paper or in a spreadsheet and then get hold of a reliable reverse cell phone directory online service provider and look the numbers to find the owners name, address and other relevant particulars.

Such private information that is normally out of reach can be accessed for a small fee of under $50. This will generally give you unlimited directory searches for a year. This is probably the most economical way of doing your detective work, compared to just paying for the one off single lookup fee.

Who knows you may be onto something that you need to know about and take action over, or you could be over-reacting and need to set you mind at ease. Life is difficult enough without having to shoulder additional stresses that could be real or just imagined. Either way you owe it to yourself to find out the truth one way or the other.