You know when your boyfriend is cheating on you, writes JANA HOCKING

Unpopular truth: you know if your partner is cheating on you.

Now you can stomp your feet and insist you were completely surprised, but were you really? If you look deep into your relationship, you know the signs were there early on.

I speak from experience, you see, I’ve been cheated on three times and each time I found out I was extremely upset, but was I surprised? Well… not so much. So trust me when I say you know one hundred million percent when your partner is cheating.

The first time I found out my partner was cheating was with my first real boyfriend, fresh out of high school. He was a nice, sweet boy, but guess what? That means crouching in the cheating universe, because yes, even the lovely one is cheating.

I can pinpoint the moment when I got a sixth sense that he was up to no good. He went to college a year before me and started talking nonstop about this girl in his new friendship group. Immediately I knew something was not right. When I traveled for a weekend to stay with him in his dorm, I was finally introduced to her. She was warm but distant.

Then we all went to the pub, and I noticed that he always jumped up to help her get a drink, lest they laugh at an inside joke.

Later that night I went through his phone and sure enough there was a text from her saying ‘When are you going to tell her?’. By the end of that weekend, he’d broken up with her, and a week later, he’d made it official with her.

Heartbreaking things.

The second time I was cheated on was a bit more brutal, but again the signs were there early. We first met when he came to my parents house to pick up my brother for a party. I stayed there for a weekend and he saw me running from the shower to my bedroom. Immediately he pushed past my brother, banged on my door and invited me to the party.

This is why your husband is cheating, writes SAMANTHA X

I was a journalist for national magazines before leaving my ‘normal life’ to become an escort in my late thirties. Not the decision most people make when looking for a change, but it suited me, for many complex reasons that even I have a hard time understanding. So why did married men come to me?

1. Someone to talk to

Believe it or not, men like to talk. They are emotional and extremely vulnerable.

2. They miss foreplay

Men secretly want to spend hours in bed with you, but say they got tired of being rejected. They miss the foreplay (pleasuring you instead of the other way around) and they don’t always want it all to be over before you can say “hand me the TV controls, MAFS is on.”

3. You had an affair

While a woman turns a blind eye to her husband’s mistake, men do not. Their ego won’t allow it. If they stay (and men rarely leave), they’ll see that as a green light to do what they want, so you’re “quit.”

4. Seeing an escort doesn’t mean they don’t love you

They don’t want to leave you for another woman, and they certainly don’t want to run off with an escort (and no escort in the history of this earth would ever want to run off with your husband – that’s the same as your work home). Men are like puppies that chew on your shoes, they just can’t help themselves.

Amanda Goff, also known as Samantha X, was an escort in her late thirties

He had self-confidence, enthusiasm and knew how to court a girl. Yes, welcome to the ‘ladies man’. That should have been my first sign that he was about to cheat – the guy wasn’t afraid to make a move. The second sign was the non-stop stares he gave women when we were gone. I used to clock him looking at other women. When I confronted him about it, he just said, ‘What? I was just watching!’.

Sure, the first time I traveled abroad for work, I came back to half the city gossiping about him sleeping with one of my friends at a party. Ouch.

The third time I was cheated on was a little harder to pick, and yet the signs were definitely there. At the beginning of our many years of relationship, he was caring, thoughtful, and smart. He was more brains than brawn. Fashion wasn’t for him, and the gym was “for people with too much time.”

But then the ancient signs began to appear subtly.

“The first time I traveled abroad for work, I came back halfway across town gossiping about my boyfriend sleeping with one of my friends at a party. Ouch,” writes Jana

Now I don’t condone looking through your partner’s phone (trust me, it sucks, and you know, all that privacy stuff), but if you feel like you can find something there, it will likely to happen,” she says.

It started with him putting his phone face down on the table, something he had never done before. Then he took his phone to the bathroom and never left it unattended. Then he decided he wanted to get super fit and signed up at the local gym. Who was he trying to impress? I mean I had watched this guy eat a pizza in less than five minutes and then give him a bowl of ice cream before putting the moves on me. So it certainly wasn’t me he was trying to lure into the bed.

Spoiler alert: Turns out it was the new girl at work. Yes, I’m embarrassed to admit that I waited for him to come home drunk one night and search his phone. (Yes, that makes it twice I’ve done that now).

The point of these stories is that my gut told me something was up before the evidence was placed before me. Whether it’s updating their wardrobe, taking better care of their appearance, starting to wear cologne, or consistently talking about the “hilarious” new person at work, the signs are there, my friends.

And I go one step further. Usually our friends also know that something is going on. At the end of your relationship, ask them if they had any suspicions that your partner was a dud, and after a few wines, they’ll usually tell you yes. They caught him looking at other women, they noticed the new, modern haircut he wears, and they may have even seen him up to no good. A cheater may think they are a mastermind, but if you look closely enough, the signs are always there staring you in the face.

Now, I don’t condone looking through your partner’s phone (trust me, it sucks, and you know, all that privacy stuff), but if you feel like you might find something in that, then that is probably the case.