CHEATING SPOUSES: VALENTINES DAY & COVID

We have done thousands of surveillance requests on behalf of spouses who suspect their partners of cheating.  Many of those assignments occur in the days leading up to (and on) Valentine’s Day. For every single year over the past 40 years, it wasn’t uncommon for us to do over 20 of these surveillance jobs on Valentine’s Day itself.

COVID has changed all that.

Keep in mind the major concern of a cheater: They must take their lover out on Valentine’s Day. Anything else is unacceptable.

In the year 2020, which was pre-COVID, things were not only the same as they were on any other year, but Valentine’s Day fell on a Friday.  This was terrific for us in the private investigative industry (and a nightmare for those people having affairs) because the cheater had to decide who to take out on the big day: Their spouse or lover. They can sometimes pretend to be working on that Friday and then take out their spouse on the Saturday.

Every year around this time, the news media calls me for an interview or a quote about our workload.

This year in 2022, as in last year, I have seen a couple quotes from rookies in the PI profession who are claiming to be completely booked for Valentine’s Day. That might actually be true if they happen to be a single-person operation and have one surveillance job to work. Candidly, I really question the authenticity of any PI’s claiming to have multiple surveillance jobs to work this year. COVID has just put an end to such activities in 2021 and 2022.

To make sure of my assessment, we contacted five of the top PI agencies in the U.S. These all are first-class investigators, running the top-echelon agencies on the planet. Four of the agencies have no assignments for this Monday, February 14, 2022.  One agency stated they have one pending matter but no retainer has been received.

My agency has two Valentine’s surveillance cases pending. We may get a few more inquiries before the big day but that is probably wishful thinking on our part.

Previously, I wrote a post titled Cheating & Dating In the Time of COVID, and another post titled Familiarity Breeds Contempt: Divorce Rate Spike During Holidays. Both essentially have the same message, namely, that many of the usual PI industry norms have been turned upside down due to the pandemic.

I’ll close out this post with a video from a Valentine’s Day past, when I was interviewed by a CBS reporter on Valentine’s Day as our surveillances unfolded. For the cheaters, you can reference the last four words of the interview regarding your chances of getting caught by my investigators: You’re gonna go down.