With the recent rash of male celebrities caught cheating on their wives, you might think that men cheat more frequently than women. Not so, according to statistics. While it’s difficult to gather accurate information on infidelity, most surveys indicate that women cheat as often as men. But if that’s the case, why do the infidelity scandals that hit the news every week always seem to involve a male celebrity cheating?

Maybe female celebrities are cheating just as often as their male counterparts and simply aren’t getting caught. But the fact that half the tabloid magazine covers seem to include the word “cheater” along with a photo of guys like John Edwards, Tiger Woods, and Jesse James may also be explained by some differences in how, why, and with whom men and women cheat.

Infidelity Fact #1:
Women are more likely to have emotional affairs than men, and emotional affairs aren’t as black and white as physical affairs. Consequently, women are less likely to be caught having an emotional affair, and if caught, they have a better chance of talking their way out of trouble. It’s far easier for a woman to explain a borderline inappropriate email from a colleague, than it is to explain why that same colleague is in bed with her.

Infidelity Fact #2:
Men are more likely to engage in some form of online cheating, which leaves a digital trail. These trails include emails, chat sessions, internet history, and other evidence that often leads to the man being caught. In addition to exposing the cheating, the digital evidence can easily be copied, forwarded, printed, or in the case of Tiger Woods’ text messages, published on the internet and in magazines.

Infidelity Fact #3:
Women tend to have affairs within their social group, i.e. with people from work, school, and, sorry religious folk, church. This factor often coincides with #1, since many of these affairs tend to start out in the emotional category. And a wife having coffee with a friend from school, or going out for drinks with co-workers, might not arouse suspicion.

Infidelity Fact #4:
Men are more likely to have one night stands or very short term affairs, and to do so with younger women. This often results in them cheating with young, single women, a la Tiger Woods. These young single women don’t have any skin in the game, i.e. a husband they’re afraid might find out about their affair. The real problem arises when they feel scorned, since there is nothing to keep them from going to the wife, or in Tiger’s case, news outlets and gossip magazines. Celebrity men face another challenge, as these young single women are enticed by the 15 minutes of fame they know they’ll get if they take the affair public.

Infidelity Fact #5:
Men are more likely to be serial cheaters, increasing the odds of them being caught. Tiger is the best example of this, but Jesse James also appears to qualify as a serial cheater. While a wife might not notice the first or second affair, by the time the husband gets to number 15, there’s a good chance he will get caught.

AshleyMadison.com, a personals website with the telling slogan “Life is short, have an affair”, has iPhone and Blackberry applications designed to help married people find partners without leaving a trace of the affair on work or home computers.

So if you suspect your spouse is cheating and see the AshleyMadison.com app on his or her phone, you should consider your suspicions confirmed.

TigerText reminds me of the self-destructing messages in the movie Mission Impossible. The way it works is that when you send an iPhone or BlackBerry message via TigerText, the recipient will be prompted to install the app in order to read the message. The message then disappears after a predetermined length of time so a suspicious spouse won’t be able to read it later. Without this digital evidence of an affair, suspecting spouses will have to resort to other investigative methods like GPS tracking or good, old-fashioned surveillance to trap their cheating spouses.

I’m not limiting cheating to men, but let’s be honest, Valentine’s Day is for women. If you forget to get your husband or boyfriend a present, he almost certainly won’t notice, let alone care.

This year, Valentine’s Day falls on a Sunday and coincides with the long President’s Day weekend, giving cheating husbands more opportunities to see his girlfriend. Here are a few suspicious signs to look out for on Mistress Day:

• Long absences or “plans with the boys”
• Unexplained charges or a bigger charge than you’d expect on his credit card bill (e.g. He bought you a small bouquet of flowers, but the charge on his credit card is for $100)
• He constantly checks his cell phone for messages or takes calls in the other room
• Changes in behavior (e.g. He acts much more affectionate or distant than usual)

Have an accomplice. Paul Young helped facilitate and hide the affair in a number of ways. From booking hotel rooms under his name to falsely claiming paternity of Edwards’ and Hunter’s love child, he was the perfect accomplice (until he wrote his tell-all book, that is).

Don’t call your lover with your regular cell phone. Incriminating text messages and call logs have been the downfall of many adulterers, most recently Tiger Woods. Edwards cleverly bought a cell phone that he used exclusively to talk to Hunter. He would then hand off the phone to Young so that Elizabeth could never stumble upon it. He and Hunter would also dial into three-way conference calls, scheduled by Young, so there would be no trace of her phone number on his call log.

Don’t leave written evidence. After the birth of their love child, Edwards sent Hunter flowers, but did not sign the card in his name in case someone saw it.

Don’t use your credit card. A credit card statement can be essentially a diary of a sloppy adulterer’s affair. When Edwards started paying Hunter’s living expenses, he made sure to send her cash and her own credit card through Young. He even managed to avoid using his own funds, funneling her money from wealthy campaign donor Bunny Mellon through an elaborate cover-up.

The most prominent recent example is Tiger Woods: After allegedly carrying on secret affairs with numerous women over several years, he was finally undone by text messages sent to Rachel Uchitel, the first mistress to be unveiled. A friend of hers told the National Enquirer about the affair, claiming she had seen incriminating text messages. The published rumors likely led to Tiger’s fight with his wife, Elin Nordegren, and subsequent car accident. For further embarrassment, another one of Tiger’s mistresses, Jaimee Grubbs, then gave illicit text messages incriminating Tiger to US Weekly, which then published them.

Most cheating spouses probably don’t have to worry about their “sext” messages being published in a tabloid magazine, but this story should still send shivers down a texting adulterer’s spine. It’s clear that as with emails, text messages can be retrieved. Even if both the sender and receiver delete the incriminating text message from their phone, communications providers like AT&T and Verizon store them for up to a few weeks.

According to this article in the New York Times, text messages are now considered proof of an affair in a court of law. Although cell phones are considered private property, if a cheating spouse’s cell phone is part of a family calling plan or often left unlocked and unattended around the house, a suspecting partner could legally be justified in checking the messages.