Editor’s Note: Who is the wisest of them all? Who is more dedicated to your pleasure than anyone on earth? Who can help you when you’re going online for the first time to find love; or when your lover’s children hate you; or when you want to strangle your husband? Why, the Love Goddess, of course. She promises nothing less than celestial wisdom, heavenly sex, divine dating. Read on …

What’s the one kind of date where you don’t go Dutch, ever?
What’s the one kind of date where glamour is considered crucial? 
What’s the one kind of date that’s losing steam faster than you can say “Bye-bye 401(k)”?

Yes, my lovely unfaithful earth lovers, it’s the extramarital date. For better or worse, high-end adultery (and who wants low-end adultery?) has gone kaput.

At least, so say private detectives. One, John DiNatale in Boston, a surveillance detective since his father taught him the art at age 16, says domestic assignments are “falling off the charts.” Indeed, there’s been a 75-percent drop in infidelity cases in the last year. Here he is on CNN recently, talking about the recession:

So let’s look at this: Are rich men, having taken note of their dwindling assets, suddenly willing to let go of their precious girlfriends? Hmm. I wonder. Certainly their interest in spending big money on their own pleasure has been as slow lately as the real-estate market in Manhattan. But perhaps cheating couples are simply scaling down, going to less-elegant spots (DiNatale calls them “no-tell motels”) or even wrangling in the back of cars (Heavens, ladies!). And perhaps more couples are eschewing high-end restaurants and eating in — at the home of the unmarried one, I presume.

Renewed moral rectitude, sadly, is unlikely. I’m afraid it’s not so much that  more married people are acting like — yes — married people, but are learning  more money-saving tricks. Some angry wives and husbands are simply refusing to pay the astronomical fees to have their spouses investigated. After all, shelling out roughly $2,500 a day (or $15,000 a week; prices differ around the country) to nail an errant mate can’t fit in with most newly configured recession budgets. And I have it on good authority that some clients, still intent on catching their partners, are doing some of the sleuthing legwork themselves — you know, checking their spouse’s BlackBerries, calendars, gas gauges and so forth — to offset the cumbersome fees. 

I don’t know which gives me a bigger heavenly stomachache: the money spent on illicit love or the astronomical sums spent on private detectives. If a married man and woman took that money they’re siphoning off from their marriages and spent it on the same lovely treats for themselves (and then declared their treats “a secret” from someone — say, the kids — since the secret itself is half the fun of any affair) would some marriages become stronger?

I’ll tell you what. I’m happy about two things: one, that the deep, deep pockets of the Domestic Surveillance crowd has diminished so dramatically; and that divorce, too, is at least temporarily way down. Close to 40 percent of divorce lawyers polled in a recent survey of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers said the economy has dampened divorce.

Now, if only you lovely creatures who so want love could take the money you’re saving and try to renew the love you’re trying so hard to get away from …

Like all savvy goddesses, the Love Goddess has her own blog, which you can visit by clicking here.