Why Do Cheaters Accuse You of Cheating?
Why did her cheater husband accuse her of cheating when his affair was discovered? She’s totally been faithful. What kind of manipulation tactic is this?
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Dear Chump Lady,
In confronting my husband on D-Day he defended his actions by saying:
“Well, how do I know YOU haven’t been cheating on me?”
In subsequent arguments regarding his infidelity, he has made this statement again. I am not a perfect spouse, but in terms of infidelity my side of the street is sparkling clean.
This makes me feel like I have something to prove or, in this case, to disprove. I have nothing to defend and have said as much.
I would love to know your thoughts or the thoughts of the Universal Bullshit Translator.
Thank you.
Street Sweeper
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Dear Street Sweeper,
My thoughts are he should be your ex-husband.
You don’t need a patented, Leibkuchen-snarfing bullshit machine to state the obvious:
Your husband has zero remorse.
He knows he’s at fault here, but instead of accepting responsibility, he’s attacking you. Compounding your pain. Making false allegations.
When cheaters accuse you of cheating they are deflecting. It’s a manipulation tactic. The ol’ the best defense is a good offense maneuver. Why explain himself or face accountability when he could make you the bad guy instead?
Honestly, it’s pretty stupid. Even if he believes this (I’m sure he doesn’t), he is 100 percent certainly a cheater. You are theoretically only a suspected one. These things are not equivalent. But whatever, it broadsides you and shuts you up. Sputtering, defending yourself. Sidetracked by this outrageousness.
That’s winning to him.
Think about that. He meets your pain with abusive power dynamics. Cheating is abuse and he’s compounding it. Leaning in. Hurting you more.
Flamboyantly demonstrating his entitlement. He’s done the personal calculus and his discomfort at being questioned outweighs your emotional well-being and personal safety.
Beyond entitlement, it also tells you something about his worldview. There’s no intimacy or connection, there’s just I Do It To You Before You Do It To Me. He’s already justified himself, made you the villain and now he’s trying to cram you into the villain suit. Oh? I’m a cheater, well, YOU’RE A CHEATER!
If he really thought that, why the secrecy?
If we’re all cheaters here, why keep it on the down low? Why not just live your good time confederacy of fvckbuddies life openly? If he really thinks you have a boyfriend, why is he hiding his girlfriend(s)? Why did he not confront you until this moment?
Because he knows you’re a chump and he wants to keep you that way. In the subordinate position. Preferably unknowing. But if you must know, then pick me dancing for the awesomeness that is him.
The other part of the mindfVck is that cheaters are usually the jealous ones. Chumps get painted with this brush, but as a few bazillion of us can tell you, it’s our cheaters who were controlling, who wanted to keep tabs, who suspected dirty dealing as they themselves were dealing us dirty.
They accuse because they are projecting.
As the saying goes: Every accusation is a confession. He is an extraordinary splendid person, deserving of privileges and special treatment! He can’t be the bad guy! Cheating? Lies? Betrayal? Let’s ball that crazy up and fling it at you.
Huh? What?
Exactly. Don’t try to make sense of his ugly little skein. Just get away from it.
Make this guy your EX husband soonest. Please. Resign from the job of being his punching bag. Let him accuse his affair partners of cheating on him. It’s probably more accurate and karmic. And so not your problem.
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I’m so sorry you’re going through this, Street Sweeper. Although I am a male, I know exactly what that feels like and how much the ‘crazy-making’ takes over once you are accused of cheating after discovering theirs.
That is exactly the point of the tactic: to force your brain to stop focusing on their betrayal and start frantically defending yourself against the absurdity. It keeps you in the defensive, sidetracked by the sheer nonsense of it. My ex-partner even went as far as planting a mark on one of my shirts, claiming it was lipstick or lip gloss. It was the most bonkers thing. I knew with 100% certainty that I hadn’t been with anyone, yet there I was, caught in her trap.
I want to echo Chump Lady’s advice: this person needs to be your ex-spouse. The ‘you were cheating, too’ phase is just the beginning; it almost always escalates into further emotional abuse. If you fall into the trap of reconciliation and start giving them space to grieve, you are only enabling the abuse.
He is trying to keep you confused and shift the focus away from his own actions. He doesn’t care about the damage he has done to you; he only cares about maintaining his power. To put it into perspective, I am a 5’11” athletic male, and my ex-partner was 5’5”, yet I was terrified of her and the volatility of her behavior. I never knew what to expect next.
Oh yes, everything in me wanted to defend the absurdity. But, I literally had nothing to defend. I told him “my conscience is clear and I can sleep at night knowing that.” His response: “if you say so.” Utterly maddening!!! But that’s the point isn’t it? Get me off base and then it’s “well, why are you reacting so strongly if it’s not true.” I’ve heard that one before too. It’s enough to not go stark raving mad with the manipulation.
I experienced very similar. My ex denied the affair and claimed it was me.
And looking back the emotional abuse, chaos. It’s so hard to process that it was all so he count do what he wanted.
If you don’t mind, I would be interested in hearing some of your experience as I have felt incredibly alone because most cheaters I read about ended up admitting while mine not only denied, but tried to blame and frame me. It was insane.
WTR, after hours of arguing on Dday ( where he had revealed that he was in a relationship with Susan of Seattle) I asked him “was it physical?”. He said “yes” whereupon I made a horrified face – the face you make when you believed and trusted your partner and took the full force of betrayal to the chest…he backpedaled to deny sex and only copped to some minor physical touch. He actually claimed they “shared” hotel rooms but didnt copulate. Puhleeze.
As I had shared elsewhere, also after Dday, he claimed that we had an “arrangement” but I corrected him “I you had sex with other women because you think that we had an agreement and I was having sex with others, then you have made a terrible mistake”.
From that point forward …through separation (which was claimed to be an out of town work assignment but was MUCH more), wreckconsillyation (which started bad and got worse) and to his death 7 years after Dday, he never admitted sex with anyone.
About 2 years after his death, I learned that around Dday, he had sought counsel from a leader at church. The church leader likely thought that I knew much more than I did but he said “the earlier affairs were only about sex, the one with Susan is where he thought he was in love”.
The room started to spin and my mouth dried up. “Earlier affairs” Oh my God. I had to start reprocessing every weird unexplainable event in a 26 year marriage. I cant tell you how many times I had a memory then reflected at that odd thing he said or did then said “Oh my God” to myself realizing that it was classic cheater behavior. That was about 11 years ago and I think I have finished my reprocessing as much as is possible.
Never on Earth was he held accountable for the cheating and the f-ing cruelty he used to hide the cheating.
Bonus for me that Im Catholic and I really truly believe that there is an accounting of your actions toward others. We call it Purgatory and I know it’s a disputed concept in Christianity but I think it must exist for reasons such as this. Sinners can be saved but there are still residual effects of sin I think that he and I will meet again in Purgatory and I hope that one of the things God will insist of him is to tell me the truth…all of it.
Ah, these “arrangements” that the chump is never aware of. SMDH.
FW would have admitted NOTHING had I not had indisputable evidence of his infidelity. Even then he has said it’s MY interpretation of his sexts to his AF that’s the problem. My interpretation?!?! Wtf? On top of that he has said that if I only knew the fully story I would understand. I’m still waiting for said “full story.” I know there is none other than wanting cake. F***er!
Walking the road, I am so sorry to hear that you are or had to go through this and that you feel isolated. These are just words from an Internet stranger, but I want you to know you are absolutely not alone. What you’ve gone through is very common for people who are professional liars. They use plausible deniability and think that’s enough, no matter how much evidence you have.
Always remind yourself, and Chump Lady touches on this in her book, that you don’t need a confession to know the reality. You’ve seen the evidence, you experienced how they reacted, and that’s all you really need. As Chump Lady asks, “Are either of those things acceptable to you?”
Not getting the confession or any sense of closure sucks. You’re not alone there. Some of these people, even if you have a picture of them with multiple people, will still deny it to their dying breath.
The research and things I’ve seen through my experience is that a lot of these people are addicted to the deception; they don’t even really care about the connection, and many of them are power-hungry. Keeping that confession from you is a source of kibble and a huge power trip.
I hope that helps. I know how crappy this feels, how isolating it can be, and how the complete destruction of your reality is so daunting. But you’re not alone; many people here have gone through it. Post more, ask for help. There is a way through this.
I would have to add that cheaters absolutely bank on you not trusting your own intuition. Trusting myself is something I’m hitting hard in therapy. I have been exquisitely conditioned to override my doubt and err on the side of believing my husband would never hurt me. Well, if that were true I would not be on this site. It’s so worth regaining that trust in yourself again. I’m not 100% there but I’m working on it.
“That is exactly the point of the tactic: to force your brain to stop focusing on their betrayal and start frantically defending yourself against the absurdity.”
Exactly. That’s what deflections are for in other cases too. They want you to change your focus from whatever it is the disagreement is about to some irrelevant bullsh**.
Because he’s three-years-old?
It’s classic DARVO, straight from the cheater playbook.
Im with the Street Sweeper…by the end of it, I lived 26 years of marriage with nary a flirt, giggle or touch with other men – even during LONG military deployments and offers presented to me when I was being betrayed….
So the accusation that I had cheated was mean and absurd.
He tried to coax an admission from me that at a party early in our marriage I had “made out” with a guy. I remembered the party but (embarrassingly) I didnt make out with anyone, I actually fell asleep because I was working full time nights and my inner clock was askew.
But he didnt give up on the accusation. There was a nightshift that happened after I told him that a coworker was trying to get friendly and I had to stay 4 hours in the morning after the shift because emergencies and I got him late. He accused me of f-ing coworker when I was trying to keep a sick newborn from going towards the light.
Lastly, somewhere around Dday, he said that we had “an agreement”. An agreement? When did we discuss this agreement? He said we didnt discuss it but it was understood. I told him “we have conversations about what to get on our pizza, so why would we choose to not discuss opening our marriage ?”.
When I was in nursing school, our psych rotation included info on common psych pathologies and when they covered “Projection”, I didnt get it..I had never seen such a thing. I realized years later that my Cheater was a classic projector. All I had to do was listed for accusations to learn what he had done. Trouble is, I learned it too late for it to do any good.
Whatever they are doing and why, the important thing is that they decided that doing it TO YOU was a reasonable thing to do. Like CL says “Is this relationship acceptable to you?”
I told this story recently in another comment section, but my FW told me that he assumed I was cool with cheating because I regularly listened to Savage Love. It’s the lamest excuse, and like Tracy said, then why the secrecy?
Sometime ago I happened to mention to FW that I had a male coworker. He then goes on to interrogate me as to how often we work together, why I had not told him previously and how this coworker must be coming on to me. I rarely work with this person and had never had occasion to bring him up. FW would not accept that and of course I got the silent treatment insinuating that I had purposely kept information from him. All the while FW’s texts to Schmoopie reference “morning meets.” My husband goes to work a full two hours before his clinic opens. If I add two and two together I can assume him and his AP were meeting up during this time. He will never disclose his timeline or the extent of the affair, but he’s convinced that I have something going on because I have one male coworker. The absurdity.
“He said we didnt discuss it but it was understood. I told him “we have conversations about what to get on our pizza, so why would we choose to not discuss opening our marriage ?”.”
Platinum response! Quick thinking on your part!
Yes, it’s a power-and-projection thing. My ex accused me of infidelity throughout our marriage, and more so after we separated. I live in a state where adultery is still a for-cause reason for divorce, and his attorney told my attorney they would prove it. Well, they couldn’t. There was nothing to find.
So eventually we got it done. All kinds of threats and intimidation on my ex’s attorney’s part. Things they claimed and what they said they’d use against me. Mine told me many times that eventually his attorney would give up if we calmly held the line. He’d get bored and push hard to settle. All the drama would end. And it did.
I was very busy working three jobs and trying to keep things going for the two college kids and me. I didn’t date at all and wore my wedding ring until the judge signed off. Just how it was for me.
That sort of thing just convinced me even more that the marriage had to end. Thankfully, nothing from him for some years now. The kids are grown, living their own lives. Life is good.
It’s a combination of projection (AKA every accusation is an admission) and a distraction technique to deflect you when you get too close to (or actually arrive at) the truth (AKA why would a Cheater want to deal with well founded accusations of cheating when they can raise some unfounded accusations against you to keep you tied up and to try and seize the narrative).
And I’d add that they also do it because they can.
I hate them.
LFTT
That’s exactly it. He definitely tried to seize the narrative as you say. He certainly had never mentioned any concerns before DDay regarding my behavior. BECAUSE THERE WERE NO CONCERNS!!!! I am sure he has since convinced himself that I am ultimately to blame and he is therefore 100% justified in his actions.
Why do they make that accusation?
Mostly projection and general a$$holery. The main thing to know is that it’s universal. They ALL seem to make that accusation. If I had understood that every accusation is a confession, I would have ended my marriage YEARS earlier.
I like that…”every accusation is a confession.” So true.
I was accused of cheating in the same conversation where I had just confronted him about his affair. Of course, he denied his affair and threw it back at me. His reasoning for me having an affair? Out of desperation, I had upped my game in the bedroom to try and save our marriage, but he told me I did it to practise new moves for my supposed lover. I remember being so shocked by this accusation and my brain being so confused. He knew I would never cheat and his accusations made me think “If I could never cheat, surely he couldn’t do it either.” He bought himself more time in his affair. Of course, I was right all along and he had been screwing the affair partner for months.
It’s been 7 years since that accusation was made towards me and for all the terrible things he said to me, this was one of the worst. I took my marriage vows seriously and cheating was never on my radar. He knew that I would never cheat. I do remember how much he enjoyed watching me squirm and sputter as I denied the accusation. His empty eyes and the weird grin.
It’s all a game to them. Stop playing and get out.
Like you, my wedding vows were ironclad and I have never wavered in my devotion. Not even close. We will be married only 4 years this October and had I known that he had no real intention of keeping his commitment I would never have gone through with it. I primarily financed our wedding which included almost 300 people on his guest list alone (all of his family) and maybe twenty of my own guests. When I think of all the money, time and energy wasted it literally makes me want to vomit. It just makes the injustice of HIS accusation all the more painful.
Everything Tracy said. Manipulative projection BS meant to trip you up.
I so clearly remember that moment nearly 3 decades ago, post DDay #1 how a sad teary FW narcopath said that he just assumed I’d been cheating with various colleagues while I was away on work trips. We were young and no kids and sitting on the floor in the sunlight. Aghast at his wild accusation I thought poor FW must have low self-esteem because lots of guys found me attractive, and rushed to assure him that I was not a cheater. The focus shifted to comforting HIM 🤢
I cringe at that memory.
Now I know FW narcopath was throwing a pity party and manipulating me and chumpy me did not realize it! 30 years and many DDays later I learned too late what a classic textbook narcissist cheater DARVO thing he was doing. Reassuring and comforting him became a theme in the marriage. Frustrated by a sexless marriage yet I passed up on eligible men interested in me because mentally I was conditioned by FW to never stray and prove him right. How easy it would have been to divorce him back then! FW manipulated me so perfectly while cheating for decade(s) it’s sickening.
RUN and don’t look back.
It’s interesting that you bring up a sexless marriage. That has long been a point of contention as my chump self could never understand why FW never wanted to have sex with me. I turned the blame inward, of course. It was my five pound weight gain, perimenopause, my failure to be a phenomenal housekeeper and cook. I made so many excuses for why I was unworthy. His excuse was always that we had too many external pressures and he just never thought about sex. Fast forward to DDay and I find sexts to his AP. He absolutely will not own up to the timeline, but I have a strong suspicion that FW and his AP were involved for at least a couple of years before I found out. His stories are really utter nonsense when I recall them in my head. But, when the sex stopped I should’ve known.
Equating became a go-to for Cheaty McLiarface. He never had the nerve to accuse me to my face of cheating. But he did tell at least one person that he’d found evidence in my phone. Of course he didn’t because my phone contained nothing inappropriate. His most ridiculously desperate example to keep the playing field level and his victimhood intact was to express concern for his personal safety two days after I had expressed concern for mine in front of a so-called counselor. He was incensed that I was fearful because he had triangulated me with Joyful Jil. Telling her how horrible I was and how miserable I made him. He made me the only thing standing in the way of the happily ever after that she’d been waiting fifteen years for. I didn’t want to become the subject of an episode of Dateline.
Me too! Everything was my fault towards the end in his twisted mind FW hated me for blocking his blissful future with hoho hooker madame and considered a fatal accident for me.
Why do cheaters accuse us of cheating or conjure up stories From the past that sniff of attraction between you and say..ANYONE? WHY? Because THEY CAN!!!. Because they are CAGE FIGHTERS while you whimper and DEFEND YOURSELF..perfect for negative KIBBLES, it all works to feed raw meat to the LION cheater while you baaaaaa as a tender lamb. Cheater says…Let’s FIGHT,let’s get distracted from the main facts of my cheating, let’s focus on YOU!! It is a cheater tactic and it WORKS!! My cheater picked a guy I worked with in the ER and 16 years later tells my then TEENAGED daughter his assumption story!!!!! Really?? Why? It works. My 26 year old daughter told me how he had set me up as a POSSIBLE cheater too. You can’t make these things up.
My experience of Traitors is that really they need to prove to themselves and the world that cheating on you is actually your fault. And they will invoke the same flimsy kind of logic to blame you that they used to cheat in the first place. “If we both do it, then it must be ok.” It makes sense if you give yourself enough brain damage, I suppose.
In my own futile effort to untangle the skein, I noticed that in terms of sheer behavioral economics that it takes less effort and emotional capital to blame than it does to lie. In other words, it’s simply more efficient to say “I think YOU’RE the one cheating!” than to have to lie and defend a non-existent thesis.
As the therapist that told me I needed to trust her (and who I summarily fired after D-Day) would say, “you can’t prove a negative.”
I remember when mine pulled that one. She reminded me that we could be in an open relationship “if that’s what I wanted.” No. No I did not want that. (shrugs) Happens I was in one anyway.
Part of my own therapy work for the last year has been setting and enforcing boundaries. “I think YOU’RE the one that’s cheating” is a major enough red flag to warrant immediate severance and a boundary worth enforcing.
Stay Mighty!
He never accused me of cheating, that would have been laughable, he knew every move I made. He did accuse me of stopping speaking, when he actually orchestrated that because he blew up at me for pretty much everything, so I got quiet. Then accused me of just wanting him to sit home, when he never sat home; and I never had any control over him. This and more during the discard. In hindsight he was text book cheater and rewriting.
Very similar to my experience. He never accused me of cheating, but he gradually chipped away at our ability to have good communication by slowly disagreeing with everything I said or did and retreated so much from family life to the point where he would hardly ever be in the same room as me and/or our kids. I naturally wanted to engage with him less and less to avoid his hostility. Low and behold, after D-Day, he could conveniently accuse ME of withdrawing from HIM. No, mother*ucker, you withdrew from me and our kids because you were in an 18 month affair with your boss. I now realise it was like when teenagers don’t want to be the baddy and break up – to re-write the narrative to me leaving him rather than him leaving his family for his f*ck-buddy.
I was a boiling frog. His actions and behaviours are now so obvious, but whilst in the pot, I was deluding myself with love and trust.
The upside to all that nasty behaviour, though, is that when they do finally leave, you don’t miss them one bit!
Yeah, they treat you like crap and then blame you for the way you behave as a result of their abuse.
Yep, people don’t hide good behavior, only BAD behavior.
Mine just liked to say repeatedly, “I never even called you a name before, never laid a hand on you or anything!”. Such a prince. Until he cheated on me, raped me by deception for at least 8 months and then strangled me over his phone when I discovered his cheating on it. “I just told him, “ALL of that good recored went away the second you cheated on me. abused and attacked me.”
F*ck these entitled creeps! Kick them to the curb asap!
This is ine of the most pathetic cheater tactics ever. It’s not worth arguing about or defending yourself, because he doesn’t really think you cheated. It’s purely a deflection. Just laugh contemptuously in his face, then demand he collect his stuff and GTFO. I hope that’s what you have done since you wrote this, SS. If you’re still with him, get rid of this clown asap.
You’re so right CL, Street Sweeper here. He would actually have way more room to accuse his AF partner of cheating because, well, that’s how their “love story” began. Thank you CL AND CN for the insight and support. This has been one of the most painful experiences of my life. Not divorced yet, but getting my ducks in a row. The clarity that ya’ll offer as a community is priceless and I could not be more appreciative.
So happy to hear you’re getting your ducks in a row. That is very difficult and scary, at least it was for me. What saved me is this- document everything, don’t react to anything but tell your lawyer about it, if you haven’t secured a lawyer yet go with Tracey’s suggestion of a super lawyer- family law, I can’t tell you how much that saved me.
You already survived the devastation of the affairs, you can survive the divorce.
Stay strong, be gentle with yourself, and keep reaching out to others that have gone through it.
Street sweeper I am really sorry you’re here but grateful you found Mrs CL site. This site has helped me tremendously with Tracy’s brilliant and witty writing along with all the support you could ask for.
My husband accused me as well but I need to share that I DID NOT KNOW about him YET. So he found a msg between myself and a much younger coworker in which I jokingly said hey- I’m not sending boobs or anything but it was great talking with you! I let him know he was intelligent young man and closed out. Husband was linked to my email and social media accts without my knowledge and called me immediately after sending that. I explained inHAD enjoyed a convo previously and that the guy was my daughter’s age- it wasn’t sexual despite me saying “I’m not sending boob” the earlier joke was “text me if you want and send boobs when you do!” I laughed it off and said that’s not happening. Took it very lightly by this particular person. It sounds Ald looks very bad but inHAD to explain and reexplain even up until about a year ago it came up! May point is my husband loves to use this as a defense EVERY time he’s reminded that we didn’t go through proper healing or hardly any at all.
(He disclosed a couple weeks after my msg incident that he had been cheating with his ex and mother of his kid.) stepdaughter just graduated and he didn’t think it was disrespectful for the other grandmother to come hug him Ald not acknowledge myself or my daughter.
It’s just been really hard I’ve not left but never resubmitted to the open fun loving person I was.
Lord only knows what the future brings
I’m so sorry you are going through this. What he’s doing/saying is psychological abuse, and as others have said, they do it to confuse you, put you on the defensive, and distract you from what they’ve done. FW never accused me of cheating — would have been a very tough sell after calling me “Mary Poppins” (and not in a nice way) for most of our marriage, LOL. But once during a conversation about his behavior with his married colleague, I said he was becoming verbally abusive. A few minutes later, he said I was being abusive to him. And toward the end, just before I moved out, he said I had betrayed him! How on earth did I do that? “You betrayed me by not believing me when I said I never cheated on you.” You can’t make this sh!t up.
My FW didn’t accuse me of cheating; he encouraged it:
“You should try cheating; it would be so good for you.!”
wtf?
It’s been a little more than four months since I left.
Not going back.
My FW blew up our lives for his workplace Schmoopie, walking out on our 3 young daughters. Schmoopie was married too, and even though it was implied that they had an “arrangement”, I kinda doubt it. So 5 lives blasted for this Twu Wuv of theirs.
When he found I was seeing someone after our separation, he said “so how long has this been going on for?”….implying that I was seeing him while still bound by my vows. It’s been 12 years, and I’m mostly meh, but we still have one minor child and that guy still knows exactly how to get under my skin.
Oh, he also justified his affair by accusing me of dead bedrooming him. And maybe I was, because we had a newborn. But it’s impressive mental gymnastics to think that I’m hot to trot for some strange but a cold fish to my own husband. Schrodingers Hotwife.
It’s actually what FW did to me, cold fish and always a headache while out there with a very long time hooker habit. So it’s again their projections onto the chump.
There’s always a justification. I lost both of my parents within a five month period in 2025. On DDay, one of his many idiotic statements was accusing me of not being present. Wow! Yeah, grief is hard for some of us. Thanks for the compassion, FW.
The Fuckwit started accusing me well before D Day. Trying to put it in everyone’s heads that I had been cheating. Even going so law as to telling MY daughter (his step-daughter at the time) that he thought I was seeing someone else. He tried to convince my family as well. Who knows how many people that he tried to build that narrative with. It was awful and I’m glad to be rid of him.
Why do cheaters accuse you of cheating?
Because they will say whatever BS comes to mind to try to retain control of the situation.