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.
“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?”
“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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.