6 Things Cheaters Always Say When Confronted With Proof They’re Cheating
A cheater will tell you just about anything to keep you with him.
shutterstock When your man has been unfaithful, it can feel like you’re the only person on the planet who has suffered such heartbreaking injustice. The entire world turns on its axis. Never in a million years would you have anticipated this pain and devastation.
It’s a lonely place to be. But I’m here to tell you that you’re not alone. Everything you’re going through, others have survived. And you will, too.
The more I research cheating, the more I find similarities among what these insensitive brutes tell their women. They're filled with excuses, with deflections from taking the blame.
Here are 6 things cheaters say when confronted.
If you've been cheated on, you've heard one or more of these lines before.
1. "It didn't mean anything."
If sex was such an unimportant component of a relationship, why did he have to go outside of your marriage to get it?
A man thinks that by quantifying that his cheating was just sex (he didn't actually like the woman he slept with), he should be let off the hook. Not gonna happen, buster.
Your reaction: “If it was just sex you needed, you should have gotten it from me, the person you vowed to be faithful to until death do us part. It may not have meant anything to you, but your betrayal meant a lot to me.”
2. "I'll never do it again."
I wanted to believe that my husband had learned the error of his ways after I found out he'd cheated the first time. For years, I defended the fact that he was reformed to my doubtful friends. Only, he wasn't.
Like they say, once a cheater, always a cheater.
You have to look at it from the cheater's perspective. If he can get away with sleeping with other women, why wouldn't he? He will just try harder to pull the wool over your eyes next time. Don't believe him.
Your reaction: “You may think you'll never cheat again, but the temptation will always be there, and I can't jeopardize my own wellbeing to think that you'll stay faithful.”
3. "I'm sorry."
He's sorry he got caught! If he were sorry, he would have been sorry while he was running around with other women, not just when you found out he'd been lying to you.
Narcissists don't tend to be concerned with the feelings of those around them. They'll pretend they are, but if they had concerns about your feelings, they wouldn't have done what they did.
Your reaction: “I'm sorry, too. I'm sorry I wasted time on you. But I'm moving on.”
4. "But you [insert blame here] and that's what made me do it."
Cheaters are also great blamers. They wouldn't have cheated if you had given them enough sex/not coddled them like babies/been subservient. But you left them unfulfilled, and so they were forced to roam.
No woman ever forced her man to stray. It's not about what you did or didn't do that made his eye wander. It's about his idea that he deserves to have everything he wants, even if it's outside of the scope of what you're allowed to do in a marriage or relationship.
Your reaction: “I may have my own flaws in our relationship, but this one's on you, buddy. You need to own up to the damage you caused.”
5. "I was abused."
My ex tried to pull this excuse to explain away his massive infidelity. This is what we call a red herring: something that is meant to distract from the matter at hand.
Maybe he was abused as a child, and that's nothing to sneeze at. But if it's never come up as a trauma that has affected him in any other way, it's not going to get him a pass now.
Your reaction: “I am so sorry to hear that, and you should get help for that. But right now we're talking about you cheating. Let's separate the two.”
6. "She gets me in a way that you don't."
That’s because she doesn't know him! If she did, she would run far away.
He might be crooning sweet nothings into her ear, but at the end of the day, she's snagged a cheater. A man who would jeopardize his marriage and family life for a fresh piece of tail.
This man has issues with getting bored easily if he feels like you, his life partner, no longer get him and that a stranger does. Flee, my friend.
Your reaction: “That's nice. When will you be packing your bags?”
Susan Guillory is a writer and survivor of divorce. Follow her on Twitter for more.