“I had to find someone else, because you never were interested in sex with me,” says the cheater.

“I had to cheat with him, because that was the only way I could get your attention,” says the cheater.

“I had to ____ (fill in the blank),” says the cheater.

The “I had to …” lie is designed to shift responsibility off of the cheater onto their victim.

Truth is that the cheater chose to do whatever he or she did!

It was their chosen action. You did not force them to cheat. They could have chosen otherwise.

A cheater speaking this particular lie is a cheater far from repentance.

How do I know?

A cheater speaking like this is demonstrating an unwillingness to own his or her sinful choices and actions. You do not repent of things done to you that were outside of your control. This is what “had to” conveys.

That is why the lie is so spiritually dangerous:

The “I had to” lie obscures the truth that cheaters could have chosen otherwise yet chose to sin anyways.

This lie must be uprooted and rejected first before any hope exists for a cheater to become anything other than a cheater for the rest of his or her life.

The road to repentance begins with accepting personal responsibility for one’s own sin. Sadly, many cheaters never take this first step on the repentance road.

 

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*A version of this post ran previously.