How many were deceived for a longer period of time because your cheater explicitly denied what he or she was doing?

“I would never cheat on you.”  “You know me better than that. There isn’t another man [woman] involved.” “We need to focus on your problems. Don’t worry about me. I wouldn’t cheat on you.”

Any of those sound familiar?

It is possible a cheater hadn’t “sealed the deal”  when they utter those words (or a version thereof). However, I doubt anyone of us got an amended version once they actually were involved with a third party illicitly.

This is all part of the deception.

The cheater is abusing the faithful spouse’s trust to buy time (or to keep in the dark indefinitely). If we believe the cheater, we are less likely to connect the dots. Right?! And it is hard for them to occupy the high ground morally once we do connect the dots. The cheater doesn’t want to lose that power. So, they lie and deny. I lay this out to expose one more cheater tactic from the pit of Hell. It is awful and keeps faithful spouses stuck in abusive relationships–for cheating is always abusive.

*A version of this post ran previously.