“I’m being faithful to God,” says Cheater.
“Sounds like you believe that,” replies faithful spouse knowing otherwise.
I don’t miss arguing over reality with my Cheater. Those were crazy-making experiences.
She would attempt to force her will on me to agree to a certain narrative. It was a power struggle. I am glad those days are done.
One of the greatest powers we have as humans is our power to choose our beliefs.
It is important that we choose good beliefs, true beliefs. And it is also important that we do not give up this choice to others as we will still suffer the consequences of bad, false beliefs personally.
When dealing with a Cheater trying to give us THEIR belief about something like the marriage narrative, we can choose to hold our ground and simply affirm that they have chosen a different belief than us.
“It sounds like you believe you are being faithful to God.”
This is statement of fact while not committing you to agreement with it. Cheaters often believe their own lies. You don’t have to join them.
A benefit of restating their belief and affirming that they believe them is that you are modeling healthy boundaries to them. You are allowing them to choose their beliefs–even bad ones in this case. Plus, you are setting up your own boundary by not agreeing to it as they may wish you to do.
Remember: You don’t have to agree!
Yes, some Cheaters will never be satisfied with less than full agreement to their image management campaign. Well, that just means that they will go on with life dissatisfied… BECAUSE YOU DON’T OWE THEM AGREEMENT!
My XW would assign motivations to my actions and then want me to apologize for the action. But I never even considered what she accused me of doing, hence I could not do apologize how she wanted. “Why can’t you make a simple apology?” is what she would screech. Thanks to DM and ChumpLady I realize that was just part of a concerted devaluing and discard campaign that justifies cheating in their mind. It was quite confusing at the time , but crystal clear now.