For God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, as in all churches of the saints.
– I Corinthians 14:33, KJV
“You never ___ [fill in favorite grievance].” -Cheater
When you hear something repeated enough times, it is hard to shake its message.
You may know the statement to be false. In fact, you may be staring at counterfactual evidence in the very moment the cheater is making this false claim.
Yet, because the statement has been repeated so frequently and with such confidence, you start to doubt the truth.
Call it brainwashing.
Call it gas-lighting.
Call it demonic.
Call it lying.
Call it just plain old abuse.
Whatever you call it, faithful spouses experience it. And I think it is one of the hardest aspects of healing from infidelity–i.e. learning to trust the truth as opposed to what the cheater said you were.
This is the another facet of why “The Shared Responsibility Lie“–the falsehood that faithful spouses are even partially to blame for the cheaters choices and actions–is so destructive.
In order to appear neutral and “even handed,” people are liable to accept the cheater’s negative statements of grievances at face value. Thereby, they reinforce these distorted statements–aka lies–about the faithful spouse.
It is wicked!
And such behavior makes recovery for the faithful spouse more difficult. Because they have to learn to discount such opinions from yet another source.
A much more helpful tact is to call out the lies and refuse to agree with a delusional cheater spewing forth obviously self-serving statements starting with “He/she never … or he/she always ….”
The likelihood that what follows is truthful is very slim. While the likelihood that they are saying such a thing to “justify” their sin against the faithful spouse is very high.
Choose not accept such lies and label them appropriately!
