There are people who find it easier to give a thousand and one reasons for their bad behavior than to own up and admit that they did something wrong.
The same goes for men who have affairs.
They already know that it is wrong for them to cheat on their partner.
However, they can’t seem to stop it, especially if they haven’t learned a bitter lesson personally or seen someone who has, as a result of cheating.
Instead of stopping the affair, some men come up with lies to justify their actions.
That way, if their wives or anyone else confronts them about their philandering ways, they’ll have one or two excuses ready to dish out to the person.
Bear in mind, however, that nothing ever justifies cheating on your partner.
This blog supports and promotes the faithfulness of partners and spouses to each other in relationships and marriages.
But we will not refrain from addressing the elephant in the room.
In this article, we’ll examine the lies men tell to justify their affair.
7 Lies Men Tell To Justify Their Affair
1. “It wasn’t a biggie!”
One of the lies men tell to justify their affair is that it isn’t a big deal.
They pretend that they can function well and fully in their marriage and still have an affair by the side.
While it may go well for such a man at the beginning of the affair, it’ll start telling on him sooner than later.
At first, he might start giving more time, energy, and attention to his family to prove that he can live up to the lie he tells himself about being capable of successfully handling two relationships concurrently.
If you look at it from another angle, it might be the guilt of cheating on his wife that’s fuelling him to pump in more time and attention to his family when he started the affair.
However, it is never easy to live a double life.
Even the Holy Bible says, “You can’t serve two masters at a time.”
Before you know it, the effects of his double life will start telling on him.
He’ll be exhausted due to constantly shuttling between his family and his affair.
Eventually, he realizes that he cannot effectively manage his family and affair at the same time.
He’ll tilt more towards the affair, which gives him some respite away from his family.
In such a situation, it’s usually the marriage that suffers.
2. “It is the devil’s handwork.”
Trust liars to always try to rope in the father of all lies into their misbehavior when they clearly did whatever they did with their two eyes open.
I saw a movie where a man cheated on his wife, and the affair produced a child.
After almost a year of constant lies, he finally opened up to his wife when his affair partner threatened to contact his wife and grown kids to announce her and the child’s existence.
Because his wife was a cool-headed and quiet person, he expected her to take it calmly, but he got the shock of his life.
She flipped on him immediately after he mentioned that it was the devil’s handwork.
She asked him if the devil was the one who asked him to approach the lady, make small talk, and then ask for her phone number.
Was the devil aware of when he started visiting, hanging out with, and having sex with her?
Where was the devil when the lady got pregnant, and he hid the whole pregnancy from her?
Was it also the devil who asked him to keep telling lies and giving flimsy excuses of being stressed and having busy days when he constantly came home late because he was attending to his pregnant side chick?
All the questions she asked him made a lot of sense because most men who cheat are always quick to try to rope in the devil as the cause of their misbehavior.
As was expected, he had no answer to any of the questions.
3. “She’s just a good friend, and we never had sex.”
Many people have the belief that infidelity is all about sex.
They believe that once they work on the sexual attraction, they feel for another person who is not their spouse and have sex with them, then it’s truly infidelity.
That’s why the general ‘unofficial’ definition of infidelity is sex that happens outside of a marriage.
But that’s a wrong approach and view towards infidelity.
Affairs must not be sexual to be addressed as such.
Once there’s an emotional or sexual intimacy that tampers with the trust between a married couple, it is infidelity.
That explains why some married persons are emotionally unavailable to their spouses.
They’re already in an emotional entanglement with someone else and still think that it doesn’t qualify to be called cheating.
Every marriage should be physically and emotionally exclusive to the individuals involved.
So, when the emotional intimacy is tampered with, it’s just as serious as tampering with the physical intimacy.
4. “I didn’t feel the same way about you anymore.”
One of the lies men tell to justify their affair is that they don’t love their wives anymore.
I understand that every marriage has its good and bad times.
During the good times, we often see our spouses as the best things after jollof rice.
But when the times are bad, we can momentarily question the reason we ended up with them in the first place.
However, temporary bad times in marriage don’t provide an excuse to ruin your integrity and look outside your marriage.
The saying, “Love is not enough,” cannot be truer in this case.
Any man who wants to use the lie that he doesn’t love his wife anymore as an excuse to cheat needs to realize that marriage is not all about love.
He should have known that and prepared for it even before getting married, but he obviously didn’t.
Although love is an essential ingredient in marriage, it’s not all that’s needed to make a marriage work.
Trust, faithfulness, honesty, dedication, and so much more all contribute alongside love to the success of any marriage.
The love emotions will definitely come and go, but that will not be the end of the marriage.
5. “It’s normal — everyone else is doing it.”
“Show me your friend, and I’ll tell you who you are.”
Some men start having affairs simply because every other man they know is having an affair.
Their male family members and friends are all cheating on their wives.
Now, they see nothing wrong with it.
They get married and continue the vicious circle.
However, everything is wrong with thinking that cheating is normal.
The fact that everyone around you is doing it doesn’t make it right.
I read a young lady who was seeking advice on Facebook.
She said that although she loved her man so much, she said no to him when he asked her to marry him.
According to her, it always bothered her that most of his married brothers and friends were having extramarital affairs, and he didn’t see anything wrong with that.
She turned down his proposal because she didn’t want to be in a marriage where her husband would start having an affair. After all, it was normal to him.
She needed advice on whether she did the right thing by refusing him because he said she was overthinking and overreacting.
According to him, seeing nothing wrong with it doesn’t mean that he’ll do it.
However, the people in our lives mirror our core values, so she has a point there.
6. “You pushed me into it.”
For some men, one of their excuses for looking outside their marriages is that their wives stopped taking care of themselves.
Such a man will say that his wife stopped being the neat and beautiful woman she used to be during the dating stage and at the beginning of the marriage.
If he were to face chastisement for cheating on his wife, he’d insist that he wouldn’t take all the blame alone.
He’d like to apportion blame to his wife for making him cheat on her by not taking care of herself.
In his opinion, she pushed him into cheating on her.
If you look deeper, there may be reasons his wife seemed to stop taking care of herself.
It might not necessarily be because she’s already married and therefore sees no need to keep putting in effort to look good and attractive for her man.
What’s at play may be passive-aggressive behavior, which is her response to her husband neglecting her in the marriage.
Perhaps she has been putting in efforts that are neither noticed nor appreciated.
Another angle is that the stress of running a family and working professionally alongside might be wearing her out so much that she now puts minimal effort into self-care.
But trust a sneaky cheating man to latch onto that lie as an excuse for his philandering ways.
7. “She seduced me.”
I don’t think that this list of lies men tell to justify their affairs will be complete without this lie.
Some men will rather push the blame to another person than take full responsibility for their actions.
In this case, such a man will run along with the narrative that his affair partner seduced him.
He’ll capitalize on the saying, “Men are moved by what they see,” to try to convey the narrative of being seduced.
This lie coming from a full-grown man, and not a boy, is a WONDER!
Whatever happened to discipline and self-control?
Even if he lacks the two, doesn’t he have any respect for his wife and their marriage?
The respect and love he claims to have for his wife, together with discipline and self-control, should act as a leash on him.
The truth remains that a man who doesn’t want to cheat will not cheat.
There are men who have resolved to stay faithful to their wives, and they’re keeping to their word despite constantly facing different temptations to cheat.
So, this man really has no excuse for having an affair.