Accusing you of cheating

[FigureIt]

On Valentines day my uBPDbf came home with a gift basket (which he had stopped at the local grocery store to buy on way home.) I said thank you and gave him a card that I specially picked out and had ordered him a specialty pillow, which hadn't arrived yet. We went out to dinner & local casino and we were out pretty late.  While out we ran into some friends and hung out and he began to make comments on how he had gotten me these gift baskets and all I got him was a card! That really irked me because the pillow I ordered him was $70. And his gift was bought 5min before coming home, not a lot of thought.

Then when going home he tells him "he can't love me like he should because he doesn't trust me and believes I'm cheating because I have tendencies... . "  I took the bait and instead of validating I got irate dandy told him what he said was hurtful.  The "tendencies" he's referring to was at the end of my marriage after my ex was cheating on me, and had verbally abused me to feeling minute, I too had a somewhat affair, never had sex with the person. My current bf knows all this and even though he cheated on his ex wife he stores my "flaw" to be used against me.

I have never cheated or even thought of cheating on my current bf, yet he is always looking for an example. He tried claiming it was cuz I had left for work 5 min earlier then most days, or I had something on, then when I wasn't home he searched my Facebook on my iPad and found a college friend had asked to do lunch this coming week (a guy who is married to another former college classmate), I responded with possibly, but in actuality did not plan to go.

So, my bf approached it by saying I know you have plans wed or thurs... . I honestly didn't know what he was talking about because the correspondence had been a week ago. He claimed I knew what he was talking about.  Finally it dawned on me when he claimed there had been 3 calls, but they weren't on my phone. I said I didn't respond with "no" because I didn't want to sound mean. Then he went into how I'm weak, and the guy is using me, etc. oh and justifying his constant contact with other women. So it all got turned around on me.

How do I deal with this? 

Honestly some days I do wish he would find another woman, so I don't have to deal with it anymore.

[RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING]

RELATIONSHIP PROBLEM SOLVING This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members are welcomed to express frustration but must seek constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[bruceli]

On Valentines day my uBPDbf came home with a gift basket (which he had stopped at the local grocery store to buy on way home.) I said thank you and gave him a card that I specially picked out and had ordered him a specialty pillow, which hadn't arrived yet. We went out to dinner & local casino and we were out pretty late.  While out we ran into some friends and hung out and he began to make comments on how he had gotten me these gift baskets and all I got him was a card! That really irked me because the pillow I ordered him was $70. And his gift was bought 5min before coming home, not a lot of thought.

Then when going home he tells him "he can't love me like he should because he doesn't trust me and believes I'm cheating because I have tendencies... . "  I took the bait and instead of validating I got irate dandy told him what he said was hurtful.  The "tendencies" he's referring to was at the end of my marriage after my ex was cheating on me, and had verbally abused me to feeling minute, I too had a somewhat affair, never had sex with the person. My current bf knows all this and even though he cheated on his ex wife he stores my "flaw" to be used against me.

I have never cheated or even thought of cheating on my current bf, yet he is always looking for an example. He tried claiming it was cuz I had left for work 5 min earlier then most days, or I had something on, then when I wasn't home he searched my Facebook on my iPad and found a college friend had asked to do lunch this coming week (a guy who is married to another former college classmate), I responded with possibly, but in actuality did not plan to go.

So, my bf approached it by saying I know you have plans wed or thurs... . I honestly didn't know what he was talking about because the correspondence had been a week ago. He claimed I knew what he was talking about.  Finally it dawned on me when he claimed there had been 3 calls, but they weren't on my phone. I said I didn't respond with "no" because I didn't want to sound mean. Then he went into how I'm weak, and the guy is using me, etc. oh and justifying his constant contact with other women. So it all got turned around on me.

How do I deal with this? 

Honestly some days I do wish he would find another woman, so I don't have to deal with it anymore.

Perhaps projection on his part?  Guilty dog barks the loudest.  Validate and keep from jading, in this case hard I know.  Kind of dealing with this right now myself.

[elemental]

It looks like he is projecting. How long has he been accusatory towards you about "cheating"?

[16YearBetrayal]

My stbxBPDh did this to me for 16 years. I never cheated or even thought about it. Yet I always felt guilty that somehow I was making him feel secure enough in me. But nothing made a difference. Sometimes as he was raging at me about cheating, I would just want to say: "yes I cheated. Isn't that what you really want to hear." Thank god I didn't do that. God only knows what he would've done to me.

After 16 years of being accused of cheating continually, my stbex cheated on me!  With a married woman. Double cheat. I will never understand how he can rationalize that in his head. But I know he does.

Many people will tell you if they accuse you of cheating, they are projecting and are probably cheating. I don't actual know if that was or wasn't true for me during our entire marriage, but I actually do not think he cheated on me throughout the entire marriage.

Their behavior is not rational. I can't and never will understand.

But I do think they see what they want to see - you abandoning him in the cruelest way possible.

[FigureIt]

It looks like he is projecting. How long has he been accusatory towards you about "cheating"?

It has been on & off for about 3 years.  It just recently started again on valentines day with claiming about my leaving 5 min early, dressing, then searching the Facebook.  I can say that I have been less doting on him and more focused on myself.  Although, it could also be because I am off this week for winter break and my schedule is open. (although I have my daughter with me all week)

I have never done the actions he has of getting texts from other women, signing up on match.com, having some new woman just met at a bar "put her phone # in your phone w/o you knowing", then when I deleted it he put it back in.  SO, I AM NOT THE ONE WITH "Tendencies"

[Cloudy Days]

I've been going to my husband's therapist for a bit and I think our biggest problem in our relationship is that he constantly accuses me of cheating on him. The way his therapist described it is that they hate themselves so much that they don't understand how someone could be faithful to them. They wouldn't want themselves so you couldn't possibly really want them in their heads. I've never cheated on anyone in my life especially not him, so don't get down on yourself about anything you did in the past. Even if you hadn't done that, he would most likely still think you were cheating. My husband also says I am weak it's his biggest excuse as to why he thinks I am cheating on him. He tells me that He doesn't think I would go looking for an affair but he thinks that if someone came up to me and basically came on to me, he doesn't think I have the guts to tell them to get lost. Which just isn't true. He really thinks men walk up and grope women in the workplace and not get fired for it.

I've gotten to the point where I have set sentences that I use to Validate his cheating fears but it's still very hard to deal with. Who wants to be reminded daily that they don't trust you. I have been telling him that I understand he doesn't trust me and I understand that from his past he doesn't trust anyone. However it has been really easy for me to stay faithful to him so he doesn't have to worry about me hurting him because it's just not going to happen.

It might take me a couple times saying it but it reassures him. I think me repeating the fact that, it has been really easy for me to stay faithful to him has helped. I think it's sort of a truth statement that doesn't tell him how to feel and it's not telling him he is wrong for feeling that he's unlovable. I think they really feel unlovable when they accuse us of cheating. So telling him that it's easy to stay true to him just takes the feelings out of it and leaves him with my truth.

[16YearBetrayal]

Totally true Cloudy Days about them feeling unlovable.  My ex would say that many times - I don't know why you are with me, I don't understand why you love me, etc.

And my ex also clearly thought people just go around having sex everywhere.  Every time I traveled he would just assume that involved hooking up with a random stranger.  It use to really bother me as I took that internally about what he thought about my character and of me as a person to think I am such a floozy.  I would often be like, Jesus Christ I would not behave the way you are saying even if I wasn’t married.  I am just not that person, and I never will be.  But I learned to recognize his fears had nothing to do with me, which allowed me to even have male friends.  God forbid.   

Cloudy Day, curious if your validation of his thoughts works for you guys?  Does he still ask continually?  I use to always reassure my ex. in such a nice and loving way.  But our T told me to start just acknowledging his statements but no longer feeling responsible to reassure him.  So he would say "I feel like you are cheating on me" and I would just respond "okay."  I actually think that might have made things worse. It got him to stop asking as much because he knew he would not get what he wanted from me, but the thoughts were still obsessively in his head.  But my reassurance didn't work either.  So I really don't know what, if anything, works. 

My ex also is OCD.  So I always thought the obsession with me cheating was just that, and obsession.  And just like he needs to continually wash his hands to feel better for one brief second, he needed to continually get reassurances that I wasn't cheating to feel better for one brief second.  But then he went right back to obsessing about it.  This is one of the many ways I "normalized" his behavior.  Although I am sure the OCD doesn't help with the BPD as well.

[Cloudy Days]

My husband has some other issues going on too. He was diagnosed with Bran Damage and PTSD as well. You can imagine that makes everything more complicated. My husband has some OCD tendency's too, he over thinks everything down to every detail, triple checks things and so on. When he has a conversation he ruminates over and over in his head how things went down. It really is madness.

For me my husband would get very stuck when he would ask me if I was cheating on him. Me saying no just made things worse and that was what I usually did. Usually a no honey I would never do that to you, I love you. His responses were usually something like, I know you are just tell me the truth. Now the way I have been validating and giving him my truth makes him not keep asking over and over and over in that moment. Although he may ask me again within the night. I would rather him ask again and reassure him later in the night than having a fight over it. So the fights have gotten lesser but he still asks. He did ask me one time what should he do when he has that feeling because he can't just let it go. I said ask me, but please listen to what I have to say and then try and let it go. I read somewhere on here that you should not argue with them, agree with them that they are feeling that way (I know you think I'm cheating on you) you can throw in the validation of I know those thoughts upset you, but honestly it's very easy to stay faithful to you. He's never argued with me on that statement so I'm keeping it   

I do notice that my husband often tries to nit pick how I say things. He always thinks I am trying to word something to get away with a lie. So if I say I am not cheating on you. He thinks I mean I am not cheating on you at this moment   So I often have to add in I will never cheat on you and I never have to the end of the conversation. I guess I have just accepted that he is insecure and will need some reassuring. But he does ask less and I rather deal with him asking than a blow up over an imaginary problem.

He did tell me once that he knows I'm not cheating on him. But he gets these thoughts and they just won't go away so he has to get reassurance that these thoughts aren't true. He even told me not to take it personally, he knows his brain is messed up.  I love those moments of clarity.

[shellsh0cked]

My xgfBPD had major trust issues.  Not just with me, but pretty much every guy she had ever dated.  I had been accused of sleeping with (or wanting to) all KINDS of women.  All the way from 15 year old girls to her MOTHER!  Now that's the one that really disgusted me in a way in which I cannot describe.  She accused me of sleeping with her best friend... . because I had "kids" sunscreen.  I don't have kids, but I do have really pale skin, so I get the highest SPF I can.  Her friend has kids, so that was her reasoning!  That because I had a bottle of sunscreen I was skeezing on her?  Wow.  She threw me out one night while we were making out... . said I smelled like an old "nasty whore"... . What?  That I apparently had sex with her friend then came over?  

Here's the point in all this.  She's projecting... . because she knows what SHE would do, and that eats her up.  So she has to figure out how to throw her behavior (past and present) on me... . It's not me cheating!  It's you!  I'm not this horrible person!  You are!... . see what I mean?  That's what's going on if you ask me... . They do that to keep from feeling insane.

Not always, but if a person is often accusing someone else of lying or cheating?  It's because they are doing it themselves (or have in the past).  Most people that lie and cheat and are generally dishonest people period... . not just with you.  They often don't have Facebook accounts or the like... . and there's a reason for that... . You'll hear like... . "I just think that's dumb"... . or "I don't have time" or "I don't want everyone in my business"... . the last one is true, because they know that social media will get them caught lying and/or cheating... . and then the BPD loses narcissistic supply (us)... . they can't have that now... . How do I know this?  I have two of my friends over the years that are "serial" cheaters and neither of them will touch Facebook with a ten foot pole and the only reason is fear of getting busted cheating... . period.  

[Cloudy Days]

Well I gotta say, he deleted his Facebook directly after he got caught chatting with an old female friend. I read most of it and while it made my blood boil there was nothing sexual. It was normal chit chat. But this would have been a major offence if I had done it myself and now he says he doesn't want one because he doesn't want people in his business. So you hit the nail on the head there. I'm still pretty adamant that he's never cheated on me though.

I know my husband has never cheated on me, but he has lied about other stuff and he has cheated on people in the past. Not long term serious girlfriends but it still counted as cheating he said. He claims he doesn't trust me because his past girlfriends cheated on him. I know part of it is because he's done this stuff in the past himself to other people. He's brought up the point to me when trying to accuse me of cheating on him!

[16YearBetrayal]

Relationships with a pwBPD always appear to have double standards.  What is good for the goose is never good for the gander. 

[Love Is Not Enough]

Relationships with a pwBPD always appear to have double standards.  What is good for the goose is never good for the gander. 

 That is EXACTLY what my gf says to me when I want to do anything for myself! Always a threat that she will then go out and make me worry about what she is doing. The main difference is that I am not impulsive and I can control myself if I am drinking. Next time I am going to tell her that sounds like a wonderful idea and that she should go and have a GREAT time! 

[bruceli]

Relationships with a pwBPD always appear to have double standards.  What is good for the goose is never good for the gander. 

 That is EXACTLY what my gf says to me when I want to do anything for myself! Always a threat that she will then go out and make me worry about what she is doing. The main difference is that I am not impulsive and I can control myself if I am drinking. Next time I am going to tell her that sounds like a wonderful idea and that she should go and have a GREAT time! 

This is also DW's new ploy/threat.  If your too busy I'll just go back online.  Mind you she is on at least 3 dating sites for her N supply... . she claims.