These are my personal opinions. Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.

Okay, I think I'm going to say something a little bit controversial because it might not be true.

What I'm going to say is, it has to do with projection and how we or people can say things that

aren't true about you, but are true about them.

And I've seen this many times, especially in abusive relationships where, and this is a good

example because somebody wrote to me recently and asked this question about their partner

calling them a cheater.

And when you're not a cheater and you hear this, all you want to do is defend yourself and explain and bring up the evidence that you're not a cheater and you're always available and here's my phone and, you know, try to prove that I am a cheater, but you're not saying that you're basically in explaining mode.

You're trying to convince them that you're not who they say you are.

And so you are in this ridiculous conversation with somebody who is calling you something that

you're not or telling you that you're doing something that you're not. And it's pointless because you know it's not true.

And now you're spending all your time trying to convince them that it isn't true.

Remember how I started this episode?

Somebody calls you or tells you what you're doing, but it's really just projection on what they're doing or about what they're doing.

This is something we have to be careful about because, you know, maybe I'm wrong.

But here's how I think about it is when somebody said, let's use the cheating example.

When somebody says, you're a cheater,

first of all, why are they sticking around? If they know you're a cheater, why are they

sticking around? So that's kind of suspicious to me. I know. People might say, well, the

relationship's worth keeping, and I understand, yeah, that's all there.

But think about all these components of what's happening.

Why are they sticking around is my first question.

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