Most people who cheat aren't just selfish jerks. They didn't get married thinking they were going to cheat.
Often, there are subconscious patterns of behavior and unhealthy relationship practices in them or their relationship as a whole.
There might have been red flags all along, but no one was paying attention to them. Now, that doesn't excuse what they did. There are no justifications for cheating.
Cheaters need to know that cheating on someone is the very definition of a selfish jerk thing to do.
You could have broken up with them or divorced them and slept with whoever you wanted to. You might be a jerk for that, but you wouldn't be a cheater.
And yet, you chose to lie, to go behind their back, to betray them sexually, and then in most cases, you continued to sleep with them, exposing your spouse to potential diseases and STDs.
Who would do that? There's no excuse for that.
Only a selfish jerk could do something like that, and you need to own that. Another thing we cheaters need to own is the excuses we make. We tell ourselves they weren't involved enough, they weren't paying enough attention to us.
Do you hear the blame? We think it was really them all along.
If they would have just done some things differently, we wouldn't have had to do that, would we? Do you hear the emotional immaturity and the arrogance? We hate taking responsibility for our actions because we know deep down what we did was cowardly, selfish, cruel, and extremely hurtful. So our brain tries to protect us by making excuses or giving us an out options.
(Second part coming up soon)