If your boyfriend or husband is too strict with you or is quick to accuse you of cheating on him, that usually means that he's the one who's doing something behind your back—or so most of your guy friends will tell you. If he's constantly snooping at your text messages, your call history, and even your Facebook messages, the same friends will tell you that he's being paranoid because he knows firsthand how easy it is to have an affair.

Are your friends simply being too quick to judge? According to marriage and family therapist Kurt Smith, there may be truth to what they're saying. Apparently, cheaters cope with what they've done or what they're doing by twisting the whole thing around and making it more about what you could be doing behind his back. Here's a blow-by-blow account of the matter.

1. They'll pretend that it didn't happen.
"This is the first step liars and cheaters take to remove themselves from the situation. If something isn’t real to them, then they don’t need to acknowledge or confront it," Smith explains.

2. They'll do anything to "shift the blame away from them.
Yes, even if it means putting the blame on you. WTF, right?

3. The sad truth is, they'll eventually convince themselves of their own lies.

"It’s easy for liars and cheaters to get absorbed in their own fabricated universes. In their world, they did nothing wrong, and you did everything wrong."

This is why you usually can't expect cheaters to confess and repent. In their eyes, they did nothing wrong. They might feel somewhat guilty for deceiving you, but they're also very good at perpetrating their lies. "They hide their true feelings under a thick veil of deceit. They conceal their true emotions beneath the complex, fabricated world they created for themselves—a world in which you become the bad guy, and they become the good guy," says Smith.

In cases like these, you just have to learn to walk away. There's nothing left in the relationship for you.

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