There are many ways cheaters mask what they are doing. Among them are lies, exaggerations, denial, word play and head games. You may have encountered some, or perhaps all of these ways they mask what they do.
There are many types of head games that you may encounter. Many of the other behaviors are actually driven by head games. Head games hide, confuse, distort or compartmentalize the affair or parts of the affair.
The cheater wants to believe that what they are doing is ‘normal’ or ‘fun’. They want to believe that other people are doing what they are doing.
They will say and do many things to have you believing that something is wrong with you, while they are ‘normal’. Any resistance to their affair will be portrayed as you either do not want them to be happy, or you are not ‘hip’, or that you are old-fashioned/square (e.g. not like the ‘other’ spouses), or boring or that you do not meet their needs along with many variations of these themes.
These statements are designed to make them look GOOD and you to look BAD. These are a form of head games. Such games are all about making them look better and you look worse. In making such shifts, it distorts reality.
The distortion occurs by changing reference points/groups, shifting morals, shifting cultural references, changing internal emotional reference points, either narrowing down or over expanding reference groups and other ploys. The shifting reference groups and points are about shifting your mental or emotional frames.
Regardless of which ploy is used, the dynamic behind it goes back to making them look GOOD and you look BAD.
They want to have sex without guilt. They want to have their affair without consequences. You asking questions bothers them, since it forces them to think and feel guilt. They do not want that to happen. So rather than feel the guilt and face the consequences, cheaters often resort to head games or cutesy sayings to numb out their brains and emotions.
When head games begin, you need to intervene and stop them as soon as you can. The reason for needing to do something quick is that when a cheater persists in their head games long enough they become good at them and they can also start believing their delusional comparisons.
They start thinking that the comparison is not only real, but more real than reality itself. They will keep telling themselves the lies until they believe them and act on them. You do not want the cheater to be acting on their own lies.
Another reason for intervening early is that the head games give energy to the affair. They have a way of giving it more life and vitality than it deserves. You want the affair to quit having power over your spouse rather than increasing the power it has over them.
Best Regards,
Jeff
