It may surprise you how far some cheaters go in denying their affairs. In some cases, they are just plain lying to you about the affair. When you have true denial, they’ll come across as sincere and believable when it comes to denying that an affair happened.
The severity of the denial often varies from cheater to cheater. At the basic level, they will deny that they had an affair. Some of your word playing cheaters are already doing mental gymnastics at this point, considering all the different definitions of what is an affair and their level of involvement.
You’re looking at the absolute version of the word ‘affair’. You want to know did they or did they not have an affair. The cheater is calculating the degree of involvement and whether it was an affair, a fling, a one-night stand, happenstance or some other mental concoction.
There are also cases of ‘state-dependent’ denial. This is where the cheater does not recall what happened due to them being in another mental, emotional or physical state.
An example of this is a person who is drunk when they had the affair, so that they do not remember until they are in a drunken state. This has to do more with how their memory recorded the event than true denial.
In the case of date-rape affairs, chemicals are used that intentionally block out their memory. They are not denying it, they do not remember anything about what happened.
At the other extreme are the cheaters who deny the seriousness of what is going on or the need to deal with it right now. They may acknowledge the affair, yet deny that they need to anything about it, much less do something about it now. These types are frustrating in that they validate that there was an affair, but view it as ‘no big deal’.
At the most extreme are some cheaters known to have ‘split off’ the cheater part of themselves/their personality from the ‘genuine’ them. In their minds their ‘evil’ twin had the affair and they did not. When denial gets this extreme, you have some serious denial going on.
Cheaters can get pretty extreme with denying what happened. This denial can also last for quite a while. In my mind, it is important to assess the extent of the denial, the type of denial along with the duration of the denial. These are very different things and each can provide you with important clues that you need in getting them out of the denial and the affair fog.
Best Regards,
Jeff
