Narcissists Perfect at Hiding Cheating Because They Perfect at Lying to You

Dr. Kerry McAvoy: [00:00:00] What we don't realize when we're in these relationships is that we're playing with an expert who's actually a master at reality distortion. Upstairs in the floor that you're living, you see a doting partner, a pillar of community. Maybe they are even on a church board or a volunteer board. But what's happening down in the basement is things that are so dark, that are so shocking, that you don't even know who you actually are married to

When we talk about unhealthy relationships or narcissistic abuse, we usually focus on what's visible, the screaming matches, the fights over the bank account, the isolation that you incur. But what we don't usually focus on is something actually even worse, and that is the psychological matrix of living with someone who's having a double life.

So recently with co-host Lynn, she and I talked about how they use data to track you, how they'll turn mundane [00:01:00] things like birthdays into massive fights. But when you're married to a narcissist who's also a sexual addict, you aren't just dealing with a partner who has a vice. You're living in a house that's built on top of a secret toxic basement And the greatest casualty to this isn't just the loss of relationship, it's how it fractures your reality.

A recent commenter wrote in, uh, something that captures this perfectly. She says, "The most difficult part for me is not the loss of trust in others, but in myself. You can no longer trust your ability to see people as they really are, like you can't trust yourself to make good decisions or judgments because it pervades everything."

Notice what's actually happening here. The sexual addict doesn't just steal intimacy in the relationship, they actually steal your internal compass because when you look back at your shared memories, the vacations, the quiet moments, you don't know what you actually were sharing. You don't know [00:02:00] what w- really the actual person was doing.

I remember when I asked my ex, I said, "I thought in a typical day that you went here, and you did that, and then you did this, and then you came home, and we did this." And I said, "How much of that was actually close to the reality?" And he said, "Not at all." So think about what that would mean. That means the foundation, the structure in which I built my life, the assumption that I was making about what he was doing as well as what I was doing, what we were co-creating, none of it could be trusted.

That means every memory becomes contaminated. You end up wondering, were they really there? Who might they have been texting? Who might they have been trying to secretly meet up with? What were they really doing in that absence? Were they shopping or visiting or whatever it was they said they were doing, or were they actually doing something else?

Because now it calls into everything into question. No longer can you trust reality. What [00:03:00] we don't realize when we're in these relationships is that we're playing with an expert who's actually a master at reality distortion because to you and I, typical people who don't live double lives, creating that kind of secrecy would cause us agonizing guilt.

But to a narcissistic personality or to an entitled personality, this compartmentalization, the ability to actually create separate compartments to put boxes to put their life in is kind of a, a terrible superpower, kinda like a villain's superpower. Here's how another viewer described this ability to create a dramatic duality.

She said, "I think they can dissociate on a superhuman level like their brain is absolutely split." They can coach Little League, kiss you good night, be the man that they expect you to be when they're there, and they can do both because why stop? Why hang it up? That's how it feels. It feels like this person's living in a split brain.

This is what Dr. Omar Minwalla calls the secret [00:04:00] sexual basement. Because upstairs in the floor that you're living, you see a doting partner, a pillar of community. Maybe they are even on a church board or a, a volunteer board. But what's happening down in the basement is things that are so dark, that are so shocking that you don't even know who you actually are married to.

That's what I felt like. I felt like when I found out there was a duality to my ex's life, I ended up feeling like he's a complete stranger. In fact, today, I don't know if I know him. I have no idea who he really is because all I know was the self he presented, but that was not the real self of who he actually was.

And this does something profoundly damaging to your nervous system. When you're being constantly lied to and forced into this sense of feeling something's wrong but not really knowing what it is, it causes you into a, a form of severe survival adaptation. Another writer wrote in on a YouTube comment, "Yes, he cheated on me and he [00:05:00] blamed me for it.

He said, 'If only you would shut up, everything would be fine.' So I shut up. But I became a person I couldn't recognize. The trust was gone. I was like a detective spying on him. And after the breakup, I looked back and I couldn't recognize that person. It wasn't me. I became someone I wasn't, someone I didn't like."

I did that. I look back, I don't recognize the person I became. I became someone who was searching like a madwoman through the house for the second phone. I actually went into our condo's collective underground basement looking for where he might have stashed it down there. I actually, on foot, stalked him across town.

Now, this was a walkable town, but I walked probably close to a mile trying to find out where he was and who he was meeting up with. The thing is, is that this is what happens when you've been gaslit. You start to dig through phone bills, check mileage, hunt for receipts because you need to know that you're not crazy, that you're not insecure, that you're [00:06:00] simply trying to find a physical anchor to hang on reality because what they're doing is absolutely vaporizing it.

One of the big questions I get asked when we talk about sexual addiction is, "Don't they feel bad about what they're doing? Don't they wanna stop?" And what people don't realize is that sex addicts are trapped in a cycle of suffering. Yes, there's an intense compulsive drive, and then there's the struggle against the drive.

So what usually happens is they get found out, there's this massive sense of apology tour, there's efforts to be better, and then the craving starts up, and then they slip back into it, and it goes along secretly until another big betrayal gets discovered, and it starts the old cycle all over again. So Dr.

Minwalla talks about a three-pronged model to try to explain what's happening because all of this is really about trying to keep two lives separate. So they put up a lotta efforts to make sure that who they really are stays concealed. So you may end up living with someone that you thought you [00:07:00]knew for 28, 30 years of life, only to find out you didn't know this person at all.

So here's how this three-pronged model works. First, there's the acting out, the behavior. Then there's the problem with integrity. There's this fluid willingness to lie to the person that you're saying that you have made a commitment to, that you promised to love until they die, that you promised this life of integrity They develop an ability to sort of live with this deceptive self and to give up the sense of integrity.

And then the third piece is entitlement. There is this core of almost like a narcissistic belief that they have a right to their secret world, no matter the wreckage that it's leaving behind. To show you the level of audacity, my ex and I had a three-week breakup in which he cycled through at least 17 different women.

He agreed it was 17 different women in a period of 21 days. That's hyper-consumption. That's not just somebody who's a [00:08:00] sad person trapped in a shame cycle. This is a person consuming individuals like a commodity in order to regulate his ego. They're not looking for intimacy. They want supply, and they feel incredibly entitled to it.

So if this is happening to you, I want you to know that you're living in a relationship that was built over a secret sexual basement, over a secret double life. And there's three truths to kind of hold on to, to anchor yourself and your nervous system to. One, that double life is not a reflection of your worth.

They don't hide the relationship because you weren't thin enough or pretty enough or attentive enough. They hid it because they knew the relationship was wrong and abusive, and they wanted to keep the privilege of having your relationship while they did what they did in that secret basement. It was a choice of entitlement.

Two, forgive yourself for becoming the detective. You did that in order to try to find the truth, in [00:09:00] order to reestablish reality because you were trying to regulate a dysregulated nervous system. It wasn't that you got crazy. It was you trying to figure out where the fire was in your house and put it out.

Number three, your internal compass is not broken. If you're struggling with this, it's not because you're stupid and missed it. It's because you expected to marry someone who had integrity, who made a commitment and would stick to it, and they lied to you. That means realizing that your radar wasn't off, but rather you met and got sabotaged by a master manipulator, and you can rebuild the trust in yourself.

So are you living with someone who's living a secret double life, who has maybe a secret sexual basement? If you are, I want you to know that you're surviving an invisible earthquake because everything may look fine on the outside, but underneath, your internal foundation has been built on a lie. And I want you [00:10:00] to know that any instability that you're feeling, any craziness that you're feeling is an outgrowth to that massive deception.

Thank you so much for the trust for these questions and comments. I deeply appreciate it. And if you'd like me to take your question on air, please feel free to send it at clients, C-L-I-E-N-T-S at KerryMcAvoyPhD, or use the link that I've provided below in the show notes. It's 2:00 AM again, and you're replaying that whole conversation over, and you're wondering to yourself, "Was it really that bad, or maybe I'm just being dramatic?"

So you start to draft that I'm sorry text again because the guilt that you're feeling or the confusion you're experiencing is just unbearable. And you know this loop because you've been there before, but I want you to know that you're not alone. I'm Dr. Kerry McAvoy. I'm a retired psychologist, and for 25 years I've been helping people untangle exactly what toxic relationships do to your mind, how they create the confusion, the self-doubt, and that trauma bond that keeps pulling you back in.

Here's the [00:11:00] truth. Recovery isn't about getting more information. It's about having the right support in the exact moment you need it. That's why I've created Reclaim You. It's a private, always available coaching app built from my work and my content, organized into an extensive library that you can actually use when you're triggered.

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