5d • General discussion
The Narcissist’s Shared Fantasy — Infidelity
The narcissist’s shared fantasy is a collaboration involving two or more participants. They create a dreamlike state built around imaginary goals and assigned roles for each person involved. The fantasy is constructed entirely by the narcissist, who selects and manufactures what your role will be. They may use what they’ve learned about you to create this world so that you’ll be more inclined to enter it, but they direct and control the structure. They will always remain in control — dictating the terms, creating the illusions, and constantly seeking to shape your behaviour so it fits within the fantasy. It is a form of symbiosis or psychological merger in which you are expected to move forward as one.
You are, after all, a role player in their game, not an independent human being, so you must perform your role or face consequences intended to realign your position. This is the source of much of the narcissist’s frustration and contempt toward others: you have strayed from the script. You are no longer behaving according to the role they assigned to you. You have shown autonomy when you were supposed to remain a character within their fantasy.
In many cases, the shared fantasy incorporates infidelity, love affairs, and certain types of sexual practices such as BDSM or sadistic sex. These are often attempts to recreate unresolved childhood conflicts involving parental figures while simultaneously avoiding genuine intimacy. The love affair becomes a fantasy space created to escape reality — a bubble, a playground, an emotional refuge from the demands of real life. The narrative created in the narcissist’s mind to justify the affair is fictional, and they assign people roles within it to reinforce its importance. The participants in the affair, whether one or many, co-create the story as it unfolds. They become rescuers or saviours, offering escape from the boredom of routine and from the “prison” the narcissist believes commitment to be.
The affair itself provides the narcissist with an alternate reality — one that feels more gratifying, less challenging, and less threatening than genuine emotional intimacy. It creates the secure emotional base they longed for and failed to find in childhood. These affairs are often modelled after movies and television shows, which is why workplace affairs, secret relationships with friends’ partners, or involvements with other married people seeking escape can feel especially compelling to them. Each participant is attempting to escape reality while simultaneously validating the other’s fantasy. It feels easy because it does not involve real commitment or responsibility. In many ways, it is an act of defiance against both, while simultaneously placing their committed partner “beneath” them in the narcissist’s mind.
These dynamics often carry undertones of infantilization and pseudo-parenthood, in which the narcissist becomes childlike again — sneaking around behind the backs of authority figures, lying, deceiving, and escaping responsibility. In this psychological state, they can temporarily reject commitment, long-term planning, and emotional accountability. The affair exists only in the immediate moment. It is not rooted in a meaningful shared past or a genuine shared future; it is an emotional escape from responsibility and commitment.
At its core, it resembles a rebellious child defying parents and social norms. The secrecy becomes thrilling. The forbidden nature of the relationship heightens the emotional stimulation. Much of this behaviour is reinforced by media portrayals that normalize infidelity as exciting, liberating, or inevitable. As one narcissistic psychopath once said to me: “No one is happy in their marriage. Everyone cheats. It’s normal. It’s healthy. Everyone deserves happiness.” They rarely consider your happiness in this equation whatsoever, nor do they express these beliefs honestly when they are forming false commitments and presenting themselves as loyal or trustworthy partners.
The narcissist rejects commitment and responsibility in nearly all forms because they fear them. As a result, they behave in ways that allow them to feel less trapped and more in control. These affairs become adventures in which the narcissist creates new characters to play — stepping into different identities as though entering different movies or television shows. They pursue these relationships to escape reality, reinvent themselves, and bask in feelings of desirability and irresistibility.
They justify their cheating by convincing themselves that you failed to provide the “perfect” love story, or that you are not submitting completely to their emotional needs and expectations. They mistake lust for love, excitement for connection, and betrayal of others for proof of commitment to them. In many ways, their emotional framework becomes an inversion of what healthy people understand love and commitment to be.
In their minds, everyone they sleep with instantly falls in love with them, much like the romanticized narratives they imitate from media. The more people they engage with, the more “love” they believe they have accumulated. Cheating becomes a way to artificially inflate self-esteem and self-confidence — qualities they desperately crave but do not genuinely possess.
Narcissists frequently display addictive personalities. They may pursue multiple compulsive behaviours simultaneously: alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling, stealing, food addiction, or, in this case, addiction to infidelity and cheating. Infidelity gives them a sense of agency, abundance, and power. They begin to see their long-term partner or spouse as merely one option among many — someone replaceable at any time.
The feeling of “getting away with it” inflates their ego even further. They may begin to look down on their partner as inferior or weak. In their minds, if you were as “special” as they are, you too would be able to attract and manipulate countless romantic options. What they fail to understand is that you are honouring your commitment because the relationship is real to you. You are not role-playing. You are emotionally invested in something authentic, while they are often invested primarily in fantasy, stimulation, and self-enhancement.
In their minds, their partner is lucky to have them because they believe they could walk away at any moment. The narcissist may even frame cheating as a form of self-love or personal freedom — something they feel entitled to experience and something they believe others are unfairly trying to deny them. Chronic infidelity is strongly associated with narcissistic and psychopathic traits because it reinforces entitlement, impulsivity, lack of empathy, and the pursuit of power and validation.
Infidelity can also function as a way for the narcissist to sever emotional bonds within the relationship through deliberate misbehaviour. It becomes an act of rebellion and defiance. Although the narcissist may not consciously recognize it, it is often self-destructive — a way of fleeing responsibility and sabotaging intimacy before intimacy can expose their vulnerabilities.
Sometimes, in a desperate attempt to break the bonds of commitment, they deliberately self-sabotage through reckless behaviour with highly inappropriate partners in order to present themselves as damaged goods, hoping their partner will eventually abandon them. At times, they want to legitimize their desire to escape, so they behave in ways designed to force you to push them away. They want to be seen as broken, damaged, or victimized by their own behaviour. This is especially common where borderline traits and severe attachment disturbances are present.
But in many narcissists, borderlines, and psychopaths, cheating is fundamentally about rebellion. The secrecy, the forbidden nature of the act, and the perceived humiliation of the betrayed partner all contribute to feelings of superiority, uniqueness, and righteous vengeance. Beneath it all lies the unspoken message: “You do not control me.”
At their core, narcissists fear intimacy, rejection, and attachment. As a result, they often behave in ways that unconsciously reinforce those fears. Infidelity becomes a means of asserting dominance and control. Genuine love, intimacy, and commitment from another person can make the narcissist feel inadequate because, on some level, they recognize their own inability to fully experience love, empathy, commitment, or compassion in a healthy and reciprocal way.
Rather than confronting this emotional emptiness, they project the blame outward. If you were better, they tell themselves, they would finally feel those emotions. If only you could become exactly what they need — without deviation — then they would be capable of love. But this, too, is part of the fantasy. The problem is not your inadequacy; it is their emotional incapacity.
So they seek validation elsewhere. They pursue temporary love affairs that momentarily fill the void and allow them to believe, however fictitiously, that everyone desires them. These affairs reinforce the illusion that they are supremely desirable, special, unique, and irresistible — everything they fear they are not.
They are perpetually running from themselves, constantly searching for what they will never truly find because they lack the emotional capacity to become the person they feel entitled to be. They endlessly seek the love, admiration, and validation they believe they deserve, yet remain unable to genuinely reciprocate or sustain those emotions in return.
No one will use the word love more quickly or more frequently than a narcissist, yet it is often used as a mechanism of control because they do not genuinely understand it or experience it in a healthy way. They use the language of love freely to lure others into another fantasy, another role, another emotional stage play built around their needs.
And so the cycle of escape, fantasy, infidelity, and emotional running never truly ends. They will never find what they are looking for because they cannot look within themselves to confront the real problem. They cannot form genuine emotional bonds or sustain authentic intimacy, yet the blame for this failure is always projected outward onto others — never inward onto themselves.
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The Narcissist’s Shared Fantasy — Infidelity
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