Gaslighting: the act of confusing someone’s reality by denying facts through misinformation and manipulation, making the victim feel confused and potentially question their own sanity. Sadly, we have all been gaslighted at some point in our lives. Until we recognize the traits and behavior, we are unable to stop it from happening again. Now, the effects of gaslighting leave you feeling very confused, ruminating over a past memory or person. Did you know they can have long-term impacts on your emotional, psychological, and even physical well-being?
Gaslighting can happen in a variety of relationships. However, today’s article is specifically about gaslighting in romantic relationships.
You are imagining things,” and “sit tight, you are imagining things.”
If you hear this from your partner, it’s probably a good time to pack your bags and leave. If you have confronted your partner on their bad actions, regardless if it was spending money from the savings account, maybe they drank all of the orange juice and then tried to hide the carton and pretend they didn’t do it, or cheating. If you tell them something and they say to you that you are imagining things, it’s very toxic. Your partner needs to understand your feelings and work through them.
Maybe you assume that they drank all of the orange juice in the fridge when, in fact, you only bought one carton and not two. Therefore, it never truly went missing. But the important message here is the lack of acknowledgment of your emotions so that they can just get away with whatever it is that you were accusing them of. Because if they think that you are going crazy, then they can continue and get away with being “optimum good.”
If you think your mentality is declining only when you are with your partner, then please leave. If you are starting to doubt your feelings and feel that they aren’t valid because your partner does not acknowledge them, it’s because you are being gaslighted. You think you are being too sensitive. If you question multiple times a day if you are being too sensitive, then chances are you really are not. You feel that something is wrong, but because your emotions and insight are being ignored by your partner, nothing is actually resolved, which makes you feel very uncertain.
And if the person that you are with is unable to acknowledge your emotions and dismisses them as needy, please leave, because this relationship is not going to get any better. A healthy relationship means that your partner will listen to your concerns and worries and address them, whereas a gaslighter will tell you that you are being too needy and that you are not allowed to feel that way. The issue is your problem and therefore, they deny anything was ever said.
You find you are having the same conversation and getting nowhere. Do you find yourself bringing up the same topic or situation time and time again? You’ve rephrased the way you speak. You’ve imagined things from their perspective to explain it in a way that they will understand, yet you seem to be getting nowhere. Well, this is gaslighting. It doesn’t matter how simply you phrase a situation to someone. If they cannot acknowledge your point of view and respect it, you are being gaslighted and you need to leave.
If you feel that you need to write down or even record your conversations with your partner for proof of what was said, this is a huge red flag. It’s a sign that you are dating a gaslighter and potential narcissist and you have to leave. You feel that they are so certain about past events that never happened that you begin to question your own memory. And this is a result of being in a relationship with a gaslighter.
You never hear the word “sorry.” Gaslighters, they deny empathy. They won’t say sorry when you are hurting. If you tell your partner that you are in some emotional pain and they ignore this request, yet they tell you you shouldn’t be crying, you have no valid reason to cry, this is them telling you how to act. It’s very unhealthy and it means you will never get your needs met from this person. Feeling exhausted and unheard is not mentally healthy. Trying to justify your feelings to a gaslighter? Yeah, it’s impossible. It feels painful to ask for your needs to be met. If the thought of telling your partner your needs and wants makes you feel very uncomfortable, because maybe you can predict that they will dismiss your feelings, it’s time to leave and find someone who truly, truly cares about you. Because feeling voiceless in a relationship is unhealthy and very toxic. And if the feeling of impending doom hits you any moment that you try to have a conversation about the relationship with them, yeah, this is a sign that the relationship is very unhealthy and toxic.
You exhaust yourself trying to make the relationship work. You’ve read all the books, and you’ve read tons of blogs to find peace for your unmet needs. You’ve reached the conclusion that you were to blame and that you weren’t good enough. So, you have adapted many different techniques and methods to love your partner better and harder. You’ve been acting out of desperation to get them to recognize and validate you. However, has your partner ever read a book to help their relationship? Could it be that you were so desperate to change yourself for the person to love you more that you actually stopped loving yourself in the process? A one-sided relationship never lasts. And it’s not that you aren’t doing enough and that you aren’t enough of something. It’s just that you have been denied love and you have been made to believe that you were the problem when in fact you did nothing wrong.
You are at fault for outside issues during times of conflict. If you end up receiving the blame for things out of your control, ah, please leave the relationship. Gaslighters will change any situation to something that you have done instead of just acknowledging what they did. Maybe your partner came home one night at midnight and woke up the baby, so you question, “Well, why did you come home so late? What’s gone on?” However, the conversation is quickly changed to the baby’s crying, “Go deal with it,” and “It’s crying because this is your fault because you stressed me out over dinner, so I had to go for a night drive.”
You lie for your partner. If friends and family have passed judgment or you notice strangers giving you the “WTF” glance in public, yet you find yourself saying, “He’s not that bad, you don’t see the side that I see, he’s misunderstood,” what you are actually doing is lying to yourself about how you are being treated. If an outsider tells you that your relationship is toxic and your partner is gaslighting you and they are no good and you deserve better, well, that’s your indication to leave. Overall, you feel pretty confused about the relationship.
When you confront a gaslighter for their wrongdoings, sometimes they could try to just smooth things over and say, “You know, that hurt me that you would accuse me of cheating because you know I love you. You know I would not do anything like this on purpose.” And that works. They keep you sweet. They tell you what you want to hear without actually acknowledging their wrongdoings or making up for those actions, which leaves you feeling confused because, well, you need to be paying attention to their actions, not their words. It doesn’t matter how much they try to butter you up and how many lies they spill. If they did something wrong physically to threaten the relationship and they won’t admit it, then leave them because it’s very unhealthy.
You end up apologizing when you did nothing wrong. A common example that I see on the internet all the time is as follows: a person suspects their partner of cheating, so they go through their partner’s phone and then they find proof that their partner has been unfaithful. So naturally, they confront them. They say, “Hey, there’s been infidelity here.” The guilty partner admonishes the other for snooping and then says, “You are a bad person for snooping on my phone,” and this is proof that I can’t trust you, which makes me do these actions. So the initial partner feels hurt and then apologizes for snooping and never mentions the cheating again. So of course, snooping is an invasion of someone’s privacy. However, if you’ve been caught cheating and then tried to cover it up and make out that it wasn’t a big issue, then you are the toxic one.
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