Thought I would start a new thread as didn't want to highlight the troll and still a bit confused?
So when ex accussed me of hallucinating and attacking him and he told midwife and he lied is this Gaslighting?
Or is it when ex told everyone I put hole in condom to get pregnant...the other story it was someone else's baby is this gaslighting?
Or when he told SS I was abusing ds....and found out later ex was actually physically abusing ds is this introprjection (sorry extra question)?
Can others share there's as it helps me understand it better in real life iygwim?
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Relationships
What was your gaslighting experiences?
118 replies
want2sleep · 28/07/2011 19:00
OP posts:
inatrance ·
28/07/2011 22:21
I would say all are obviously abusive and twattish behaviours but that 1 is gaslighting. To me it's when they lie, rewrite history, make up or twist events to make you doubt your own reality.
My experience of this was frequent with my ex, the stand out example being when he went into a crazy rage whilst driving and lost control of the car during a verbal tirade at me while I just sat crying.
He crashed the car going too fast over a roundabout and continued screaming at me while we got the car to a side street. I was on my way to a job, so I rang the person i was working for and got picked up while he rang his parents to get him and the car.
By the time I got home that night he had rewritten history and said we crashed because I was screaming abuse at him and attacking him. 
The Lundy Bancroft book actually gave me my truth (and sanity) back. I honestly thought I was crazy.
BeardofZeus ·
28/07/2011 22:29
Yeah but Inatrance, the whole definition of gaslighting is that you're not meant to be able to at it because you're not sure if it happened or not. If you remember clearly what happened, and he tells other people differently, that's not gaslighting, that's lying surely?
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inatrance ·
29/07/2011 00:10
BeardofZeus that was the most extreme example of my ex's gaslighting and was actually the straw that broke the camels back for me. I KNEW what had happened that time especially as I was able to have several hours to think about it without him confusing me, there was no way he could rewrite that one! It took me a few months to get out after that, but that was the point I started to plan to leave. The intent was the same as all the other less extreme incidents in which he did similar things - to confuse me and cause me to doubt what had happened. The definition of gaslighting states:
"in which false information is presented to the victim with the intent of making them doubt their own memory and perception. It may simply be the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred..."
On many previous occasions I wasn't because he DID have me doubting what happened. I'm more with hindsight, it wasn't so cut and dried at the time. He out and out denied things that had only just happened, he distorted events out of all recognition so that I ended up being convinced that I was the one with the problem and had mental problems. Gaslighting can be over minor things, and it IS lies, but said with absolute conviction and sheer mind boggling denial over FACTS, the truth as it is.
You still see the truth with your eyes, and your mind still computes the facts but you are presented with a completely different version of events and confused by exhausting mind games which end up leaving you feeling like your head is surrounded by fog. As soon as the crash had happened the fog started to clear and my survival instinct kicked in as I realised he could have killed us both. I still doubted myself until I read the Lundy book and saw my marriage and H there in black and white.
garlicbutter ·
29/07/2011 00:35
Yeah, women gaslight. You should meet my mum!
XH#2:
Was in a car, parked in the middle of our road, at midnight with a woman. He'd just phoned to say he was nearly home from a work thingy with a male colleague. I went up to the car, the woman hopped out and he drove off. I asked the woman if she knew my husband, she said "No, I'm just visiting a friend" - next door to us. I went back in, there was H, insisting his pal had just dropped him off on the corner. I tried to pursue this with him, he just said I was 'pathological'. I ended up thinking I must have not seen what I did see 
Frequently disappeared at parties. One of a certain few women would disappear at the same time. They'd be gone for hours. He'd tell me they'd been chatting at the end of the bar or some such, and only for an hour. Again, I doubted myself as much as I doubted him.
Told everybody he was single! We knew a lot of the same people; everyone knew I was married, but practically died of shock if I happened to tell them my H's name. Again, I was imagining it due to my (supposed) extreme possessiveness - he said. I actually bought books on how to become less jealous. Dickhead me.
Regularly 'lost' his credit card shortly after overstretching it on a night out. He was the most generous man at the bar, but didn't pay for what he'd bought and cadged off me for the rest of the month. OK, that's not strictly gaslighting, but I certainly felt when I figured out what he was doing.
I was going to offer some more gems from my two delightful husbands and my insane 'best friend', but I'm getting too angry!
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