Tell me your gaslighting stories

[Sandra15]

I had a relationship with a guy in my 20s who was obsessed with the idea I was a cheat and hated me seeing my friends. One day he told me he had received an anonymous letter telling him all about how terrible I was, flirting all the time with different men at work and so on. It was a three page letter torn out of a spiral bound notebook. He told me it had been sent to him at work.

I knew it was a load of old pony because nobody I worked with was sufficiently interested to do that, nobody knew where he worked and it was all untrue anyway. I asked him to show me the envelope it had arrived in.

He came up with a Jiffy bag and it was his own handwriting on it in capital letters. He had written it himself using his non-dominant hand and sent it to himself. Absolutely ridiculous.

Of course this is mildly amusing not to mention stupid, but the guy went on, a year later, to beat me up and tell me he was doing it to restrain me as I was in danger of hurting myself.

@Shodan, I had that with my exhusband. Combination of gas lighting and passive aggression, agreeing to things, doing what he wanted and then denying he had agreed in the first place. Therapist advised me to take written notes when I spoke to him. It was far easier to just get rid of him!

@Dacquoise Yes it got to a point where I was seriously considering buying a dictaphone or something, just so I could replay conversations. But that would've meant recording everything, because I could never guess where he might suddenly argue that I was misremembering. Sometimes it was even during a conversation- he'd say I'd said, for example, 11 am, when I clearly remembered saying 10, just one or two minutes earlier.

Strange times. Glad they're over.

One of the lovely things my husband used to like doing when we first sparated due to him needing 'space' was ruturning to the house when I was out and taking 'items' away, laptop, bank cards, credit cards, then returning them and denying he had them.
Sent me crazy, the look on his face one day when the car was in for a service and he thought I was out, I was upstairs and watched him walk into the house with the laptop under his jacket.
He just loved lying, it was his favourite hobby.

@sandra15 Jesus wept that guy sounds like a looney tune,!! 5 / 10 for his letter proof efforts tho, that made me laugh 😂 sorry to hear he assualt you.

When I was a kid in the early 1950s I resented having a new sister at 7/8. I was jealous and probably behaved very badly. But i dont beleived I deserved the way my parents gaslighted me.

My mother told me they didnt love or want me any more so they were going to arrange to have me taken away to a home. I saw my mum drop a very distinctive postcard into the post box,. She told me that on saturday the man with the van was coming to take me to a home for naughty children,

They had me so convinced it was going to happen and on the day in question made me get washed, dressed in my best dress and sit on a stool in the garden to wait for the "man with the van". All day I cried and cried. Then my mother suggested I go to my father and promise to be a good girl, and beg him to get around the man to take some other child. Still crying I did that.

A short time later I found one of the distinctive postcards my mother has used and realized it was for the weekly football pools my father did. I knew then my parents had played a cruel joke on me. When I grew older I often threw it back in their faces as an example of psychological cruelty. They just treated it as a joke.

If parents behaved towards a child of 8 like that today I dont doubt that social services would become involved,

Wow your parents were horrible member.

Christ, @memberofthewedding, that’s some fucked up shit.

ExH used to speak to me like a piece of shit and when we had made up and I would say that I didn't like him speaking to me like that, he would go 'I only said.......' and he would re say the thing in a calm soft tone.
After years of that I have a stuck belief that I'm being unreasonable or over reacting!
Pretty sure that would come under the gas lighting umbrella

I had this for many years with my now ex. It was almost constant. During 'discussions' which would often go on into the small hours- he would not let me go to bed- he would claim we had discussed the issues I wanted to raise and that it was not his fault I couldn't remember them. Of course we had never discussed them. he told lies and blamed me for his physical assaults on me. I thought I was going mad.
He once told me that my friends had gone to him in private and told him they thought I was mad and selfish and felt sorry for him. When I asked them they were horrified and said they didn't like him actually and felt uncomfortable around him- Then when I confronted him he said that they would never admit to me that they had confided in him.
He is still a pathological liar but goes around basing his honour on the 'fact' that he is always truthful.

The word gaslighting is so overused and often incorrectly these days. It's like a buzzword for a cheater, liar or abuser.

One can be all of the above without gaslighting you.

OP...you should have left the Ex when he produced that nonsensical letter. That's a clear sign he was an idiot to say the least.

@SandyY2K

The word gaslighting is so overused and often incorrectly these days. It's like a buzzword for a cheater, liar or abuser.

One can be all of the above without gaslighting you.

OP...you should have left the Ex when he produced that nonsensical letter. That's a clear sign he was an idiot to say the least.

I know. I stuck with him for another year until he beat me up. This was over an incident when I wasn't well enough to go out with another couple (I'd had bronchitis) and told him to go by himself so he started an argument calling me selfish, lazy and other things. He walked into the bedroom and in frustration I threw a cuddly toy at the door (not at him). He marched out, started wagging and pointing his finger, totally goading me so I kicked out at his briefcase. Then he punched me in the face 6 or 7 times, pushed me to the floor, and got me in a crouching position and sat on my back/neck. I was in constant agony for about a week. That was the straw that (almost literally) broke the camel's back. He said he had restrained me because he feared I was going to attack him.

It turned out he had been cheating anyway!

My husband regularly tells me he is only shouting at me because I shouted at him. I'm particularly careful to make
Sure I don't shout at him for this very reason. It does
Leave you questioning yourself
Though. .

My childs Disney Father used to get a buzz out of being seen to neglect any responsible parenting he'd agreed to pick up on his time, he used to enjoy the "If Mummy asks you went to bed way before midnight" it was win win for him, he got to be the fun one with no boundaries, and he got to paint me as someone who is such a scary cunt that is was safer to lie to me. When I realised he was never going to change I stopped ever expecting anything remotely grown up from him..... That's when the gaslighting started properly, he pretends to my Son that he's lost things that were never sent to his in the first place so he can show my Son the 'panicking' routine about my reaction because I might 'tell him off', he pretends they are running late so my Son comes in apologising profusely on his Dad's behalf when they are not even late, last year he was self isolating for two weeks before the Easter holidays when home schooling started so I said he could have my week of the Easter holidays as well as his own to make up for it, he spent two weeks pretending to my Son that it wasn't the holidays at all and that he was supposed to be doing learning, so instead of enjoying the holidays with his Dad my Son got to enjoy two weeks of worrying that I would be angry with him when he got home for not doing any maths when he was there. The prick is forever living his life through facebook but it apparently escaped his notice that it had been Easter for everyone else, he set the scene by asking him to do Times Table Rockstars a few times and not giving him any Easter eggs which he normally would.

@sandra15 that guy sounds like a looney tune,!! 5 / 10 for his letter proof efforts tho. That made me laugh,!! Especially using his left hand to look like different person writing. Such trickery.... 😂

An ex of mine swore blind that we had discussed him moving in with me and I had agreed. We hadn’t discussed any such thing, but he kept insisting we had and was making efforts to move in.

My emotionally abusive ex was a twat in lots of ways, but one example was how whenever we were in the car (he would always be driving, or course), he would slyly open my window just a centimetre or so, so that I didn’t notice. Then when we were parked and getting out the the car, he would have a massive go at me for leaving the window open a crack and it would be my fault the car would get stolen, etc, etc.

I 100% know I didn’t open that window. I knew it then and I know it now. But even so, I still ended up doubting myself and wondering if maybe I’d done it without realising.

Proper mad head fuck.

Its awful how much you can end up doubting yourself
I knew dhs drinking wasn't normal but being constantly told you're 'mental' that it's 'you with the problem' and that everyone does it and it's 'normal' really did make me doubt myself sometimes
I never felt I was important enough, that my opinion counted I or deserved to be happy so I just put up with it
It took him getting drunk in the morning while looking after dc to make me kick him out because dc is important and there was no getting past that what he did was totally unacceptable. Even then he still tried to lie and make me feel like I was creating issues out of nothing

So many arsehole men! My exh was out of work for 8 months after the 2008 recession. We were living on my part time wages and getting housing benefits with 2 growing teens in the house.
Despite this, he secretly clocked up a tab with a weed dealer for many hundreds of pounds. When he went back to work and had to admit it (cos the guy wanted all he was owed) we had a massive row.
He told me I only thought it was a lot of money because I didn’t smoke.

@marriednotdead, jeez that's terrible 're your exh, that literally was money going up in smoke weed stinks to high heaven, not to mention the dangers that dealer could have brought to your door / family if
He become unpatient / nasty waiting for his ££. ,!!

My ex from when i was about 20, we were living together. Arrived home from work (and this was in the days before mobile phones), and he was waiting for me, a friend of his had seen me go into the phone box, he wanted to know who i was ringing. I was confused as i hadnt rung anybody, had come straight home from work.

Lots of pleading my innocence, crying, accusations later he said he believed me. Asked who this friend was, and he told me, i then started putting my shoes and coat back on, he was asking where i was going, told him i was going to find friend and have it out with him as his lies were putting our relationship in danger. He then said as casually and as calm as anything "Nobody saw you, i made it up to catch you out"

Sadly he pulled this trick again but i had my friends young children wit me (under 10 but not toddlers) who backed up my story that i had been now where near a phone box.

Took about another year to leave him. He was a total head fuck. Sneaky and loved nothing more than catching people out.

[quote Ardvark111]**@marriednotdead*, jeez that's terrible 're your exh, that literally was money going up in smoke * weed stinks to high heaven, not to mention the dangers that dealer could have brought to your door / family if
He become unpatient / nasty waiting for his ££. ,!![/quote]
That's one of many ridiculous things he expected me to tolerate, I look back at the years I wasted with him in disbelief. Good riddance!

My STBXH used to move things and deny it, even though I'd know he'd done it - just another excuse to tell me I was going mad.

After I left I suddenly remembered a couple of incidents from when DS was a baby where I couldn't find my keys - once they were in the wrong coat pocket & the other time they were in the airing cupboard, just plonked on top of a pile of towels - not hidden at all.

This was 20 years before I left him while he was still being pretty reasonable - I'm now 99.9% certain he moved the keys

Why the fuck do people get off on behaving like that?

There is a play set in Victorian times where a husband deliberately plays tricks to deceive his wife (and other people) into thinking she is losing her mind. He uses psychological tricks such as giving her gifts, hiding them, and accusing her of losing them. He is attempting to gain power of attorney over her affairs so he can search her house for a dead relative's jewels. The title "gaslight" refers to how the lights in the house dim when he secretly searches the attic and the gas pressure drops.

The term gaslighting has now been adopted to explain certain types of psychological abuse and control, often within an domestic setting.

Most of the ones on here aren't gaslighting.

Not sure if mine are, but here they are:

Saying he had phoned when he hadn't. No record of the calls.
Drip feeding that I had a drink problem. I almost believed him, but at the time I hadn't had a drop for months, not particularly deliberately, but I just hadn't thought of it.
Going on about me shagging other men.
Denying that he had hit me.
Fat-shaming me.

I see gaslighting as a behaviour where one partner does things and denies them in order to put the blame on the other person who then can't remember having done them ( because it never happened in the first place) and thinks they are going crazy, accuses the partner of having done things they haven't, saying things they haven't, hiding things, all that kind of stuff. Anything that makes one partner believe they are going mad and not trusting their own mind and memory.
it is a deliberate attempt to undermine and confuse in order to gain the upper hand.