[Songanddance]

I have noticed a lot of references to gaslighting and how our MLCers use it especially the narcissists.  When ever I read about narcissists on here they always seemed extreme and I did not see that in my MLCer H; He's never fitted the classical symptoms.  But what I began to realise as his MLC continues and so does his denial of his actions - how he would gas light me very subtly and carefully to try and keep me in his loop rather than my own.

So here's a thread for examples of gas lighting and how to deal with it.  I would prefer it if the discussion did not go off at tangents discussing narcissism (plenty of examples on here already) nor examples of projection.  I am more interested in the little ways that MLCers play the gas lighting game.

So share away....

[Acorn]

Excellent discussion topic, Songanddance. 
I, too, saw the need for the topic after reading Jojojo’s latest post.
I hope to get back with my thoughts later.
It’s an important topic in that by recognizing what GL is and responding appropriately, LBS upholds the boundaries and her dignity. 

[Mortesbride]

Mine used to say something...and in the very next sentence deny he ever said it. 

Even if I had recorded it and played it back...it would be me ''miss hearing'' what he said. Or ''putting words in his mouth''.

Another thing he did that was in this realm was passive aggressive style punishment. So if I didn't say or do something he liked...he would then take a silent, cold mood and ignore me, avoid eye contact, not speak to me....this could last for hours or days if I let it. When I asked why he was acting that way...he would deny that he was acting differently at all... then tell me I was just trying to make a fight with him.

The idea of course was to get me to question and torture myself mentally trying to figure out why I was trying to start a fight I didn't want. 

He would also do things like talking to OW on FB for a bit before she became the OW fully, and when I asked about it..or said it made me uncomfortable how much he spoke to her...it told me I was controlling. That I NEVER let him have any friends...that I was jealous...None of which was true because she was the only friend I had a problem with, yet he painted it as if I had a problem with ANY friend he had. Deflection of course.

There are lots of other things but mainly it was a constant mental battle trying to make me question things. Was I being mean? Was I starting a fight over nothing? Was I being controlling?

I would like to say all this behaviour was isolated to after BD but it wasn't. It is something that did happen in small places throughout, but increased drastically in the year and a half before and after BD.

[9393roo]

Great topic Song,

I think my H has done small amounts of gaslighting throughout our marriage.  It has only been in the last year or two I have come to recognize when it is happening.  I believe this is coming about because as I have begun to dissect our marriage I have been sorting through what issues actually belong to me and what belong to him.  I am starting to stand up for myself more and more and I THINK it is actually causing my H to stop and think.  Recently his guilt is catching up with him and he has been trying to deflect it on me.  Here are some recent examples:

My D called me the other night, in the conversation she asked if her dad was out of town.  I said no why?  She said she had not heard from him in 3 weeks.  He never responded to any texts.  She said he never checks on her anymore.  I asked her if she had said this to her dad.  She said no.  I told her she needed to talk to him.  I decided to mention my conversation to him.  His first response was "What did you tell her?"  I said she needed to reach out to you.  He said "Why don't you ever defend me? You used to have my back.  Are you siding with her?" (he is in teenaged mode) I said I'm not going to defend you when I have no idea what you have and haven't done with our D, and besides that our children are adults and so are you.   Your relationship with our kids has nothing to do with me.  He went silent.

The women in the office thing reared it's ugly head the other day.  I had to stop by the office and my H was in his office having a beer and looking up plans with a woman employee.  I was instantly triggered.  I got what I needed to get and headed out the door.  My H called me later and asked why I left so quickly.   I was honest with him and said seeing you having a drink with a woman employee is a big trigger for me.  He seemed confused.  He said I always have had drinks with employees if I have a meeting at the end of the day, men or women.  I told him that this is how his affair started and it is something that bothers me.  He said,maybe you shouldn't come to the office at the end of the day and then you won't see it.    I said maybe you should rethink your drinking habits and have some empathy for for the situation you caused to make me trigger.  I left it at that.   He went silent. 

When asked why he is working so much my H always responds "I'm just trying to provide for everyone. You have no idea how hard it is for me, don't you care about our company? We could both retire and live a very comfortable life at this point.  But it is all about his need to be the best and get more.     

The funniest gaslighting moment was on our 30th anniversary 2 years ago.  I posted a wedding picture on facebook.  H asked me to take it down because "some people" (IE OW) might get upset about it.  He said that "some people"  may think that I was rubbing that fact in that we were still married after 30 years?  I left it u.

The further along we go into this crisis the more my eyes have been opened to what my H is doing to try to relieve his guilt.  I am responding more than reacting lately and I am unzipping my lip when the situation calls for it.  I feel like the more self respect I have gained the more I am taking responsibility for what truly belongs to me and what doesn't.  My H is kind of surprised at me calling him out calmly because the last 3 years I have been truly reactive and sound crazy sometimes. 

Off to get Thanksgiving dinner preparation started.  I pulled out some extra table for kids today and the thought crossed my mind that maybe I will put my H at the kids table....He has dipped into the tunnel and is acting like a teen. 

[Not Applicable]

Earlier in his MLC H was more honest.. But the longer this goes on, the more he gaslights, probably because the more time that he remains in MLC, the more he has said and done that he feels the need to deny or twist into something other than what it was.

[9393roo]

I completely agree NYM.  I think my H is starting to process somethings and wants to find someone else to blame for his transgressions.  It’s not working with me anymore.   

[Treasur]

Very good topic choice, Song 

I think you recognise gaslighting bc it makes you doubt yourself or your own judgment about what is normal or real. If it goes on for a long time, it is crazymaking to the point where you feel unsure about what is real or not or unsure about your ability to know.
Gaslighting may involve lying but it is different. It is designed to cause you to doubt your sense of reality and adopt someone else's or be off-centred by uncertainty.

I think lies tend to make you doubt the other person or perhaps your ability to know when they are lying or not. Gaslighting leaves you uncertain and anxious about your own knowledge of what is true.

Imho I don't think gaslighting is always done with a conscious Machiavellian intention to drive us crazy. Sometimes it is, sometimes it is about distraction, sometimes about someone else's ability to know truth from lies or reality from story.
But I do believe gaslighting can be profoundly damaging to those on the receiving end for a long time. It can normalise the abnormal and dysfunctional so much that it takes real mental effort to claw our way out of it.

The antidotes? Refusing to engage, persuade or justify. Reducing contact/exposure to someone who does it. Placing less weight on someone else's POV. Finding and acting on facts and speaking your own truth. Calling it out for what it is like the small child looking at a naked emperor lol.

Some of my xh' gaslighting triumphs? Using his psychiatric diagnosis as a reason for not being able to communicate with me at all...while holding down a job and starting a relationship with ow. Getting angry about a tweet post I made about 'a nice snowy walk with my h' bc he despised social media now. Saying in an email that 'we have talked and talked without anything getting better' when he had not talked to me for months. Sending the police round bc he was 'worried' when I ignored a series of ranting texts for three days. Refusing to admit the existence of ow or mention her to everyone from his L to his family or me when all the facts meant that everyone knew she existed and he was living with her. Saying I had agreed to things I hadn't. Denying he had agreed to things he had even in the face of documentation. Saying that his L didn't 'necessarily represent his real views' bc he 'never read any of the legal letters before they were sent' as if the idea of your own L working for you was a novelty. Or complaining about the stress of a divorce process HE initiated damaging his mental health. Or using the divorce process as a reason for not being able to talk about the divorce bc he was 'scared of me', that I would use things he said against him legally so couldn't 'have the kind of conversation he wanted that would get us back to being a team again'. While he was planning his wedding with ow.. It's a pretty long list lol...but it was an exhausting mindf**k.

Looking back a bit more objectively, I think he did it for one of two reasons usually - whether consciously or unconsciously - to control the 'story' or to avoid being challenged by realities he did not want to deal with.

I have no idea if he did or didn't believe any of these things at the time, but it was obvious eventually that it was impossible to have any kind of rational conversation with him about anything really. He truly at one point, after maybe about a year, would have insisted that black was white or the earth was flat. The  only picture of reality he saw was his own and for some strange reason he needed everyone else including me to see it the same. Regardless of awkward things like facts or different opinions or the law.

For me, gaslighting was the biggest reason why bit by bit I refused to meet him or talk to him on the phone when he occasionally popped up wanting to. Tbh his 'normal' seemed more and more bizarre to me and the fact that he seemed not to think so made it even more bizarre. His gaslighting was a serious threat to my mental health and trying to change it or work with it was futile. Found this a useful article https://medium.com/@sheaemmafett/10-things-i-wish-i-d-known-about-gaslighting-22234cb5e407 and this https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/are-gaslighters-aware-what-they-do

[Acorn]

Gaslighting. A trade secret of my H during MLC.  Sigh...

If I may share my thoughts on why my H did it and how I tried to identify and respond to it, please.

My MLCer gaslighted during his escape and avoid, not because of any nefarious agenda or to deceive me.  It was to avoid responsibility for himself.  To avoid feelings of deep shame and guilt.  Truth was too difficult to face so he relied on blaming others, especially me, for the state of our marriage, family and the ever growing emotional distance between him and us.  A case of self protection at rather primitive level. 

For example, he gaslighted (bigly!) when I asked him why he was so emotionally distant from me.  He blamed me for it by saying that I didn’t share the same hobbies as him, blah, blah, blah. 

My reaction was, ‘O cra*, it’s my fault.’  Now, that’s one of the ways I identified his prodigious gaslighting. He made me feel guilty for his dastardly choices.  Another indicator that he was gaslighting was when he convinced me with his accusation, I would think, ‘there is a grain of truth in what he said.’  That’s more insidious because that ‘grain’ became a huge rock in no time and I hung it around my neck. 

In short, identification of his gaslighting was through my immediate reaction of feeling guilty, and not what and how he said it.

Once I identified how easily I got sucked into his gaslighting, the only way to cope with it was not to engage him. ‘O’,  ‘I see’, ‘really?’, ‘uh huh’.  That took quite a bit of self control (AKA respond, not react) which is a part and parcel of detachment.   By regarding him like a TV presenter ranting about something based on fluff, I could see how silly it all was.  And immature.  And bonkers. 

Fortunately, he stopped gaslighting as the escape and avoid phase came to a close. 

A sample of one.

[Shockandawe]

I think they all gaslight.
My h did it for months prior to him leaving. He did it a lot just after he left when he was coming to see me frequently. Since I only see him once a month he still tries it but I have come to see it for what it is.

I think he does it in order to justify to himself that what he’s doing is the right thing whilst trying to convince me that it’s my fault because he cannot handle the guilt he’s feeling.
Really not my problem this is for him to deal with. He told me last week that he feels tremendous guilt and knows I am suffering emotionally. A WTF moment if ever there was one. He would like to think I am suffering emotionally and will try to gaslight me into thinking I am but, I am not. I passed through that particular part of my journey some time ago. My other thought is maybe he sees me moving forward and being so much stronger than him that he tries to convince me that what he’s saying is actually true.

Right after saying all of this he then said it’s for the best. I just sat listening and saying very little. As my uncle always says it can only bring you down if you allow it to. You know the truth so don’t listen to what you know is false. Listen to yourself as only you knows you.

I prefer to keep going forward and I don’t pay attention to his victim mentality and gaslighting. I told him one thing which was, you go do whatever it is you think you need to and I will do the same for myself. I then left.

Gaslighting or lying is more to themselves  to keep you from going forward. It’s like they cannot allow you to move forward. Crazy bus ticket holders all of them.

God bless you all

[Whyus]

When I told XW that I was uncomfortable with her and TGF26 Training with These Young lads she said "your paranoid and dont trust me. You Need therapy!". This was between BD and ABD!!!
I actually believed this $h!te too for a while "no, shes Right. Shes cool and would never……" PUKEBUCKET anyone?