Relationships are built on trust and feeling emotionally safe with your partner. In a healthy relationship, both people will have confidence in themselves and each other. They will not feel the need to question their reality or themselves. If you feel like you are constantly questioning yourself from your partner’s words maybe you need to learn, what is gaslighting in a relationship.
What is Gaslighting in a Relationship, is my Partner Gaslighting me?
The goal of gaslighting is to make the other person doubt their reality and themselves. They begin to second guess themselves and lose confidence in their own abilities and opinion. To put it bluntly, gaslighting is psychological manipulation and abuse. It makes the victim doubt their memory and recollection of events to the point they feel like they are going insane.
The aim of gaslighting is to gain control and power over the other person. The other person’s feelings, memory and experiences are all met with denial leaving the partner feeling invalidated and frustrated. They know something happened or was said but is constantly told it did not.
Also, gaslighting does not stop with mental games. They criticise you or tell you, you are not capable of doing a certain thing. They make you doubt your own ability.
Gaslighting also involves separating you from those you love such as close friends and family. They will criticise them and create issues, so you avoid conflict. You may find yourself covering for your partner’s behaviour or justifying his behaviour to yourself.
You need to start recording events and conversations in a journal. Break down the conversations that worry you with your partner and ask yourself if you feel uneasy, do you feel like this with anyone else.
Start to put boundaries down. Do not accept the other person’s version of events if you know them not to be true.
If you are still not sure if you are being gaslit, below are some examples of phrases that can be used.
Examples of Gaslighting Phrases used in Relationships
- “You are so sensitive!” (I’m not going to stop insulting you.)
- “That’s not the way it happened!” (You do not get to challenge me.)
- “I didn’t say that!” (Do not hold me accountable to my words.)
- “You’re just paranoid.” (You’re not going to find out the truth.)
- “I was just joking.” (Actually, it’s what I really think of you.)
- “You’re making that up!!” (I’m not going to let on you know the truth.)
- “Why don’t you trust me!” (I’m not accountable for hiding things from you.)
- “You know that’s not what happened!” (I’ll confuse her/him.)
- “Can you hear yourself!” (Humiliating.)
- “That’s not what I meant, and you knew that!!” (Denial.)
- “If I didn’t tell you how you looked, who would!!” (Belittling.)
- “You are so thin-skinned!!” (After an insult.)
- “You take everything so seriously!!” (Humiliating.)
- “I am not arguing, I’m just discussing it with you! You are so sensitive!” (I can’t confuse her/him.)
- “Can you hear yourself!” (Insulting.)
- “For everyone one thing you say about me I can say 10 bad things about you!” (Deflecting.)
- “You know you are not good at that so why bother trying!” (Undermining.)
- “Can you honestly say you’re a good wife/husband!” (This puts doubt in your mind about yourself as a good wife/husband. No gratitude.)
What is happening in these phrases? The person’s feelings and recollection of things in the past are not validated. There is no acceptance or responsibility for behaviour. The person excuses their behaviour and justifies it. There is undermining the other person as their partner and no gratitude.)
If you can relate to any of these and you are still not sure if it is gaslighting, ask yourself the question do these phrases come from friends and family? Do your friends’ responses make you doubt your recollection of events or not validate your feelings?
Gaslighting in other Relationships
Gaslighting is not only in romantic relationships. Gaslighting can also be in friendships, among family members and even in the workplace among work colleagues and employers. Work colleagues can set other colleagues up to take the fall for them. They build up a relationship of trust just as in a romantic relationship and then the mind games start. Because of the close relationship, you have with them you begin to think you are being too sensitive because they could not possibly do to you what it feels like they are doing. You begin to second guess your instincts about the situation. You may find yourself having to defend yourself to your boss on a regular basis to the point you are now being micromanaged. Your boss has lost trust in your abilities.
Logic and reasoning do not work on a gaslighter. If you challenge them on their behaviour, they will have an answer just as frustrating which does not validate the way they make you feel or what you know to be true. You are better to just stay with strong boundaries. Do not allow a gaslighter to convince you to move from a position of what you know to be true. You know you are not lying, and you heard with your own ears or you saw something which you know to be true. Do not be persuaded to believe differently.
Now you know, ‘what is gaslighting in a relationship’. If you are in a relationship where you are being gaslit, seek professional support because you will need it especially if you decide to leave.
