With gaslighting, the person denying reality is perfectly aware of the fact that he or she is lying, usually as a way to manipulate the other person.
We will call him .... Jack ---
**Jack ** and I met at a place I was working. We dated for 3 years, lived together and he kept promising me we would start our future together but that never quite happened.
The last year and a half, phone calls were less and less, he came home less, and when he did come home his behavior was sneaky. We barely communicated.
He works on the road doing construction and he’d be gone for months but sometimes Id feel lonely and Id try to call him but he wouldn’t answer his phone, sometimes all night. He wouldn’t even respond to my texts, just to let me know hes not dead. If I dared ask him any questions about where he was, who is was with hed call me insecure and crazy and all sorts of other things. Then he”d get drunk and become awful to me. He tells me that if I want to keep the relationship then I need to stop acting crazy. Well, when he’d get too drunk he’d let things slip, and he pissed off a coworker one night so I received a message about what **Jack** had been doing. I went through his phone and found numerous things that didn’t add up to his stories of being faithful. As time went on other things happened. Google search gave him away, he claimed to have taken a viagra to “enjoy himself”. Anytime I confronted him about his lies or things I found, hed tell me that I’m crazy and I’m destroying us by thinking he’s cheating , and that I was misinterpreting everything. And I actually started to believe him! Now, instead of being mad, I feel crazy. I cant eat, I cant sleep, I cant think straight, and I have absolutely no idea what is real and what isnt.
Sadly, my story is not unusual. In cases of romantic and sexual infidelity, almost every betrayed partner experiences gaslighting to some degree. They sense that something is wrong in the relationship, they confront their significant other, and then the cheater flips the script, adamantly denying infidelity and asserting that the betrayed partners discomfort is based not in fact, but in paranoia and unfounded fear. Basically, cheaters insist that theyre not keeping any secrets, that the lies theyve been telling are actually true, and that their partner is either delusional or making things up for some absurd reason.
The (typically unconscious) goal of gaslighting is to get away with bad behavior. Cheaters gaslight because they dont want their spouse to know what they are doing, or to try and stop it. So they lie and keep secrets, and if/when their partner catches on and confronts them, they deny, make excuses, tell more lies, and do whatever else they can do to convince their partner that she (or he) is the issue, that her (or his) emotional and psychological reactions are the cause of rather than the result of problems in the relationship. Basically, the cheater wants the betrayed partner question her (or his) perception of reality and to accept blame for any problems.
At this point, you might be thinking that you could never be a victim of gaslighting because youre too smart and too emotionally stable. If so, you need to think again.
The ability to fall for a cheating partners gaslighting is NOT a sign of low self-esteem or a form of weakness. In fact, it is based in a human strength the perfectly natural tendency of loving people to trust the people that we care about, and upon whom we are healthfully emotionally dependent. In short, we want (and even need) to believe the things that our loved ones tell us.
In large part, betrayed partners willingness to believe even the most outrageous lies (and to internalize blame for things that are clearly not their fault) stems from the fact that gaslighting starts slowly and builds gradually over time. Its like placing a frog in a pot of warm water that is then set to boil. Because the temperature increases only slowly and incrementally, the innocent frog never even realizes its being cooked. Put another way, a cheaters lies are usually plausible in the beginning.
Im sorry I got home at midnight. Im working on a very exciting project and I lost track of time.
An excuse like that sounds perfectly reasonable to a woman (or man) who both loves and trusts her (or his) partner, so it’s easily accepted. Then, as the cheating increases, so do the lies. Over time, as betrayed partners become habituated to increasing levels of deceit, even utterly ridiculous fabrications start to seem realistic. So instead of questioning the cheater, a betrayed and psychologically abused partner will simply question herself (or himself).
Sadly, gaslighting can result in what is known as a stress pileup, leading to anxiety disorders, depression, shame, toxic self-image,addictive behaviors and more. As such, gaslighting behaviors are often more distressing over time than whatever it is that the betrayer is attempting to keep under wraps.
With my story, for instance, the most painful part of my boyfriends behavior wasnt that he was having sex with other women, its that he was never trustworthy and made me feel crazy for doubting his endless excuses.
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