re: I never really grasp term gaslighting (NSFW)

Accusing someone of gaslighting IS gaslighting. That's all I got.

I thought this involved a lighter and a fart?

Sure it’s overused. I’ve overused it. But anyone who has had to deal with an ACTUAL narcissist knows being gaslit basically becomes your reality. You can’t escape it. You either tune it out and defeat it or you become trapped inside it. Your boss, your mom, your wife- everyone runs into it and I’m glad we have a word to describe it.

Reminds me of several people, including the cdc director and the president, saying the vaccines were 100% safe and effective. Then everyone and their dog saying no one said that. We got the receipts.

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O got accused of this from my former wife. This was not a word that she had ever used in her vocabulary with me. She learned it from her therapist.

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Same. It's a word women like to break out any time they're held accountable for their behavior.

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The premise comes from a movie in the 40s. I watched it with my wife once. In the movie, the man was basically lying to his wife. For example, she would see the gaslight constantly flickering. But he would lie to her and basically convince her that what she's seeing with her eyes is not actually true. Basically driving her insane.

That's what gaslighting is. Lying to someone, trying to convince them that what they see with their eyes is not actually reality.

Truth be told, it does get thrown around a lot. When my wife started therapy, she all of a sudden started hurling that word at me alot. Our marriage wasnt in a healthy place, she was constantly throwing accusations at me, and tbh that made me want to fight back. It wasn't until we had a mature sitdown, she explained her feelings. "Baby when you did this or said this, it really hurt me. I feel like you never acknowledged my hurt. All you do is say I have no reason to be hurt". Once we approached it from that point of view, we was able to really settle some things and move forward. Oh, and once I knew what that word meant, I was able to have discussions with her on how I feel that she technically gaslit me in different ways.

Yeah it's hard to find a more topical example than his sig pic

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Sure it’s overused. I’ve overused it. But anyone who has had to deal with an ACTUAL narcissist knows being gaslit basically becomes your reality. You can’t escape it. You either tune it out and defeat it or you become trapped inside it. Your boss, your mom, your wife- everyone runs into it and I’m glad we have a word to describe it.

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Narcissists use it for sure. And I'm not talking about the type of casual narcissist accusations that get thrown around willy nilly these days, but the real deal, emotionally disordered type. It's also a favorite go to of borderlines - again, not the cutesy "i'M sO cRaZy" borderlines in the movies, but the no-shite deeply disordered individuals who are so legitimately crazy that they dont know their OWN reality, let alone yours.

here's what gaslighting looks like in a long term marriage or relationship: it is deep psychological abuse that will seriously frick you up if you dont figure out what is going on. mostly what it has been in my experience has been a fight over a seemingly insignificant issue, usually something that is fairly nebulous and doesnt have a clear solution.

example from my life - my wife put a new bedspread on our bed a couple weeks after we got married, and i didnt particularly care for it. i dont remember my exact reaction, but i'm sure it was negative. nothing over the top, but i'm sure she asked me if i liked it, i probably said "i'm not crazy about it" or something like that, and then she had a deep, visceral reaction to my disapproval of the bedspread.

---note, in hindsight, i should have just said it was fine and STFU, picked my battles, whatever...but i didnt realize what i was dealing with at the time---

this ended up being a HUGE fight. there was yelling on my part, yelling and crying on her part, she kicked a hole in a wall, i'm talking a MAJOR conflict over this stupid arse bedspread (which btw we still have).

over the years, this bedspread has come up time and time again in other fights as examples of my "anger management issues" and "inability to control my anger and emotions" and my "selfishness and control issues" as exemplified by the fact that I had such an over the top reaction to her simply changing the bed spread. and for years, i went along with that narrative because i remember the fight about the bedspread, and i remember being really fricking pissed, but i could never really remember why i was so mad about the bedspread itself. or if i even WAS really mad about the bedspread. but that had sort of become my reality. and i'm using this bedspread fight as an example, but there are literally dozens of these flare ups in the last decade over the most inconsequential shite.

finally i started to talk to a fricking actual therapist about this because i thought i was losing my mind. he told me to start writing down what i remember about our fights and also to document our current fights. once i did that, this shite jumped off the page at me. in every single fight this pattern emerges:

1. issue arises in our marriage, typically nothing that significant in the grand scheme of things
2. i have some sort of negative reaction or emotional about whatever that thing is
3. wife perceives my negative reaction as a personal attack on her, accuses me of being "angry" even when i'm displaying zero or very little actual signs of anger (this is where she likes to pull out the "you're acting just like your father" card bc she knows my dad's temper bothers me, and is something i try to avoid replicating)
4. accusation of anger triggers me to ACTUAL anger, crazy fight ensues as i angrily try to defend my position of not being angry
5. fight ends however it ends, days, weeks, months, years go by
6. wife brings up the time that i was SO ANGRY about ***insignificant issue brought up in step 1***
7. i question my own memory and my own sanity

THAT is what gaslighting is. and if i hadnt started therapy and read a stack of books about this shite, then i seriously would have lost my mind. now that i know what i'm dealing with, i can avoid these fights because i just dont argue, but REAL gaslighting will absolutely frick you up.

anyways, TL;DR - it's a term from a movie

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you can just be neurotic and/or insecure and in an argument attribute emotions and actions to someone that they don't actually feel. Nobody likes having someone else repetitively tell them how they feel, especially when it's not true. It's a relationship killer because one person is so insecure and the other gets so frustrated.

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the good news is, once you know it's being done to you, you can usually sidestep.

but yes, being told about the time i felt a certain way in a certain argument about a topic that i barely remember from a decade ago and having that used as ammunition against me in a current argument about another thing - that is what gaslighting is by my definition. that's the shite that makes you legit question your own memory and sanity.