Gaslighting Read online

  YOU MEAN IT’S NOT MY FAULT?

  It often comes as a great relief when I tell my clients that they are not to blame! It’s very normal for people to blame themselves for their partners’ behavior. If I was a good person, she wouldn’t have acted that way. It is also normal, when you’re dealing with gaslighters, to be blamed for things they are doing. This is classic projection.

  “This whole time I thought I did something to make him act like this.”

  —Charmaine, 28

  A good example of gaslighting projection is when a cheater constantly accuses his spouse of cheating. The gaslighter will say things like “I know you and your coworker have something going on the side” or “I saw you flirting with him” or “I see you wear that skimpy dress when you go out with your friends. Planning on meeting someone?” when in fact it is the gaslighter who is cheating all along.

  Gaslighters turn reality on its head. This is definitely one to watch out for. If you find yourself blaming yourself for your partner’s poor behavior or treatment of you, please consider alternative perspectives. More on how to do this throughout the book.

  “It’s not my fault she acted that way?”

  —John, 43

  GASLIGHTERS AND SEX

  Gaslighters are very good at pretending at romantic behavior and connection at the beginning of your relationship, but they can’t keep it up forever. They quickly become very one-sided with sex. It’s all about their pleasure, not yours. You just happen to be there; you are the means to an end. Pretty soon you feel more like an object than a partner who is loved and cherished.

  Gaslighters will also often set up “rules” for sex, spoken or unspoken, such as:

  You should always be available for sex when they want it.

  If you want to have sex, they will probably tell you no.

  They will withhold sex as a way to punish you.

  If you want to receive oral sex, you have to earn it.

  If you don’t give them what they want sexually, they will belittle you.

  They’ll tell you they would be more sexually attracted to you if you changed your appearance.

  They don’t really care if you aren’t feeling pleasure.

  And they don’t really care if you are feeling pain.

  Very often, if you tell a gaslighter no to a particular sex act, you’ll be pressured into doing it anyway. Pressuring could be anything from “You’re so good at it” to actually forcing you to engage in sex or particular sexual activities.

  Gaslighters also don’t take kindly to being turned down for sex. As a punishment, they will tell you they are never going to initiate it with you again—as a way to “teach” you the correct way to behave. For more on gaslighting as it relates to sexual assault and abuse, see Chapter 5.

  Infidelity and the Gaslighter

  Here are a couple of examples of how gaslighting works when it comes to infidelity:

  John, forty-three, hired an assistant at his office, Jane. John’s wife, Mary, was convinced John and Jane were having an affair, even though John said they were strictly colleagues, and he couldn’t figure out why Mary would think he was cheating. Mary started cyberstalking Jane and making threatening phone calls to her—to the point that Jane filed a restraining order against Mary. Mary also became physically abusive to John—at one point she threw a heavy vase close to his head. She then commented that if she’d really wanted to hurt him, she would have aimed closer to his head. Mary told John that Jane had called her several times, detailing information about their supposed affair. When John asked what Jane had said, Mary responded, “Wouldn’t you like to know? I’ve learned enough.” John blamed himself for Mary’s out-of-control behavior. He felt he must have done something to instigate Mary’s actions because they were so extreme.

  Mary’s behavior was more than just irrational jealousy. She was gaslighting both Jane and John to maintain power over her husband, particularly when he wasn’t home with her.

  Even if John had been cheating on Mary, her reaction was extremely out of proportion. Healthy people do not stalk and harass others, regardless of what “bad” behavior they think their spouse has committed. John began attending individual therapy for several months at the urging of his sister. He realized that he had been in an abusive marriage, and took steps to leave Mary. After John moved out of the house, Mary never spoke to him again. All divorce proceedings were done directly through her attorney. Later, John worked in therapy on learning red flags to watch out for when he started dating again.

  Brian noticed Sarah had been coming home from work later than usual in the past month. She used to come home at seven p.m., but now she regularly arrived home at nine, with not so much as a returned phone call or text. Brian waited another month before he asked Sarah what was going on at work. He even asked her point blank whether she was having an affair. He would have asked her earlier, but he was afraid she would become icy cold and shut him out, as she had done several times during their marriage.

  When asked, Sarah responded coolly that she wasn’t sure what Brian was talking about, that she had always gotten home from work at the same time. She then said that she had been concerned about John’s state of mind lately, and wondered whether he was the one having an affair. Brian never brought up the late nights to Sarah again, although he thought about it constantly. He even convinced himself that Sarah might have been right. Maybe she had always come home at that time.

  Sarah told Brian he needed to go to therapy “to figure out why you feel the need to persecute me.” She attended one session with him but was bristling from the start, telling the therapist that she wasn’t sure what was wrong with Brian but that he needed to figure it out or she was leaving him. Then, Sarah started coming home reeking of liquor. Brian tried to push his thoughts of Sarah’s behavior out of his head. However, one night he caught Sarah in an intimate phone call. When confronted, she denied having an affair. Brian finally learned the truth when the wife of one of Sarah’s coworkers contacted him. It turns out that Sarah and this woman’s husband had been having an affair for at least six months. As Sarah left the home for good, her parting words to Brian were, “If you were a better husband, I wouldn’t have had to seek companionship elsewhere.” Brian wondered why he hadn’t just “cut and run” when he was first dating Sarah and she admitted she was living with her boyfriend. He realized, in retrospect, that he’d liked the fact that he’d “won” Sarah when she decided to move in with him. But now he realized that Sarah’s cheating and then jumping into a new relationship was a red flag. In the future, he would look for these warning signs before making a commitment. He also worked at learning why he was attracted to someone like Sarah.

  There are some key features to these stories that I see over and over again with survivors of gaslighting (Sarkis 2017). Gaslighting spouses (or partners):

  Are caught cheating, and their spouse doesn’t bring it up due to fears of violence and/or retaliation

  Have a history of cheating in previous relationships

  Openly flaunt their cheating, relatively sure that their spouse won’t confront them

  Project their cheating onto their spouse. This acts as a distractor from the gaslighter’s cheating.

  Change routines and behaviors to hide cheating or substance abuse, and then deny these changes when asked.

  Respond to a perceived “bad” behavior from their spouse in a way grossly out of proportion to the event. This response can include stalking and threatening behaviors.

  If in couple’s therapy, tell the therapist that it is their spouse’s fault, and imply or outright state that the spouse needs to “be fixed” for the marriage to continue

  Have been sending up red flags from the time the couple started dating, but their spouse either wasn’t aware that these were warning signs, or chose to ignore them

  Blame their spouse for their own cheating, often claiming that the spouse has not been fulfilling their needs

  Never apologize, yet expect a
n apology from their spouse

  Are delusional in their views of being “wronged”

  Immediately drop their spouse if accused or found out, refusing to communicate with the spouse—almost as if the spouse dropped off the face of the earth

  I cannot emphasize this enough: No one causes a spouse (or partner) to cheat. You didn’t cause your spouse to cheat. Your spouse cheated of his own free will. Your spouse had options—including talking to you if he had any concerns about the relationship, making an effort to attend couple’s therapy, or simply discontinuing the relationship. Cheating was a choice he made.

  It is also important to note that your spouse did not cheat because you were lacking something, no matter what your spouse says. Your spouse cheated because gaslighters crave newness and attention. Even if you could do “everything perfectly,” whatever that means, the gaslighter still has a bottomless pit of need that can never be filled. You would be blamed for the cheating no matter what.

  Taking personal responsibility is not a characteristic of gaslighters—they always believe it is someone else’s fault. And they rarely feel empathy or remorse. This is another example of ego-syntonic behavior that I mentioned earlier.

  If you discover that a gaslighting partner has been unfaithful, make sure you get tested for sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). The gaslighter, although he may have told you otherwise, really doesn’t care about your well-being, including your sexual health. He most likely did not use protection when he was cheating. You were the furthest thing from his mind.

  For more research on where to get low-cost STD testing, see the Resources section at the end of this book.

  LOVE-BOMBING, HOOVERING, AND STONEWALLING

  When Josie met Jamie, it was love at first sight. On their first date, Jamie said to her, “I know this is really early to say something like this, but I think we could be together for a long time.” Jamie showered Josie with gifts and trips, telling her, “I’ve never felt this way about anyone.” Jamie talked with Josie about marriage and kids within their first week of dating. Josie described feeling “high” from Jamie’s attention. She wound up spending all her time with him, and eventually stopped seeing her other friends. Jamie said they were “bad influences” on Josie and constantly reminded her that she was happier when she wasn’t around them. “I had never been treated with so much adoration—I was put up on a pedestal.”

  After a few months of “bliss,” Josie started experiencing Jamie’s stonewalling. He would completely ignore her, without Josie’s knowing what she had done to upset him. She would wrack her brain trying to figure it out. Jamie wouldn’t return calls, “which made me worried and made me contact him more.”

  Josie’s sister told her she needed to stop contacting Jamie and wait for him to contact her. “It was one of the hardest things for me to do, because I still didn’t know what I did wrong.” Josie now spent her time waiting for Jamie to call and scouring the Internet for articles on what to do when your partner ignores you.

  Two weeks later, she got a text from Jamie. It said, “Your bike is here.” Josie said her heart raced and she got butterflies in her stomach. She answered his text right away. “Are you okay? Where are you?” This was met with more silence. After some heavy crying, she texted, “I can’t do this. I just don’t understand anymore.”

  A few hours later, she got a knock on her door. It was Jamie, with her bike—and flowers. “He told me that we needed to go bike riding together, like, right now. I felt really uncomfortable about it, but I went anyway.” During the bike ride, Jamie didn’t mention anything about his disappearing or lack of communication—instead, he talked about moving in together. “It was like nothing had happened at all. I chalked it up to him just needing some space.”

  About two months after they reconciled, Jamie started the silent treatment again—and it went off and on like this for two years. The times in between the stonewalling became “worse and worse. We stopped having what I called ‘honeymoon’ periods.” Jamie went from asking her to move in with him to saying he had changed his mind “because I was unstable. He kept me hanging in there with his promises that we would take things to the next level. Then it would fall apart again.”

  Josie said of Jamie, “Looking back, Jamie looked great on paper—smart, educated, funny.… but now that I really look at it, there were some red flags from the beginning. He had cut off contact with his brother and sister several years prior, and he was always blaming people at work for why he never got a promotion. He also criticized me more and more over time, especially for things I couldn’t change—like my family.”

  Love-Bombing

  Gaslighters are amazingly good at keeping their pathology in check until they know you are hooked. The first time your partner blatantly lies, you think you must have misheard him; after all, the person who was showering you with love just wouldn’t do that. But he will, and he will continue to blatantly lie. Gaslighters erode your perception of reality until you feel you cannot function normally without them.

  Love-bombing is a way that gaslighters get you hooked. In the case of Josie and Jamie, Jamie showered Josie with gifts and told her everything he knew she wanted to hear about the kind of future they’d have together. Jamie also quickly zeroed in on getting a commitment from Josie. When a gaslighter love-bombs you, it is hard to get away. The attention you receive is intoxicating. It’s like nothing you have experienced before. Finally, you think, someone is treating you the way you want to be treated. That pedestal he puts you on feels damn good. But eventually you will always fall off it, and it is a long way down.

  Hoovering

  With gaslighting, we also use the term hoovering to describe the way gaslighters will suck you back in if they feel you checking out. (Yes, it comes from the vacuum of the same name.) When Jamie cut off contact with Josie, and when Josie stopped reaching out to him, he swooped in immediately—and started talking about moving in together. If gaslighters get any inkling of perceived abandonment, they work at sucking you back in. They put on the full-court press to get you back in their clutches.

  Nothing causes fear in gaslighters more than the feeling of abandonment. This abandonment is what is known as a narcissistic injury. Gaslighters have an endless pit of need—a need for attention. No matter what you do, you will never be humanly capable of fulfilling gaslighters’ needs. They will always turn to something or someone else to fill that void. When they find that something or someone else to transfer their attention to, they will drop you like the proverbial hot potato. It is heartbreaking and confusing. When you first see a gaslighter’s facade crack, it can be startling to see who is really underneath.

  It’s very normal to feel like it is your fault for not noticing the instability of a gaslighter earlier in your relationship. However, keep in mind that gaslighters are masters at acting “normal.” In fact, love-bombing is just an exaggerated form of what most people do when dating and starting a relationship. You’re attracted to each other and feel excitement. The difference is, in a healthy relationship you each still retain your own identity and activities. You want but don’t need the other person. In love-bombing, that wooing is cranked up to an extreme level. The gaslighter wants you to need him to be the kind of person he is projecting on to you; he wants to make sure you don’t see the insecure person underneath.

  With hoovering, gaslighters give you just enough to string you along. It can be in the form of suggesting, if not outright promising, something you’d like. If in the beginning of your relationship the two of you talked about getting married and this has never materialized when you bring it up, all of a sudden after stonewalling the gaslighter starts saying maybe he’s ready. In Josie’s case, it was Jamie’s talk about moving in together. Be aware: these plans never materialize. The gaslighter knows just how to get you hooked back in with the promise of something you want.

  Often, gaslighters also will use objects to reel you back in. You will get texts and e-mails about things he has of yours.
He’ll say, “I have your stuff. Come get it or it’s going to the curb” or “Do you want your chair/bike/clothes?” Be aware that it is not the gaslighter’s intention to give you back these items and then leave you alone—it is just a pretense to get back in contact with you.

  Hoovering also involves gaslighters’ wanting physical contact. Don’t be surprised if the sex is better than ever. It appears your gaslighter is actually connecting with you emotionally. Giving you the physical contact you have craved is another way the gaslighter strings you along and gets you hooked again. It won’t last.

  One of the most confusing parts of a relationship with a gaslighter is that it isn’t 100 percent bad. Just as in any other abusive relationship. When the gaslighter is hoovering, it actually feels pretty good, almost as good as the person behaved toward you in the beginning of your relationship. When things are going this way, it’s hard to remember that the hoovering is a means to an end. But it is. It will stop.

  “I actually had to ask her for an apology. And even then it was, ‘I’m sorry you’re so sensitive.’”

  —Liz, 60

  As with all gaslighting, it’s about seeing the behavior patterns and knowing when you’re being had.

  Stonewalling

  I’ve used the word stonewalling a few times already in this chapter without explaining it. Stonewalling is the disappearing act or radio silence gaslighters will treat you to when they get caught and feel that they have been “done wrong,” or just prefer to not talk about something because it’s more convenient for them that way. If you don’t live with them, you won’t see or hear from them. They will not answer texts or calls. Meanwhile, you grow more anxious the longer you don’t hear from them. In the case of Josie and Jamie, Jamie would stonewall Josie; he’d just stop communicating with her and disappear for periods of time, then reappear when he wanted to.