![]() The next time she visited, I made a point to not call or text her. She needed time to herself and with her family. My ex once told our therapist that I never left her alone when she went to visit her sister (who lived about an hour away and had a new baby). The making you question yourself so you track things more closely and then get accused of being crazy is spot on. It's beyond simple lying, it's lying that makes you doubt your reality and makes you docile, easy to control because you no longer trust which way is up, you have to depend on them to tell you which way is up. You wear the women's underwear to dinner as a make-up surprise. He says he got you those two years ago for your anniversary, what the fuck, why don't you remember? You apologize because you feel bad for being inconsiderate, forgetting something that mattered to him. Some day you find a pair of underwear in your laundry and it's not yours. You're not too smart, or you'd know for sure what time he gets home, like the fact that you doubt it is not a good sign, he seems pretty sure that he always got home at this time. Honestly that is so like you to be kinda airheaded. You wonder if you're really that unobservant. I always come home at this time." And you try to argue that it's only been the last ten or even times he shows up at this time, he insists that you must have been confused, maybe in the past he got off work early once but he definitely always just comes home at this time "You're late!" And he said "what? No I'm not. The next day it happens again, but you checked the time. "I haven't been coming home late! Are you sure you aren't just losing track of time?" And you doubt yourself. You ask him why he keeps coming home late. Just that it's "right" or "good" if it supports her outcomes/narratives, and anything bad is only ever the fault of others (even if she's the one technically doing the bad thing).Ī good example of gaslighting is when your husband comes home late from work for the 10th time in a row. The concept of actions just being right or wrong on their own was not something she even seemed to consider. In this way she was always operating from a pre-judgment of her own actions such that if she's doing it it is good (good people do good things only), and if you manage to show that indeed it's bad, then it's not her fault. ![]() She was always "outsourcing" any negative consequences of her actions as being not her fault-but was all too happy to take credit if a given action resulted in a positive outcome or one that reinforced her idealized concept of herself. In couple's counseling, when asked if she thought she was even partly responsible for any of the problems in the relationship (instead of them all being my fault) her answer was that she was just "TOO nice" and had "TOO much empathy" (bonus, even her "being accountable" supported her poor me victim narrative). The result was never accepting responsibility for literally anything ever. even if I technically did it, it must be bc I was forced to and HAD to do it bc of something you did or the circumstances etc." and me being a good person by definition means it's ridiculous and impossible that I could've done such and such 'bad' thing. This resulted in a lot of weird logic like: "I couldn't have done such and such bc that is a 'bad' thing. It was a big part of her overall identity and the image she wanted to project out into the world and be seen as. She had this belief about herself as a "good person" or even an "empath". I saw this as driving a lot of my ex's behaviors.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |