Gaslighting in a relationship: how to trust yourself again

What is gaslighting in a relationship?

Gaslighting is a serious form of emotional abuse that wears down a person’s trust in their own memory, perception and sanity. Your partner turns your feelings, your reality and your wants against you, and you rewrite your reality to fit theirs.

• Where the word comes from. A stage play by Patrick Hamilton, Gas Light, in which a husband alters the lighting in the house and tells his wife she is imagining the change.
• What it does to you. You come to depend on your partner’s version of the truth for safety and stability.
• Why it holds. The sociologist Paige Sweet argues that it leans on inequality: it succeeds when one person draws on the assumption that the other is unreliable, emotional or unstable.
• Why it is hard to describe from inside. The contradiction is believable to other people, and eventually to you.

How do I know it is gaslighting and not just a disagreement?

Look for repetition and direction: the correction always lands in the same place, and you end up doubting yourself. In my clinical view, a great deal of what gets called gaslighting is 2 people remembering differently, and that is normal.

• Memory is no recording. In Elizabeth Loftus’s review, misleading suggestions after an event changed what people believed they saw, and an average of about 30 per cent of participants in the lost-in-the-mall studies produced a partial or complete false memory.
• “That is not what I said.” Usually this is a person whose memory has settled differently from yours, often in their own favour, as yours does in yours.
• Disagreeing with your interpretation. Unpleasant, sometimes infuriating, and ordinary.
• Defending themselves badly. A poor defence is still a defence, and it is not aimed at your judgement.
• Holding to a version they believe. Refusing to accept an account they think is wrong is a disagreement.

One argument about what happened is a disagreement. A year of them, after which you have stopped trusting yourself, is something else. Read more about whether the relationship is doing harm.

What does gaslighting actually look like between 2 people?

It looks like repetition aimed at your judgement, and no single lie or bad argument defines it. Klein, Li and Wood asked 65 people who said a partner had gaslighted them to describe what happened, and the accounts had a recognisable shape.

• An intense start. A great deal of attention, affection and grand plans, very early.
• Doubt framed as concern. Remarks that question your grip on reality, delivered as worry about you.
• Words that become information. “Crazy” and “stupid”, used regularly enough to stop sounding like insults.
• Misplaced blame. You are blamed for things you did not do.
• Unpredictable warmth and anger. The rules of the relationship are never stable.
• What follows. A shrinking sense of yourself and a guardedness that outlasts the relationship; some people also described growth and becoming quicker to speak up.

Read more about living around someone else’s moods.

Does someone gaslight without meaning to?

Yes, some of it is deliberate and some of it is not, and the effect on you is real either way.

• Intent changes the repair. Whether it was intended changes what the 2 of you are able to repair, and it does not change whether it counts.
• You do not have to settle it first. You do not need to answer the question of intent before you ask for help.
• Watch the hour afterwards. What happens to you in the hour after one of those conversations tells you more than the conversation itself.
• The damage sits in your judgement. Your record of events is usually intact; your trust in your own judgement is what has been hurt.

How do I stop gaslighting from eroding my trust in myself?

Get an account of events from outside the relationship, then describe the behaviour and leave the label out. Gaslighting works by cutting you off from every account of events but one, so the first repair is another account.

• Get an outside view. A friend, a sibling, a therapist, a written record, in that order of availability.
• Keep a plain record for a month. Write the date, what was said and what you felt afterwards, and keep it where your partner has no access.
• Read it back. A series of ordinary rows is useful to know about, and a pattern will show itself as a pattern.
• Describe the behaviour. “When I bring this up, you tell me I am imagining it” is harder to dismiss than “you are gaslighting me”, which is a serious accusation if you are wrong.
• End the conversation when your experience is denied. Say “I am not continuing this conversation while my experience is being denied or turned against me”, and step away.
• Choose the help that fits. If the 2 of you still hear each other, couples therapy is the direct route; if you need your own footing back, start with individual sessions.

If you are frightened of your partner, or controlled where you used to be argued with, a joint session is the wrong first step. Individual sessions come first. Read more about silence used as control.

These steps fail when every attempt to describe the behaviour is turned back on you, and when you no longer trust your own record of what happened. That is what the session is for.

Questions people ask

How do I know if it is gaslighting or just a bad memory?

Ordinary memory differences go both ways and are not aimed at your judgement. Gaslighting is a pattern in which the correction always lands in the same place.

Should I tell my partner I think they are gaslighting me?

Describe the behaviour and leave the word out. “You tell me I am imagining it, and it keeps happening” is harder to dismiss and does not open with an accusation they will fight.

Is couples therapy a good idea if there is gaslighting?

It works when both of you still hear each other. If you are frightened or controlled, individual sessions come first.

Does the damage go away after the relationship ends?

It does not go away by itself. People describe a shrunken sense of themselves and a lasting guardedness, and recovery takes time, other people and deliberate work on trusting your own account again.

Why do I keep collecting proof?

You collect proof because your own word has stopped being enough for you. Part of the work is putting the file down and rebuilding trust in your judgement.

Sources

• Paige L. Sweet, The sociology of gaslighting, American Sociological Review, 2019
• Klein, Li and Wood, A qualitative analysis of gaslighting in romantic relationships, Personal Relationships, 2023
• Elizabeth F. Loftus, Planting misinformation in the human mind: a 30-year investigation of the malleability of memory, Learning and Memory, 2005

How this article was written. I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. Nothing is published until I have read it, corrected it and stood behind every clinical statement in it. The professional and clinical judgement is mine and mine alone.