How did you overcome being gaslighted from a past relationship?

12 comments

1. I listened to him call me incompetent, but then I saw what he did with his own life. He ran it straight into the ground. He’s deceased now. I’m still plodding along, happy without him.

2. He cheated on me and said I was the problem

3. Finally cutting him off and moving on with someone who treated me like a princess.

4. I find it almost impossible. It conjures a divide between you and yourself. Worse when others were brought in against you. Fight or leave them all! Life gives choices but they are sometimes ugly.

5. Stopped defining myself by men. Finished grad school, paid my own rent, bought a rifle to protect myself.

   /r/socialistRA

   /r/liberalgunowners

6. I don’t know, but ending the relationship sure helped a ton on my mental and emotional health, which allowed me to get into a peaceful headspace to be able to look at things more clearly, and that showed me all the things my clouded mind missed while in the relationship.

   Additionally, good people on reddit also helped me out, albeit unintentionally. I first learned about gaslighting, stonewalling, sealioning, DARVO, JADE and some other things by reading posts and comments on the different subreddits here, which really helped with opening my eyes to all the bullshit I endured back then. So thank you to the good folks on Reddit.

7. I went full no-contact with them, and held myself and the other party accountable fir what we said and did.

   If they talk the talk but don’t walk the walk, there’s a problem. They are either deceptive, delusional, or cowards. Either way they aren’t to be trusted.

   At some point it’s about realizing that you got attached to a mirage and not to who the person truly was. You can accept the good times happened, while acknowledging that they were overall a terrible and abusive person. They chose their behavior, it didn’t “happen” to them. They chose to fall back on it every single time. So thank you for the good time, I don’t want to keep associating myself with you anymore, bye.

8. It wasn’t just him who gaslighted me, I did it to myself by excusing his behaviour that did not match his words. I didn’t want to believe I was wrong about him.

   Learning to evaluate whether their words v actions consistently align and are followed through, is a promise to myself I won’t overlook any more.

9. Therapy. I went no contact with him after we broke up and when he tried to reach out a year after we broke up I managed to be at a place where I could explicitly tell him our relationship was toxic and I didn’t like who I was when I was with him and that I didn’t think any contact between us was a good idea besides cordial hellos if we bump into each other in person, and I wished him well. We haven’t spoke since. It’s been 8 years and I’m with a partner who would never ever gaslight me.

10. Therapy, a ton of self-reflection and investing in myself, my hobbies and the relationships I have with people who do care about me. Coming to an acceptance of whatever role I may have played in allowing myself to tolerate this type of behavior and making sure I do not do it again. Also coming to accept that some people are severely unhealed, take it out on others and there’s nothing I could have done (or tried to have done) to fix them.

11. Well he did other abusive things as well, and it eventually got so bad I saw all of it clear as day. Embarrassed I hadn’t seen it all sooner

12. I started taking notes in my phone about what happened, what was said and why I felt or responded the way I did. Quickly realized he was gaslighting me and making me seem crazy, overly sensitive, etc. I couldn’t have ran away from that relationship fast enough!