I have mentioned a few times that I found a website called www.survivinginfidelity.com that is a great resource for everything that I have been going through. Not only do they have forums and support groups, but they also have resources and FAQs that are packed with great information. As I was browsing through the FAQ I found one on what they call “gaslighting.” The first part of the answer describes this behavior perfectly:
“This term is taken from the movie “Gaslight” where the husband (Charles Boyer) tries to make his wife (Ingrid Bergman) think she is going mad by convincing her what she thinks she is seeing isn’t real. When the WS is either caught or suspected, he/she may try to convince the BS that they are not seeing what they think they see or that something didn’t happen, even though everything points to the fact that it DID happen.”
I have never seen the movie and I hadn’t heard that particular term before but it is SO accurate. I even tried to find the movie on Netflix or cable so I could watch it, but 1944 movies don’t seem to be in high demand. Anyway, it is something that my husband did to me early in our relationship. It is really hard to accurately describe how it feels to be on the receiving end of gaslighting. It is disorienting. It reeks emotional havoc. It is a terrible, self-doubting experience. It is incredibly cruel in the way it turns your own mind against you.
Let me give you just one excruciating example from my life. A few months after my husband (then boyfriend) moved in with me (about a year into our relationship) I started feeling very uneasy about his behavior. I won’t go into all of the reasons right now because they aren’t really pertinent to this particular story. I will say that I had already experienced gaslighting on a smaller scale, and I was starting to see quite a few signs that things weren’t quite right. Around the same time we moved in together we also decided to combine phone plans (actually I added him onto mine). One day when the anxious feeling was especially strong I decided to log into the phone bill online and do some peaking around.
I don’t know what I expected to find. Most of me was hoping that all my fears would be assuaged, and I could get on with my day blissfully. Part of me knew that there was nothing good waiting for me on the other end of the “Call and Message Details” link. I clicked bravely and held my breath as the data loaded… and felt it all knocked out of me when I saw page after page of calls and texts to a number I didn’t recognize. Still, I tried to rationalize, go through a list of possible reasons in my mind, try to convince myself one of his friends or brothers got a new number without me knowing (after all, they are his friends and family, so its possible). I did a reverse phone lookup (those things are quite amazing), and I could feel my stomach winding up into a tight knot – it was a cell phone registered to someone in Madison County. As far as I knew, he didn’t have any friends or family there. I called the number trying to get more information and got the voicemail for some woman. A woman I had never heard of.
I don’t even know how I got through the rest of the day. It was all a blur of mind-numbing pain, confusion, and deep hurt. When I got home from work that night he wasn’t there yet, and I found myself pacing and restless, unable to sit down or stop my racing thoughts. I decided to go to a local park. I had an overwhelming need to get out of the house – away from all the walls that seemed to be closing in on me. While I was driving there he called me. I managed to answer the phone even though my hands were shaking from a combination of anger and anguish. He was cheerful, called me “baby,” and said that he was on his way home to me and couldn’t wait to see my face. I remember just feeling shocked that he would sound the same – that he could seem as loving and happy as he always did – when my world had just imploded. I don’t know what I said, but I know that he caught on very fast that something was wrong. I told him that I needed to talk to him, and I told him the park where I would be. He acted like he was completely unaware of what could possibly be the matter, but he put on the concerned, supportive boyfriend voice and said he would meet me there.
Those first few minutes alone in the park were surreal. I went over to the swing set and just started swinging. I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t planning what I was going to say. I was just sitting there, swinging between two worlds – the one I had in my mind where I had a loving, devoted boyfriend and the real one that I was about to confront where he had been cheating on me. The motion and breeze on my face were comforting, and the calm and still of the park at night were a direct contrast to the swirling madness going through my head. All too soon his headlights cut through my reverie, and it was time to face reality.
©2008-2012 ~goose77
I don’t remember every detail exactly, but it all went something like this. He got out of the car, his face concerned and confused. He called me baby again, asked me what I was doing, and told me to come sit next to him and tell him what was wrong. I can’t recall my exact words, but I laid out what I had found – including hundreds of texts to another woman every day, calls/texts late at night (after midnight, 1 am, etc.), early in the morning (5 am, right after getting up), and throughout the work day when he said he was too busy to talk to me. At first he put on this completely baffled look and tried to act like that wasn’t possible at all (I have since seem that look multiple times and have come to despise it). I stuck to my guns and told him I saw it all there in black and white, that I had called the number and got some woman. The records went back for weeks and weeks with the same pattern.
Then he tried to backpedal – “oh, right, her. I didn’t know what you were talking about at first, but…” He tried to tell me some lame story about how she was an old friend, they were out of touch for a while, but he recently found her again online. They exchanged numbers, and those calls and texts were them just catching up. I asked him why he wouldn’t have mentioned her to me before, especially if they were in contact that much, and he pulled his normal “I just forgot,” “I didn’t think it was that important” routine. Still, I pressed.
What about those late night and early morning texts? He said that he was just returning a call or text that he had missed earlier. He even gave me a story on the fly – once he was leaving his buddy’s house after their weekly get-together (which always ended late), and he just happened to have a message from her so he responded. The early morning stuff was when he got up for work and saw something waiting there from her. He wasn’t seeking her out at those times, etc., etc. He went so far as to say they were talking about me most of the time. WHAT!?! Oh, yes – he swore he was telling her all about our life and the changes he has made since he last saw her and who I was, what I did, blah, blah, blah. That is why there were so many texts – because there was so much great stuff in his life to share.
For every question I asked he had some off-the-cuff explanation of why it wasn’t what I thought. He even started turning things around on me – trying to make me feel guilty for even looking at the bill. He asked why I would go through the statement like that. He said that it was wrong that I didn’t trust him. He said I was controlling and didn’t like him having friends. It went on and on. By the end I was so turned around and inside out – not sure if I was wrong, if he had really just forgotten, and if I was some monster preying on my innocent boyfriend who was just trying to reconnect with an old friend. Still, I wasn’t convinced. I knew things weren’t right, I knew he wasn’t telling the truth, I knew there was something going on, but he wouldn’t admit to anything.
The gaslighting went on for over a week or more. I’m not sure. I can’t remember the dates now because the whole thing seems like an endless nightmare. I started checking his phone, and I found an animated pornographic thing with a naked woman and a man screwing her from behind. He had sent it to her. Even now it makes me feel sick. I confronted him again with that evidence, sure this time he would have to admit it was inappropriate. Wrong. He defended himself all the way. He said it was a joke, and he sent it to a ton of his friends (which he had). I pointed out that she was the only woman on this list – he hadn’t even sent it to me. He countered that he didn’t think I would like it – his underhanded way of trying to make me feel prudish or like I am not sexual (which couldn’t be farther from the truth). I asked how he felt comfortable sending it to her, then – how did he know that would be something she would like? I said that implies some level of a sexual relationship because that is not something you send to someone not knowing how they will react. He argued back that there was nothing sexual between them, and he hadn’t really given it that much thought because it was just a joke.
Once more he guilt-tripped me. He said I shouldn’t have to look in his phone – that he had never done that to me. I told him that I have nothing to hide, so he could look whenever he wanted. He was furious that I would ask him about her again when he had already told me they were just friends. Didn’t I trust him? What was wrong with me that I would violate his privacy and make such a big deal over something so small? He said he wasn’t thinking, and he wouldn’t send her anything like that again – but really I shouldn’t have a problem with it and wouldn’t if I weren’t so insecure, yada, yada, yada.
After a few such encounters that made me feel terribly conflicted, guilty, worn-down, and paranoid I finally found some concrete proof that he couldn’t explain away – in the form of an explicit picture stored on his phone. I remember feeling justified, vindicated, and then incredibly, incredibly sad. That was followed quickly by a white-hot rage. I rushed into the living room where he was, threw the phone in his lap with the offending picture on display, and started yelling. At first he tried the defensive, angry thing, but this time I was not going to take it. His face crumpled, and he finally confirmed all of my fears. I wanted to throw up. What followed was days of sobbing, screaming, silence, and tension before we even started to communicate.
Since those days I have become much more certain of myself, and much more confident in my own thoughts and feelings. I would like to say I was never fooled again, but, alas, that is not the case. That was only the beginning of things, and it certainly was not the only time I was “gaslighted.” However, to this day it is one of the most traumatic experiences of my life.
This screenshot shows Ingrid Bergman being gaslighted. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Tags: Charles Boyer, doubt, Gaslight, gaslighting, infidelity, Ingrid Bergman, lying, marriage, mind games, Movies, Netflix, relationships, sexting, Support group, texts
Being a Beautiful Mess 