Recognizing Manipulation and Gaslighting

I think its possible people who go from crisis to crisis, drama to drama, are unable to take responsibility for their own happiness, so each crisis and drama becomes a “legitimate” reason for their unhappiness. I began to see this developing in my own life. I didn’t have too much drama on my own, but I think my parishioners provided me with lots of material! I don’t believe my ministry was totally about creating an incubator for justified unhappiness. (please God let there have been something of value), But I do think that potential played into other patterns in my life—like my mother teaching me to expect nothing from life (which was the real biggie, I think) Taking responsibility for my own happiness has been a huge step in the recover Diane project. And I’ve discovered I CAN be happy. It’s still scary, but I just feel a lot better.

In the bigger picture of encountering others, I think that when someone has already sacrificed her own well-being for the sake of keeping ‘some thing” intact, it is a far shorter step than we can imagine to sacrificing somebody else. That’s what I’ve seen over 25 years of ministry. People do it in the blink of an eye, and just have no self-awareness to see that they have done it. It’s horrifying because it’s presented and rationalized as a normal response.

Profound and scary, Diane. Going to meditate on that for a while. Yeah, quite a while.

FC, we seem to have parallel lives in a lot of respects (other than the wonderful in-laws – DEFINITELY don’t have that) like the healthy relationship with parents and between parents as spouses and the partnership relationship with H. And the “good girl” aspect as well. That has always been me. I also have massive failure issues because no one in my immediate family has ever been divorced (and no, we’re not Catholic). Great grandparents married 67 years; Grandparents married 54 years; Parents married 47 years. So I’m still trying to gain some clarity on all this too. I wish had started therapy years ago. I have a lot of ground to cover!

FC, I forgot the social circle aspect – same here. The one friend I’ve told that I’m separated always has the same group of couples over for New Year’s Eve. They invited us this year even with the separation. After giving it some thought, we went. The host couple live right up the street so I knew we could easily leave if I started feeling uncomfortable. It was a surreal evening; the weirdest part being the host couple, who are as far as I’ve ever seen or known, a happily married couple, were clearly NOT getting along at all. It was incredibly awkward, especially since we were the first ones there and they were snipping at each other. When we left we talked about the irony of the separated couple with this HUGE issue getting along better than the happily married couples. I hadn’t thought about a divorce support group. I think I’d have to find one that was all female. I’d be afraid a co-ed group would be a giant pick-up arena and I have absolutely no interest in that.

Teri,

That is so much like the issues with my STBX.

The dissection of what I said, and comparison to what I said last week on Tuesday, etc. .. if I didn’t have a thesaurus, dictionary, calendar and journal on hand it was not worth even trying to talk. He prided himself on being a champion debater and I would often say to him, “Score, you win the debate, so what exactly is your prize now?” It was NEVER about actually understanding one another. He prided “precision of expression” far, far, far over having something to share. And if I left crying, that was ok if, like you say, the proper terminology and constructs were determined before we stopped. How that NEVER came out in dating I don’t know. Probably because he knew what an ass he was being.

He was also one who expected complete and total attention while he spoke. I get that, it’s respectful, but he would “speak” for 3 hours if you let him, I timed him a number of times. If once during the 3 hours a child needed me, or the phone rang, and I answered, he would not exactly say he was pissed, but he would sure show it. Who can stand or sit in one space and “listen” to someone that way every single time they have something to say? Who with a life, that is?

Speak with perfect diction and grammatical style with collegiate references and do NOT look away. Exhausting.

As you can imagine, I avoided conversations except on weekends when we did the grocery/shopping trips alone.

Believe me, I SOOO get it.

Teri and Lynn, it makes my skin crawl reading these posts about the things these guys did. They are monsters. Not human at all. Slow talking? Three hour lectures where you are to remain at full attention? It is absolutely insane.

ugh. these guys are detestable.

Lynn, my stbx would just get all self-righteously indignant or angry with me rather than condescend. Either one sucks. But I think I would be pretty noncompliant like you, if he had been condescending.

Mine always played the poor nice guy, absent-minded professor act up. I think he started out being kinda that way, and he learned to perfect it. I tried so hard at first to hang with him through his difficult speech. But it really ended up that he would drag it out so long it would shut me up because next thing you knew it would be 2 am, and I had work in the morning. And I couldn’t complain because it was just so hard for him. I felt like a bitch AND I felt shut down. And there was no way out of it. God knows I tried- asked him to write stuff down, gave him time to think, blah blah blah.

When I describe to people how he does this, I always gets blank stares. It is just so weird. He’s a freak. I am so glad to be moving on.

I am glad for you Teri. We all experienced portions of that behavior. I think it all stems from not being able to just be human……

Yes I did, Bev. The first time was just before Christmas 2008, I found a W2 tax form for a woman in another part of the state in his briefcase. Then I saw the same name in his address list. When I asked who she was he lied and said she was a secretary for an insurance co. they used at work or something like that. I knew that wasn’t true from seeing the W2. He swore it was a mistake and had happened because we had grown apart. I didn’t see a therapist then (something I regret) just tried to “fix it” ourselves. Then in Aug 2012 I started to see some of the same distracted, secretive behaviors creeping back in so got up one night and looked at his flash drives. Found the porn spreadsheets and a note he’d written to a woman he was seeing that seemed to indicate that she was a stripper (it mentioned her friend Onyx – gotta be a stripper or a hooker). I confronted him, he started to give me the “we’ve been growing apart” line again and when I refused to accept that, started on the path of accountability. I really don’t have many complaints about his behavior toward me. After the first affair he told me he felt unappreciated so I did all the usual stupid things to try to make him feel better – greeting him at the door when he came home from work, trying to be more sexy, more adventurous, all that shit. Now he’s working on trying to make ME feel better. Other than lying to me about where he was when he was with his stripper friends, he never used any of the manipulation techniques you all have described. I think that’s why it isn’t impossible for me to imagine us coming out on the other side of this together. I don’t know if it will work but it is still a possibility at this point. I also think I will be okay if it doesn’t work out.

Daisy and FC – I’m in the same boat with supportive, stable parents, happy childhood, etc. and it definitely didn’t make it easier for me to walk away. I’ve been agonizing over asking for a separation for years (basically since I found out about the first affair 7 years ago), and then still for over a year after I found out about 2 more affairs, and then still for another 3 months after I found out about prostitutes. Have been in a black hole for over a year and still had trouble going through with the conversation with my SA to insist on a separation. And even though I made the decision to separate – and I’m sticking to it (T-minus 11 days), I still have days where I agonize and second-guess myself. I don’t think having a supportive FOO makes it any easier to recognize an SA’s messed up behavior or walk away from him, but it does make me admire so much the women who have been through so much trauma in their lives and still had the strength to save themselves from a toxic SA.

FC – the “good girl” thing…totally right there with you. My hero used to be Miss Melanie from Gone with the Wind – so generous, kind, so much faith in people. Endlessly forgiving -self-sacrificing – just pure “good” (or what my idea of “good” was). I aspired to be like her (never got even close). Now I see how dangerous that is to have no boundaries and not prioritize yourself at all. She’s not my hero anymore. Teri – you are rapidly becoming one of my new heroes. My new motto is no one can save me from a toxic situation but myself.

Joanne – you said in a prior post, “Intent doesn’t excuse behavior.” Thank you for that. Though I know I am making the right decision for me and my kids with this separation, I still wrestle almost daily with guilt about it when I see how sad my SA is (clearly I’m not 100% there yet on recognizing gaslighting and manipulation). Still have days of self-doubt because he didn’t intend to hurt me. Thank you for that statement on “intent” – I’ve really been struggling because his intent wasn’t evil. That really helped me. I am going to repeat that to myself over and over for the next 11 days.

P.S. – I know this post isn’t really on the topic of the thread, sorry – just stream of consciousness tonight as I read everyone’s posts.