Dear Seaturtle:

“This sounds right, that he had a revelation and basically reevaluated the way he thought of the situation, but still trying to figure out how to reevaluate in a way where he would have to take no responsibility“- he reevaluated it wrong: that he was joking. Clearly he interrogated you and accused you of dishonesty in regard to money (the cash incident in the grocery store).  This reevaluation relieves him from taking responsibility for what he did. He basically says: I didn’t do it!

To my quote: “gaslighting involves: “1.Lie … 2. Repetition. Like psychological warfare, the falsehoods are repeated.. 4. Wear Out the Victim.”, you responded:  “-which is what happened at our dinner on Monday night.”

I wrote to you regarding the cash incident in the grocery store: “I am confident that there was absolutely no humor and no jokes in that situation”, and your response: “Me too.”

When we people are confronted with behaviors that embarrass us, behaviors that are negative, we tend to explain why we behaved that way, explanations that shed positive light on us, and that’s fair for as long as the explanations are true and as long as we express regret for those behaviors. What N did was not to explain himself but to TOTALLY DENY what he did, aka GASLIGHTING.

“He met a different more gullible version of me”-  Gullibility makes Gaslighting Easy.

“You know how you can give someone all the advice you want, but they need to be ready to hear it. If they aren’t they don’t. My higher self has been giving me messages to leave the relationship since the beginning of this year, since I first posted on here. But I wasn’t ready to hear it. But it is almost as if I could sense it coming and was subconsciously and consciously preparing myself for it. The part of me that wasn’t ready to hear it, tried so hard to mend the ‘miscommunication.’ Saying to myself ‘if only I could communicate my feelings better, he will surely understand and not repeat those actions that hurt my feelings’ and ‘perhaps my dad is why I have these feelings, I can fix my feelings and THEN our relationship will work.'”-

– very well expressed.. wow! (1) Your past gloriously positive expressions about N (“He is supportive… He is truly a stand up man, he is so kind and deeply cares for those around him… my partner is a stand up man, no question“, etc.), were your subconscious efforts to present him in such a way that readers will discourage you from breaking up with him.

(2) Your past focus on minor incompatibilities (ex., “Laughing, we laugh of course at times, but not as much as I would have imagined, our sense of humor isn’t as in sync as I have had with other friends and acquaintances, like not having the same kind of humor“) were your subconscious effort to hint that there are greater incompatibilities, but not go all the way and state what those were because you were not ready for a breakup, and you didn’t want the readers to suggest a breakup.

“But as I was doing all this ‘hyper-meditation’ with a dimmed crown chakra, simultaneously my higher self was taking care of me, because I asked her to. I asked for guidance in this relationship so much”- there is now LIGHT in that crown chakra!

“I am attempting to unite the two, my earthly self and higher self. But my earthly self (or sea-bound self cause I am Seaturtle, hahah…  has a door open to ‘maybe he was really joking, and I completely misunderstood him!, how sad, I have empathy for him because I know what it means to be misunderstood and If I did that and left/abandoned him…enter guilt‘ I know this door is open and I want to work hard to not let this actually become something that I even give attention, although I already have, I want to shut that door.”-

– again, so very well expressed! Self-doubt is the Gaslighter’s bread and butter. Anytime you express your doubts to N.. he will want more and more of that doubt. A sea turtle is an air breathing reptile: think of N holding you down in the water by placing heavier and heavier weights of self-doubts on you… Eventually, you will not be able to come up and breathe.

Notice this: Empathetically, you don’t want him to feel misunderstood by you. Unempathetically, he wants you to misunderstand yourself (via self-doubts).

“My higher self has prepared me for this breakup, and I hope that my current state of calm, is not temporary and just a delay in intense pain”-

– the truth shall set you free (bible). Self-doubts, the Gaslighter’s bread and butter, will keep you imprisoned in a never-ending state of going back and forth between partial clarity and  confusion.

“Is it projecting though if I think I know him well enough to know he probably changed the screensaver in the parking lot before he drove away from my apartment..“- I don’t think that predicting that he changed his screensaver is about knowing him personally: most people will do that post breakup. Maybe he’d be quicker to do it.. don’t know. Solidify within you important things that you should know well enough about him, such as his lack of empathy for you when he gaslights you, not caring about how you feel (a MAJOR incompatibility).

“Seaturtle needs to evaluate about who? about n? I feel exhausted of the evaluation I have already done about him, I am curious to know why this would help?“- it will help to reevaluate him as he truly is because if you understand that he has no empathy for you, you are not likely to have so much empathy for him. It is harmful for a victim to have empathy for a perpetrator: it’d be like a deer having empathy for a hungry mountain lion (and because of that empathy, presenting itself as food for the mountain lion).

“I would like to go through this breakup as healthy as possible, and the way I can get the most growth out of it. I want to do the bare minimum I need to as far as thinking about why he does things. I thought about this SO much while we were together that now I just am tired of it, but I will do what I need to properly grieve this relationship. A part of me just wants to move on and just focus on me now and not hear his name again, but I don’t know if this temporary either, maybe it is just because I do not miss him yet.”-

– For as long as you are no longer in a relationship with N (I hope that would be a permanent breakup), I’ll let you take the lead on whether to talk about N or not. You talk about him=> I respond; you don’t=> I don’t.

“A couple more details on the actual breakup, if you would like to read…. New detail, he then said..  ‘you are really breaking up with me about hurting your feelings?‘… then he was very quiet, pouting like a little kid just looked annoyed and wanted to leave. I then said ‘I had more to say…‘ and he then said ‘I am just over this conversation.‘ Anita you know what is wild to me, he went from ‘baby no I was just joking‘ to completely emotionless and irritated within one minute”-

– this reminds me of the game you were playing at his parents’ home, the one where he gloated about winning and you losing: in the relationship with you, he thought he was winning because he made all the .. right manipulative moves (ex., appearing empathetic and deflecting responsibility), and he’s surprised and upset that he lost the game.

Notice his surprise: “you are really breaking up with me about hurting your feelings?“- as if it’s not a big deal.. ?

“As I was packing he said ‘So like what am I suppose to do in a future relationship‘ surprised by the question my reaction was ‘I don’t know, be more aware of her feelings and treat her more gently‘,  he said ‘so you really think I wasn’t gentle enough with you?‘ still in an annoyed tone”-

– He is asking you for tips on how to better manipulate a future victim and he is disappointed and annoyed that his appearances of being gentle enough with you were not convincing, at the end of the day. He thought he did a great job at appearing to care.

“When I packed his things a few days ago I put the poem I wrote in the bottom of the bag… nothing to lose for me”- it was a mistake to leave that poem for him because the love you expressed in that poem, the love for him, can only encourage him to contact you for another manipulative round, as he’d see it as his success in the art of manipulation.

“I do worry about him reaching out to convince me to come back. I also worry about him impulsively sending me a rude message about me owing him. Not sure. I hope has enough love and respect for me to not do these things but I am honestly not sure.”- a gaslighter does not have love and respect for their victim, the gaslightee.

“I think last night and today I felt numb. But tonight is a different story… I am home trying not to think of my lack of physical affection now and the potential of where his affection will go next” (Dec 7)- I am thinking about where his Gaslighting will go next/ who will be his next victim.

Dec 8: “This morning I woke up with more clarity. I remember the time while I lived with N… The previous day he saw over my shoulder when I was looking at my bank account and it was pretty much empty as I waited for my next paycheck. He has recently helped me with a medical bill that had to do with birth control so both our responsibility. Anyways back to the couch, he was irritated, I said what’s wrong? He said ‘oh I can’t buy this trailer…an you help me buy one?‘… Next day I told him that that made me very uncomfortable given the circumstances and he said ‘oh baby no, you thought I meant that? No it was just a joke! Hahaha no baby” and hugged me.”-

– that’s another GASLIGHTING incident in his Gaslighter Resume.

“the amount of this gaslighting I have gone through!“- I wrote the above before reading this sentence. Indeed, gaslighting.

“It is angering. I wish I brought this up in the breakup, wish I could text him this now but I absolutely wouldn’t start that“- if you brought it up in the breakup, it wouldn’t have made any difference to him. You can only LOSE trying to talk sense to a gaslighter. There is no honest reflection or introspection on the part of a gaslighter. being honest with him only invites more of his dishonesty.

“You know what, ironically, he said I felt too many emotions and was too sensitive… Making me think I was the problem“- that’s the gaslighter’s strategy: I was only joking, you only imagined it, you are too sensitive, etc., YOU are the problem!

“Anita, let me know if this sort of venting is okay for you me to post here“- yes, that’s okay. I may not reply to everything you vent/ share about in a new post if I already did in previous posts.

anita

Dear Anita,

“How was I so badly tricked? There was real love in the relationship right?“- most abusers (and gaslighting is abuse) are not people who plan to abuse and then carry out the plan cold heartedly over days and longer, every so often, assessing their progress in tearing down the abused, and knowingly, with full awareness continue to .. improve their evil mission to methodically abuse.

I don’t think that N had a mission to trick you and then methodically abused you. As a child, he adjusted to his childhood difficulties in certain ways, and he got used to those ways. Those ways became part of his modus operandi/ method of operation (MO), and he will continue his MO for the rest of his life (unless something motivates him to change it, a change that will take a lot of introspection and hard work over months and years).

Gaslighting (without him knowing the term) worked for him as a child, so he keeps working it.

When you tried to make him operate differently, as in being honest and upfront about his feelings and motivations, you had no chance of success because his MO is habitual and heavily ingrained in him.

Did he sometimes feel genuine affection for you? I am sure he did. Is it love? Depends how you define love: if you define it as occasional affection/  passion, then yes, he loved you. I don’t define love by occasional emotions and behaviors. I look at the BIGGER picture, and ask: is this love?

Imagine this scene: a man surprises his wife one evening with a fancy dinner with candles. He smiles at her, tells her he loves her in the most genuine way you can imagine, and he indeed feels genuine affection and appreciation for her. Now, imagine this bigger picture: the day before the surprise dinner, he beat and bruised her, and the day after the fancy dinner, he beat her so badly that she ended up in the hospital.

I’d say, in this example, although the husband felt genuine affection and appreciation for his wife on that one night, overall, he doesn’t love her based on the bigger picture.

Where there is repeated abuse,  there is no love.  N didn’t beat you up, but he lied and gaslighted you repeatedly, unnecessarily hurting you repeatedly. This- I say- is not love.

“Ever since your very first bringing up the words ‘controlling’ and ‘gaslighting’ I have seen him as if he is another person, when away from him…. now when I see him in my head it is a person with a mask on, false and trying so hard to portray things that he did not actually feel…  I tried so hard to help him see me“- a mask that’s covering his eyes, so he can’t see you. You can’t remove his mask. He has to acknowledge first that he has a mask on, and then intend to remove it.. and then do the hard work that it’d take to remove it.

As a pattern, he is too busy appearing, pretending and calculating his moves to have the time and state of mind to.. genuinely and spontaneously be.

“His reaction to the wallet was immediate tears…he cried when he read the poem on the wallet and the love letter, but the weird part is later he said ‘I don’t know why I cried‘ this was weird to me… it scares me that he was this out of touch”-

– imagine that normally (according to his MO), he cries in front of someone only when there is a reason, a manipulative intent to it.. but on that occasion he cried without an intent and it confused him.

“Although I have a lot of emotions over the breakup I also feel relieved still, waking up lighter“- it’s a good thing when you remove abuse from your life, it’s like removing what was weighing you down for too long.

“It is just such a weird, uncomfortable, icky, confusing, saddening, scary feeling that I did not know who I was really with“- you will get used to the reality that you didn’t know who you were really with, and you will continue to learn from the experience and get way better at evaluating people in the future.

“Coming to the realization of N’s gaslighting and emotional manipulation has made me see (F) in a totally new light… My dad even just texted me ‘so excited to hang’ with two kissing emojis. He has learned how to talk to me in order to make me feel comfortable, I assume similar to N’s tactics in making me feel loved. It feels false suddenly and I am having a hard time because I don’t want to be inauthentic, but I also don’t want to put hatch in her cage .. I need some tips how to deal with my dad in a kind but way that protects me. We have only a few hours together, then I will see my mom and sister who I feel safer with”-

– Your father will not be the only inauthentic person you still need to deal with, there will be more, in the workplace and elsewhere. Coming to think of it, when you go to the supermarket, for example, and you interact with the employee behind the cash register, you don’t know if he or she is authentic or not.. but it doesn’t matter to you: you are there for a reason and the cashier’s authenticity, or lack of, is a matter of no consequence to you.  So, you smile politely (not necessarily authentically) and say thank you.  Do the same when you spend that bit of time with your father: smile and say thank you.

Accept that F is the way he is. Don’t internally resist fully accepting who he is. It doesn’t mean that you approve of who he is, it means that you fully understand that he is who he is independently of you (not your fault, not your doing). You were never able to change him, and never will, not any more than you’d be able to change the cashier as you pass by the cash register.

The child only imagines that her father’s misbehavior or abuse is about herself (the child). She imagines that because this man is far from being a stranger, in the child’s mind. She feels too connected to him because she needs to be connected to him. I suggest that you learn to see F as your biological and legal father, but not closer than that.

Safe travels and hope to read from you soon!

anita

And I hope that you and your roommate soon recover from Covid!

anita