What causes people to gaslight (NSFW + TW for mentions of abuse)

The main question I have is whether you still have any contact with him? If so, you have to completely get him out of your life whether there is a court case (?) or not.

Various possible causes:

* problematic and/or abusive parenting
* alcoholic/drug-addicted family
* toxic shame-ridden family
* other flavors of abusive and/or crazy family
* other types of child abuse by others

which often contribute to them developing:

* dissociation
* abusive relationship patterns
* narcissism
* sociopathy
* psychopathy

The internal thought pattern I have seen in these people tends to be a view of relationships in terms of abuse, and projecting the feelings from having been abused in the past into instead abusing in the future. They wanted to escape abuse, and by some reptilian-brain fight-or-flight logic that comes to underlie their later relationship patterns, part of them gets wired to be abusers.

The same causes in the top section also tend to lead to people who will tolerate such behavior*, and repeatedly end up in relationships with them, and spread it to their children, instead of avoiding all people who behave in such ways.

(* And who may also tolerate it in other authority figures, such as bosses, and… politicians…)

@janbb Sorry, I should have mentioned. He is in jail now. No contact since February.

@Zaku Okay that is interesting. Thank you for your response. So a lot of it is bad childhood and continuing the cycle of abuse?

My first thought is that he is trying to scare you. Let him take it to court. First he has to get a DA to file charges unless it’s civil court. If it’s civil court, he has to find an attorney to take that wacky case.

Okay, he is currently being charged with 6 felonies. I reported him.

Sorry I am so bad at explaining myself. He could either plead guilty, or not guilty. He is choosing to plead not guilty and is taking it to trial by the looks of things. Maybe it could change, I don’t know. But as of now, it sounds like this will be taken to trial. My issue is the fact that the police have 2 years worth of online communication between me and him. This isn’t like a he said/she said type thing. They have a lot of evidence against him. I don’t get why he is even pleading not guilty. Yes it is his right. But with all the evidence it seems like a stupid thing to do. And he was even threatening me like “oh it sucks that the next time I’ll see you will be in court” So I think he just genuinely doesn’t think he did anything wrong. I don’t get it.

He’s a jerk, he’s trying to scare you, block him, cut off all contact, consider getting an Order of Protection so he can’t contact you.

That’s already in place. He cannot have any contact with me even if he got released on bail.

I do believe this is all a scare tactic, which is kind of funny because I literally have no say in what the state does anymore. It’s all out of my hands. So any kind of attempt to try and get me to drop this won’t work. I can’t.

I just wish I could know how his mind works so I could figure all this out.

@SergeantQueen: If that’s already in place, then how is he contacting you and saying “the next time I see you will be in court?”

Forget him. Don’t try to figure him out. Don’t waste your time, You may never figure him out and why waste energy on it? Who cares. Let it go. Consider therapy to try to help you forget about him, and figure out why you’re investing time and energy into this person.

He was in contact with me after the police contacted him last summer. From Oct 2019-Feb 2020. He was arrested in March. None of these conversations have been recent. I keep thinking of them because I don’t understand why he is trying to make this drag on. I want this to be over with. I am getting tired.

Wait he has been arrested for the things you said above, the Police and DA must think they have a good case so . . . why are you worried??? The DA is the one in front of him in court., not you.

@SergeantQueen “They have a lot of evidence against him. I don’t get why he is even pleading not guilty. Yes it is his right. But with all the evidence it seems like a stupid thing to do.”

I say this with respect, but you’re not a lawyer (and neither am I). There may be excellent legal reasons why he’s pleading not guilty. Maybe he has nothing to lose? Perhaps the evidence will be inadmissible because of a technicality, or there could be some other factor that comes into play that you’re not aware of.

@gorillapaws I understand. I don’t take any offense to it. I understand there is a lot more to this stuff than I know.

He’s thinking that it can’t be his fault so it must be your fault. He’s not going to accept the blame for anything and pushing the blame off on you is the easiest route for him to go. You’re giving him way too much control over your life; so, the first thing you need to do is cut him out of your life completely. He’s in jail and can’t contact you but you’re still willing to accept the blame for what he is doing to himself. Work on believing in yourself. You’ve done nothing wrong and he did everything to put himself in jail. Let him take care of himself and you take care of you by not worrying about him.

He dated you because you were easy to gaslight. He couldn’t find a woman his own age that was willing to be used and abused by him. And before you even think it, yes you were emotionally abused by him big time. This is one of those important life lessons that you need to learn from for future relationships. Believe in yourself, stand up for yourself and never let another man make you feel that you are wrong for making choices that are best for you. If it’s not what he feels is best for him, give him the opportunity to deal with it. Then the 2 of you can determine what is best for both of you. Sometimes the easiest thing is to go your own way being responsible for your own life. You don’t need anyone else to be you and sometimes that makes for a happier you

“Okay that is interesting. Thank you for your response. So a lot of it is bad childhood and continuing the cycle of abuse?”
@SergeantQueen Yes.

My experience in gaslighting relationships is that it’s about control. Both in that a gaslighter usually has a false image of themselves that they subconsciously are protecting at all costs, which means their bad behavior must be someone else’s fault which leads to both invalidation and blame shifting. Also, control over YOU. Once a gaslighter realizes that they can make us doubt ourselves, they will do it because it’s convenient. It keeps them in control and us off balance trying to figure out which way is up even if we’re pretty sure we know, with enough manipulation you start to question everything. It’s extremely effective over time, like brainwashing.

People don’t talk about it enough and recently it’s become confused with invalidation or disrespecting someone’s perspective, but the effects of long term gaslighting are serious and severe.

Abuse is pretty much always about control.

I just want to say to everyone, I am not so focused on this. This isn’t something I obsess over. I am working on eating healthier, I go biking everyday I can, I do things to keep myself busy. I am working hard to not let this control me.

This is something that has affected me a lot. So I can’t just ignore it like it never happened. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. I am trying to figure out what exactly causes people to do this, to see if it would help me understand. I know this isn’t my fault. I know that I was young and not as aware of things when it all happened so it was easier to be sucked into.

I am not “worried” so much about him being found not guilty, as much as I am about being called to testify or something dumb. I want my life to move on from all this, but it’s hard when the legal stuff is still happening.

I am not so pre-occupied with this and I know I post things here, but what I post here isn’t a reflection whats on my mine 24/7.

@SergeantQueen Can you find out from the prosecutors whether you might be called to testify or not? If it were me, knowing that I wasn’t going to have to would ease my mind a great deal.

I understand why you are thinking about it but I do think it i more important to figure out why you fell for him than why he does what he does. It may make sense to just realize that there are unstable predatory men in the world.

I was 16, my homelife was kind sucky, and I had taken pills a few days prior to meeting him as a suicide attempt.

I think I was really desperate to have a place to be when I turned 18, even before that. I wanted out of my house. And Then I fell for him because when we first met he was really, really, really nice. This abusive behavior didn’t really start until 6 months in. The person I broke up with/the person in jail now, is NOT the same person I fell in love with. He presented himself way differently.

I did not, and would not, be with a man who so obviously showed these traits to me. He showed them once I was already in love. He was not like that when we met. Even if his niceness was fake. The manipulative man he turned into was different.

I don’t know what state you live in. (Don’t tell me) But in NY, anyone over the age of 21 who has sex with another under the ag of 17 can be charged with felony Rape. Even if the younger person “asked for it”. According to the law, an individual under the age 17 is not capable of giving consent. Therefore it is rape – even if they are boyfriend and girlfriend.
The case is easy to prosecute and look great on the district attorney’s record . All the DA needs is some proof it happened and copies of the participants’ birth certificates.
He is working from the same playbook our “fearless leader” uses for all his activities.

Literally anyone can fall prey to gaslighting and psychological manipulation- but, especially a teenager in a tough situation who has zero prior life experience to know better. If abusers were horrible right out of the gate it wouldn’t be a problem, it’s more like being slowly brainwashed or the frog in a boiling pot analogy and you don’t even realize anything is wrong until it’s really wrong.

@ANef_is_Enuf I agree.

I understand its the norm to question the victim and to ask why they allowed it to happen, but I think its time we start shifting the blame on to the person who caused all of it. Why everyone in this thread decided to get on me about all this I will never know. I asked this question because I am not the one to blame in this situation. He is. I did nothing wrong except trust him. So I asked, what makes people want to gaslight others, and I just got treated like I am the one in the wrong, or that I am obsessed over all this.

I did nothing wrong. I am not obsessing over this. I am trying to look for answers and I am trying to understand. And I will one way or another.

@SergeantQueen some folks are just…broken. How they got that way is their story to tell. It’s often hard to accept, but you might never understand it all, except that broken people hurt other people.

@SergeantQueen ”I did nothing wrong.”

I completely agree that you did nothing wrong.

That also doesn’t mean that you can’t learn from this and become a stronger person who is better at recognizing red flags. The first one being that he was MUCH older than you. Younger victims are easy prey. So in the future, I suggest you run the other way if a much older guy tries to date you, no matter how nice/charming he seems.

It’s absurd to me that OP is planting her feet firmly in her position and everyone thinks they know better than her, you know, if you were just a stronger person and more firm in your position maybe people couldn’t influence you.~

That is harmful shit ^ She didn’t ask for advice on how to avoid getting in this position again, which suggests poor boundaries in that responses continue to ignore her question (in General, btw) and give unwarranted advice. How’s that for spotting red flags?

Anyhow, I understand the need for answers because part of the effect of being victimized by psychological abuse involves rebuilding our sense of trust in ourselves and our understanding of things and sometimes that requires simple knowledge. It’s quite fortunate to go through life and not need to worry about why other people do what they do, but if you have suffered certain types of abuse those details can be important in piecing together your own narrative- something that can be broken up or difficult to view in a cohesive way if you’ve been traumatized. The truth is that if you tend to be one to introspect it’s hard to imagine how other people can avoid it so aggressively, but there are a lot of people who will do literally anything to never have to look at themselves in a negative light because they are incapable of coping with it and have found ways to avoid it (usually by being abusive.)