It starts off with small, benign things that are too small to make a big deal out of. Maybe I am an idiot for forgetting to do the dishes? Then they don’t like your friends, your family is too judgemental and you need to respect whatever they say because your partner takes priority, how dare you not be completely committed to your partner?

I didn’t really know what gaslighting truly was until I was already in too deep, but it involves eroding a person’s self esteem, debasing their values and constantly putting someone down so they’re constantly trying to think of anything they can do to keep their partner happy because that’s what a good partner does. I think the tipping point when I started to question my relationship was when she punched me in my face on my birthday, kicked me out of the car and had to walk home 2 miles at 1am; I think I stayed in the relationship probably another 1-2 years after that because that’s how effective it can be.

Oh and FYI they’ll never actually take their mask off. Once I finally caught them red handed cheating on me, her mask “slipped” and she smiled for just a quick second. Then she doubled down and tried to say she can’t live without me, its not what it looks like, and trying to seduce me, anything to sell the lie and never ever admitted the truth.

It usually takes about 6 months to a year for the mask to start slipping, and then full blown asshole/abuse happens much more rapidly. In my experience.

I’ve dated plenty of shitty human beings, some were physically abusive, some emotionally/mentally and the super fun ones were both. Not making excuses for my decisions, but I was young, had never seen what a healthy relationship looked like, and had only seen shitty humans/abusive people as “loved ones” before.

Edit: abusive/assholes CAN be VERY charming. They figure out how to get what they want, and then once they think they have you “locked” they start showing you who they really are. Hell, they usually show you small glimpses pretty early on, but at least for me, they also make you believe that you’re crazy/wrong for the spidey sense tingling.

Wow…that’s spot on. It hurts to realize you didn’t see it.

She messaged me first on Hinge, the mask was off pretty quick but I overlooked/excused the red flags. Astrology and Instagram wellness type that went to college in Los Angeles, by date 5 she had told me “lying comes naturally to us pisces” twice, and that she didn’t have a positive relationship with psychology growing up until starting her psych PhD due to her having dissociative identity disorder & dad also being a therapist. However the motivation for the PhD was to charge therapy clients more money.

She ended things after a few months saying “I’m not feeling the way I want to feel”, “our energies are too similar”, and that she’d “fondly remember me” during the breakup phone call. Turns out she was insulting me on twitter the whole time about my perceived income, said her therapist called me a beta male, and that “these dudes never buy me flowers and act sooooo surprised when I break up with them”.

Also used to have blowjobs in her twitter handle & dudes were tweeting at her saying thank you for the starbang, but that was more weird/trashy than shitty or abusive.

@vis4valentine about 8 months. I stupidly married him. But that’s way in the past.