Are You Losing Your Mind?

On Monday I told him my parents were coming on Saturday. On Saturday he said I had never mentioned it and that I had ambushed him. I was sure. Then I was less sure. He says I do this all the time. He says I am forgetful, and that I am the one who is always angry.

Last week I began writing down what I say to him, with the date. Is that normal? I used to run a team of forty people.

Preeti, it is not normal. I do not think the abnormal part is you.

There is a name for it

The word is gaslighting. It comes from a play of the 1930s in which a husband keeps turning down the gas lamps and then tells his wife that they are no dimmer. Over time she comes to believe she is going mad.

The psychologist Ramani Durvasula treats it as a form of emotional abuse. In Should I Stay or Should I Go? she sets out its usual shapes. He denies that something happened. He tells you that you remember it wrongly. He changes the subject to a thing you did years ago. He says you are too sensitive, or that it is not a big deal.

It works slowly. That is why capable people do not see it coming. Doubt arrives in one corner of your life and spreads to the rest.

Durvasula adds a plainer possibility. Sometimes he was never listening in the first place. One woman she interviewed spent years being told that she had not said things. She finally understood that her husband had been tuning her out behind the television all along. From your side the effect is the same. You said it, and you are told you did not.

The accusation that fits him better

You mention that he calls you the angry one. Durvasula would ask you to look at that closely. She describes projection, the habit of accusing someone else of what you yourself are doing or feeling. The one who is cheating accuses the other of cheating. The one whose moods swing calls the other unstable.

Her advice is practical. When a charge does not match what you know about yourself, turn it round in your mind and see whether it fits him. She goes as far as calling sudden jealous accusations a kind of truth serum.

Why arguing it out fails

You are an able person, so you have tried to settle this by reasoning. Durvasula explains why that does not work. A partner like this argues from cold logic while you are arguing from feeling, and he is the more ruthless debater. You come away looking foolish and nothing is settled.

Many people then write the long, careful email. She calls it a litmus test, a sign of how unheard you have become. She says she has read dozens of them and has never seen one work. Write it if it helps, she suggests. Then send it to a friend.

What doubt does over time

She lists what tends to follow. You become indecisive at home while still decisive at work. You start making excuses for him, to other people and to yourself. You apologise constantly.

And you begin to feel ashamed, of how you are treated and of putting up with it. So you tell people less. She notes that lying is the giveaway of shame. Once you are saying “we are fine” to your sister, you are losing the only people who could tell you that your memory is sound. His version becomes the only version in the house.

Hold your ground

That is her phrase, and she puts it in capitals. It does not mean winning the argument. You do not have to take the fight at all. It means not handing over your own account of what happened. She states one principle flatly. A person who loves you does not deny your feelings.

So about the notebook. I think it is a sane response to a situation that is not sane. You ran a team of forty. You did not suddenly start losing track of your own sentences. Keep the notebook. And ring someone who knew you before.

Durvasula notes that low mood and anxiety are common in relationships like this, and that both respond well to treatment. If you are not sleeping, or you feel hopeless, please see a doctor or a counsellor.