Stop Gaslighting in Relationships and Get Happily Married

psychology of gaslighting in relationships

The purpose of this post to to give show you How to stop gaslighting in relationships so you can be happily married (like I am). The definition of ‘gaslighting in relationships’ is emotional abuse of power. It is a form of physiological manipulation. It is an idiomatic expression that has appeared in the collective unconsciousness of those seeking authentic interpersonal relationships. My premise is, it is not stickily a psychological issue but has an energetic component. If you are not aware of this energetic componet the processes of healing will be longer.

I have the cure. I am happily married and I have some wisdom that will help you. However, you have to stick with me and read, not just take the assumption you know what I am about. Read as I would like to help.

The origin of this relationship issue is as old as mankind, but the phraseology first appeared in Patrick Hamilton play Gaslight in 1938 and subsequent film adaptations in 1940 and 1944. It popped up in academic literature in the 1990s e.g.  Gaslighting, the Double Whammy, Interrogation, and Other Methods of Covert Control in Psyccordialherapy and Psychoanalysis (Dorpat, 1996) and When Men Batter Women: New Insights into Ending Abusive Relationships (Jacobson, Gottman, 1998).

Today social media channels outlined the issues:

  • Meredith Miller from Inner Integration – Gaslighting the Narcissistic favorite tool 
  • Jordan Peterson with his discussions on narcissism
  • I highly recommend you spend a few minutes listening to the above.

These personalities are noteworthy mind you, and I am not taking anything away from them, and can even recommend these two at least as a first step. I believe you can solve many problems in your life with Youtube as the personalities authentically try to help people based on life experience.

All walls are self-made

I would like to say I am truly sorry you had anyone make you feel unworthy or doubt yourself or question your sanity. The good news is most people in the world are not manipulative. Most people are like you, sincere and wish the best on others. It may not seem like that now, but I have been happily married for years and so have my friends, and so can you.

We all have been in a relationship – often playing both roles

We all have narcissistic tendencies and all have to some extent been in a gaslight relationships, it is just the matter of degree for both.

Whether it was your spouse, partner, work, even children or parents. Often for men, it is their work relationship and for women from it is the interpersonal dating relationship.

The key thing is there is a solution and there is a way out of both, narcissism and being a victim of this.

When Psychology misleads you in relationships

If I am brutally honest, the psychological advice that is offered is often not radical enough. I still think there is a bit of Platonic sophistry in modern psychology as it is a cottage industry unto itself.

I know, I know the first thing, I should write is, ‘find the courage to see the patterns and then eventually leave, even depend on the strength of your friends’. However, it not just about psychology, it is about and energetic connection and the meaning of your life.

As a disclaimer I am not a trained counselor and you should always seek professional advice. I am simply a commentator or some observed aspects of Western Culture.

When are shacked by the bonds of excess thought or a manipulator you do not open yourself  up to something more positive.

The good suffer in gaslight relationships

When someone manipulates you because they have power in a relationship, the good ones suffer, they are not victims but trusting people who get catch in a web. The innocent and the idealists suffer and the primitive reptilian ones win, for the time being. But in the end, they lose.

Never take revenge, because God will always carry out justice better than you, and if you are really good, he will let you watch.

You have to simply trust that this is not your person to fix or analysis.  You are not your brother’s keeper. Your mission in life is not to help or fix or prove anything to a narcissistic person.

If you want to enlighten someone, help poor children in Africa or something. However, do not try to bring awareness to a gas-lighter. This is not your life mission. God will bring justice or healing in this world or the next to a person who abuses the power that they have.

  • God’s justice is this. God will show them unconditional love. If someone is narcissistic this will be very painful. It is an undescribable pain of purification for someone so far removed from God to feel unconditional love and acceptance.

Think about yourself. Is that not true for you? If someone totally accepted and loved every aspect about you, it would be almost too hard to deal with, and if you are a reader, you are pretty together I am surmising.

Power of the narcissist

Any power people have comes from above, we know this. And if someone abuses this power with a manipulation tactic they will someday have to own it. The reason they abuse their power is they come under some energetic dark-side energy that could have to do with Karma or generational inherited energy passed down or simply most likely pride. However, the reason you are susceptible to that is you do not see your own power or worth.

  • The reason you fall under their spell is one reason you do not feel good about yourself.

It comes from patterns when you were a child. You do not feel worthy at some level. Perhaps your partner is better looking or has more money or a career or simply more confidence (the latter is usually the case). Their abuse of power taints you for the next healthy relationship. After you leave and it is hard to image you can regain that sense of worth. Just understand, they have the problem. It is them not you.

I still have the solution. You can spend the next ten years or more healing or listen to my solution.

Choose your rut carefully, you will be in it for the next ten miles.

Road sign on a highway construction site

Before I give you my solution for gaslighting – some questions

First, objectively determine if the current situation you are in is real or convenient self-delusion. If it is self-delusion, then without address the bitter truth, you will find your life on a trajectory that will be less than optimal.

You have to differential between gaslighting which is real and those perceived. Often people use a new found term to get out of a committed relationship. Often people will grab as psychological idea from the web, like gaslighting or narcissistic and conveniently apply it to their life.

But if you are not married, it does not matter I suppose, if you feel this way leave.

What if you are married with children?

Second, consider if you are married and have children, this is different and the term does not apply in the same way to you. You need professional help, preferably from a trained Priest, Rabbi or Minister. 

The reason is often one spouse is looking to bend their psychological perspective, even subconsciously to fit the narrative. This is tragic. Relationship quitters when kids are involved make a train-wreck out of the family and children because they get pumped.

Metaphorically, like astrology, people fit the terms to their circumstance, no matter how general the characteristics are and no matter what the situation. They project themselves into this situation, however, that does not mean it is real. They do it so they have permission to quit their family responsibilities because times are a little shaky.  You have to be objective. You have to see it from all angles.

Is the person physically beating you? Or rather are they just obnoxious and manipulative in a passive-aggressive way?  If they are hurting you physically, well you know your answer?

If you are married with children and you feel the person is manipulating you, then it is something else.  This person is your spouse, you brought children into this world with them. You work with them to fix it, rather than get a divorce like modern culture will tell you.  I am sorry but that is what marriage is about, work it out. It is insane the amount of adults can not calmly sit down and talk to people they brought children into this world with. I understand a lot but I do not understand that.

The cure for those trapped in a relationship with a narcissistic.

Gaslighting in a dating relationship solution

However, in every other relationship, from interpersonal to work, the solution is simple, leave.   Drop them like a bad habit. If you do not like your job, quit. There are many narcissistic bosses.  I do not care you have bills to pay, just leave. Write me and I can give you hints what to do next.

Do not think about it, do not over analysis it just leave. Start a new life. Move to a new city. Where is your sense of adventure? Move to Europe and teach English, just leave the whole toxic area.

The central ingredient to the cure for gaslighting that others do not tell you

Always ask God for help. Ask God to remove and disconnect the attachment. I am not one to believe in any form of supernatural. I am a corrosive rationalist skeptic.  However, I can not deny:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. your philosophy

William Shakespeare

Negative people are controlled themselves

I have had a lot of bad things happen in my life. When these things happen directed from aggressive people the residual energy attaches to you. I do not care if you think it is psychological or supernatural, it seems to be real. It is like a demon is probing your weaknesses and working on you.

Observe a negative person, their faces are distorted. They themselves are under some energetic control. Take it metaphorically or literally, net, net it is the same. I recommend the book Unbound by Neal Lozano. You can research this yourself or use other ways.

Take that for what it is worth. But the bottom line is if you want full healing, you need to ask God to remove this energy from you. You can go to psychoanalysis this for the next twenty years like Woody Allen or you can accept that life is about energy. We are strands of energy between heaven and earth and all cannot be explain and cured by the followers of the prophets of psychology and self-help. Sometimes, you need a higher power to clear this energy. You need to ask the Holy Spirit or Ruaḥ Hakodesh to intervene with deliverance.

100% No contact – Forever

Then you need to remove yourself physically from this person, Geographically, get far away, even if it sets your career back. Your career I can coach you on, as I am an Economics Professor, just write me. The main thing is get away from them.

Do not call them, do not contact them, do not check them on the Internet. If you do that you are not breaking free. You have to go total radio silence. Zero. How long? Forever. I know this is a hard pill to swallow but they are renting space in your brain for free.

If you are checking them online they are energetically connecting to you and being an energy vampire. If you check them only once a year, that is not no contact.

Go on Survivor or something

Then do things that build your confidence when you leave that relationship. Get a PhD, travel the world, go on the TV show Survivor, Jeff Provost would love to try to snuff your touch.  But do something as an ideal minds invites temptation. The main thing is start to see your worth as a human being.

No matter how strong the pull and how many years wasted in the relationship, the solution is the same. You have to ask yourself this:

What is the meaning of your life?

Meaning of life question

The problem for people today in relationships is they have not asked themselves this question to the deepest end. People are not radical enough in their examination of life. They do not bring this question into the relationship. My God, you have to ask your partner this question. How could you be with someone, even intimate and not have this conversation?

When you are intimate you are exchanging energy and connecting. Yet you do not know where they stand etherically and philosophically?

You are a child of God. You are a miracle from heaven. Why would you put yourself in a relationship where the other person does not see you this way?

Why are you in a relationship with a person you do not sit on  a park bench, hold hands and talk philosophy with?

Mark Biernat

You need to have deep philosophical conversations with your partner or you not be in a relationship with them. Take it from a happily married man, you need to converse about the meaning of life.

If you do not know where you are going, you will end up somewhere else.

Metaphorical self flagellation

Why would you be in a relationship with a person who is not chastising themselves to achieve a higher level of humility? Does the other have a routine of prayer and some manifestation s of spiritual asceticism, not for physical beauty, but to make themselves a more humble person. Or at least some element of the spirit of denial for a greater purpose, preferably in an organized religion like Judaism or Christianity or others. I believe in rituals as people that are too new tend to lack this aspect of radical humility.

What would Alexander Solzhenitsyn think of narcissists?

At the Start of the Day
At sunrise thirty young people ran out into the clearing; they spread out, their faces turned towards the sun, and began to bend down, to drop to their knees, to bow, to lie flat on their faces, to stretch out their arms, to lift up their hands, and then to drop back on their knees again. All this lasted for a quarter of an hour.
From a you might have thought they were praying.
Yet in this time we live in people cherish their bodies and with determination and patience practice this body- daily.
But they would be mocked and laughed at if they paid the same regard to their souls.
No, these people are not praying. They are doing their morning exercises.

Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Prison break

Here is the solution. If you are bonding with a partner who is not this path of asceticism to achieve a greater humility, rather one a path about themselves as illustrated in the above poem, I would recommend you escape.  If they are about a career or something stupid like that, leave. If they can not engage you in deep philosophical questions about the meaning of life, run. Make a prison break and run for the woods. When the floodlights hit you, you may freeze for a second but keep running.  God will protect you if you ask him. Say ‘Lord give me strength’ and keep running. Ask God to remove the negative energy of that person. Pray for the good of that person with a sincere heart.  Then move on and remember, forgiving is forgetting. People say I forgive but they do not forget, forgiving is forgetting.  It is that simple.

Author: Mark Biernat

I live in with family between two worlds, US and Europe where I create tools for language learning. If you found my site you probability share my passion to be a life long learner. Please explore my site and comment.

2 thoughts on “Stop Gaslighting in Relationships and Get Happily Married”

  1. If anyone is in such a toxic relationship and can not believe there is a chance to be happily married, you can contact me.

  2. Hello Mark, the site sounds so impressive and educative openning our knowledge about love …generaly. I love to have a wife abroad. How could you help me reach here.

    Regards.

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