Wanted to Share My Experience with Being Deeply Gaslit

[Pure Imagination]

I wanted to start this post off by saying that I am an incredibly neurodivergent person. Spirituality, empathy, and sensitivity come very easily to me, and some people may think that's a great thing, but it is actually detrimental to my life in many ways. So much so that I have realized lately that it's been almost a spiritual practice for me finding out every day how much differently I experience reality compared to most people. It's quite radical; I can't overstate this enough. I am a guy who is very sensitive, so much so that I feel emotions so deeply to the point that it makes socializing extremely difficult. For most people, socializing requires some degree of holding back emotions one feels to fit in with whoever they are socializing with. Well I have almost no ability to hold back my emotions. I also have deep social anxiety problems, which puts many people off because I can't hide my feelings and they tend to think they did something wrong when I can't hold back my anxiety. And I experience anxiety with every relationship I have, even with my closest friends and family. So obviously I am a huge introvert and prefer to be alone almost all the time.

So to the topic, I met a guy about five years ago who I seemingly clicked very well with romantically and sexually. He always showered me with praise, said how attractive he thought I was, and was always candid about the fact that he only wanted to be with me and no one else. On our third date, we played a game of twenty questions and one of the questions he came up with was "What is your biggest pet peeve in relationships?" When he answered, he said that he absolutely hated being lied to. Being the sensitive person I am, I took that incredibly to heart, so much so I had internalized that he was one of the most honest people I had ever met. He also constantly accused me of sleeping with guys behind his back, claiming that I'm just so beautiful that I couldn't stay with someone like him. This was absolutely untrue; I take loyalty very seriously. But he would always, seemingly jokingly, make these comments that I had to be cheating on him. I would always playfully reassure him that this was not the case; it is totally true even to this day that I have never cheated on him.

Well fast forward to 2021 and we get married. I was so happy that I finally found someone who loved me and who I seemingly clicked with so well. One of my wedding vows to him was that I wanted our marriage to be based on total honesty with one another. As you probably predicted, things turned South very quickly.

Midway through 2022, I started seeing sex apps appear on his phone. I confronted him about them several times, but he always just told me that they were never actually there and that I was just seeing things. I know myself better than that though, and eventually I found hard evidence that he had been cheating on me repeatedly behind my back. In a rage, I confronted him about it, and he still had the nerve to downplay the whole thing. He couldn't deny the hard evidence I had, but he told this ridiculous story that it was only urges and he never acted on the things I had evidence of. It was also at this point that he admitted to me that he had controlling problems, and that he is controlling me too much. When he first said this, I didn't even believe him. I never thought that this guy, who I thought was so honest and considerate, would be controlling me so much. I thought that he was just self-conscious of his own tendencies and that he wasn't controlling me nearly as much as he thought. Little did I know how much I was wrong about that.

I found out in the months afterwards that he got a hacker to hack most of my devices. This hacker enabled him and my husband to spy on me constantly, spied on and altered my OneNote journals, attempted to delete the evidence I had of his cheating, and stole a nude photo of me and used it as a profile picture for a sex app. I confronted my husband about this and to this day he acknowledges that there is a hacker that is out to get me, but denies that he asked the hacker to hack me. Which is absolute bullshit as you can obviously tell.

My husband during much of last year preyed on my sensitivities. He tried to instill beliefs in me like that I didn't listen to him well enough and that my problems were so bad, that I should look past his "problems" because my anxiety and depression were just as bad if not worse. But obviously those aren't the words of someone who is capable of a healthy relationship, at least with me.

Now I just want to underscore that my patience with him reached a breaking point at the end of last year, and we are now officially separated, and that I will seek a divorce when I am ready. He is incredibly manipulative though and has tried to get me to stay with him, I assume because he thinks I am naive and easily controlled. Which may have been true for a while, but I now know that I have the strength and support system to end our dysfunctional relationship.

 

So I guess the moral of this story is....I want to say to people here on the forum who are more conscious and self-aware than most people: the vast majority of people are not as conscious as you are. People are totally capable of taking advantage of your good nature. Learn to vet people. If I had trusted my gut about this guy on our first date, I knew there was something off about him. If I had just followed that feeing, I would have avoided years of this manipulation and gaslighting. I am glad I caught it all when I did because I was ready to drop my whole life and adopt kids with this guy. Now I know that will absolutely never, ever happen.

I still question so many things about my own reality. I know it will probably take me years to undue all of these negative beliefs about myself that my husband helped instill to controll me. I am on the path of recovery, and I am holding my support systems tight. Including this forum. Thank you to all for reading and at the very least letting me vent. Hopefully you learned something from this incredibly painful experience I had to endure.

 

Edited March 26, 2023 by Pure Imagination

[Leo Gura]

Thanks for sharing.

[Pure Imagination]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for your videos. I watch them all.

[Pure Imagination]

2 hours ago, Lila9 said:

I agree with you and I think that the main reason that more consious people might fall to people's manipulations and any sort of traps is because they naturally tend to assume that other people are as the same as they are, and because they value honesty and integrity, they assume that it probobly applies to everyone else.

That is a huge trap I have fallen into most of my life. I was born an empath and unfortunately developed into a people pleaser. And I tended to project onto others, assuming that they care about others as much as I do. It has been a tough pill for me to swallow realizing how rare those qualities actually are in most people.

I watched this video of Leo's when it was first released, but it wasn't until recently that I grasped the depth of this message:

 

Edited March 26, 2023 by Pure Imagination

[gettoefl]

so sorry to hear all this, that you were manipulated and deceived so blatantly and that your dream life ended in tears

you are a beautiful transparent inspiring person and i send you so much love and affection and encouragement to keep forging your best future

i hope you know that your light is seen and understood and appreciated

@Pure Imagination

[Pure Imagination]

@gettoefl

I appreciate your kind words so much. Beautiful, transparent, and inspiring were never things I would have called myself so it is moving that you see me in that way.

All I can do right now is take life a minute at a time while I recover, so I am very thankful to receive your support ❤️

Edited March 27, 2023 by Pure Imagination