“Is my husband gaslighting me?” If you’ve asked yourself this question, here are three types of gaslighting to watch for.

Dr. Robin Stern, director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, details the three types of gaslighters and the tactics they use to make YOU feel crazy.

To discover if you’re experiencing this type of gaslighting, take our free emotional abuse quiz.

The Glamorous Gaslighter

The glamorous gaslighter grooms victims by using manipulative kindness – a tactic that lures victims into believing they’re loved and safe.

The Good Guy Gaslighter

The good guy gaslighter uses covert abuse to condition everyone, including the victim, into believing that the victim is the problem, rather than his deceit and manipulation.

The Intimidator Gaslighter

The intimidator gaslighter uses overt verbal abuse, bullying, and physical abuse.

If you need support, attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.

Transcript: Is My Husband Gaslighting Me?

Anne: I am delighted to have Dr. Robin Stern on today’s episode. She is the co-founder and associate director of the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence. And a senior consultant at the Yale New Haven Hospital. She is a licensed psychoanalyst with 30 years of experience treating individuals, couples, and families.

She’s the author of The Gaslight Effect, How to Spot and Survive Hidden Manipulation Others Use to Control Your Life, and The Gaslight Effect Recovery Guide Your Personal Journey Toward Healing from Emotional Abuse. Dr. Stern has been a guest on many local and national radio shows and has traveled widely to lecture on emotional intelligence, women in leadership, and relational bullying. Welcome, Dr. Stern.

Dr. Robin Stern: Thank you so much, Anne. Thank you so much for having me on this show and for doing this work to help women. I’m delighted.

Anne: Let’s start with the definition of gaslighting, because a husband gaslighting is crazy making. Since you’re the gaslighting expert.

Dr. Robin Stern: So gaslighting is a form of manipulation in a power dynamic. Where the person more powerful seeks to sow seeds of doubt in the person less powerful, to lead them to question their memory, sanity, and character.

Anne: What is their intent in doing this?

Dr. Robin Stern: Most of the time gaslighters intent is to destabilize their gaslightee. To cause them to wonder if they’re going crazy, and stay connected to them. So that they, the gaslighter, become the source of stability and reality. And undermine the ground they’re standing on.

Anne: Are you familiar with the Allegory of the Cave by Plato?

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes, of course.

Using The Allegory Of The Cave To Describe Gaslighting

Anne: We use that allegory of the cave quite often, and instead of having the fire, and then people walking in between the fire with the shadows. We make the man the fire itself, and he’s holding up these objects. So basically, he wants to be the person who defines reality. Oh, one other thing, Dr. Stern. I talk in a gender segregated way, because this particular podcast is specifically for women who have been emotionally and psychologically abused by men.

Dr. Robin Stern: That works for me, because even though gaslighting happens in any relationship, the pairing I’ve seen most often is where the man is the gaslighter and the woman is the gaslightee.

Anne: So we use that allegory where he is setting himself up as the person who’s defining reality, keeping her oppressed, and stuck. And that’s interesting that you also say they want to define reality for this person.

Dr. Robin Stern: More than that, in a moment of feeling out of control, a gaslighter will go to gaslighting to feel more cohesive, grounded, and in control. And so it’s not just, I want to do this. It’s I need to do this to feel in control of the moment and the relationship.

Anne: Control, it always comes back to that. I have heard some people say, “Well, everyone gaslights, but just some people are more dangerous than others.” This example that maybe a mom might gaslight a child into, like, eating a salad. What would be the main difference between telling a child, like, “Oh, of course you like vegetables. Eat your vegetables.” When they’re like, I don’t like vegetables.

What would be the difference between that and someone intentionally deceitful?

The Husband Gaslighting Her Is Intentionally Deceitful

Dr. Robin Stern: Just what you said. There is an intent to deceive to maintain control with a husband gaslighting.. And most importantly, it becomes the core dynamic of the relationship. In a moment, a mom might gaslight a child either to eat a salad or eat their vegetables. Or my favorite is when you go into a grocery store and you see a mom grab the child’s hand and say, “You’re not hungry, you’re tired.” Sometimes you’ll see a kid saying, I don’t know, “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not, I’m really hungry.”

And then the mom says it again. I don’t know, maybe you’re right, maybe I’m tired. So, the message is not just vegetables are good for you, or you’re not hungry, you’re tired. It’s, you don’t know what you feel. I know what you feel. In that way, it’s similar to more diabolical gaslighting, if you will. For the most part, I would say there is not an intent when parents are gaslighting to cause harm. I’m guilty of it myself, I’m sure.

My kids, who are grown up now, will once in a while say, uh huh, I think you’re trying to gaslight me. But in the gaslight or gaslightee dynamic, that causes people pain. That causes people to feel like their souls are being destroyed and their identity is being destroyed. There is that intent to destabilize someone and lead someone to deny their own reality. Even something they actually saw or heard in favor of the lie or the made up reality of the gaslighter.

So the gaslighter can control the reality. Men who are, for example, having an affair or seeking pornography to gratify themselves. Those are things that most men don’t want their partners to know about.

Lies & Diversion Away From What Is Really Happening

Dr. Robin Stern: So they will lie, and then they will gaslight. So, the wife or girlfriend can be kept off track of what’s going on. It’s very common. “So, honey, you know, I haven’t been able to reach you when you say you’re working late at the office. Like, I’m nervous. What’s going on? Are you seeing someone? Are you doing something? It’s just not been …, so honey, what’s wrong with you?”

The response is, “Why are you so paranoid?” And that happens once, and maybe the woman even thinks. You know, I am feeling a little paranoid. It still doesn’t answer where he was, so of course it already threw her off track. But by the second time, or the third time, or the nth time he says, you’re paranoid. When she asks him a question he does not want to answer. The gaslightee thinks to herself, maybe he’s right. Maybe that is a problem for me, and maybe that is our problem.

Anne: That I’ve been so paranoid that I don’t trust him. If maybe I trusted him more, we would have a better relationship.

Dr. Robin Stern: And we wouldn’t be having these arguments.

Anne: Exactly, when reality is, you wouldn’t get any arguments if he was not having an affair.

Dr. Robin Stern: Exactly.

Anne: But you don’t know that, yeah. Because of the husband gaslighting.

Dr. Robin Stern: And one case in particular that I’m thinking about, one man told his wife that It was her fault when she finally found out that he was having the affair.

Is My Husband Gaslighting? Yes, The Goal Posts Always Move

Dr. Robin Stern: He said, well of course I’m having an affair, because you won’t travel with me on my business trips. She was devastated, but couldn’t believe she couldn’t convince me that he was right. Because, of course, it becomes a closed loop. Like, if she traveled with him, he wouldn’t be having the affair. So, isn’t it her fault? Because she didn’t travel with him.

Anne: It’s also a dangerous loop. Because, let’s say she starts traveling with him. And then he might say, “Well, when you travel with me, you need to be at the hotel at 8 when I get back, and we need to have sex that night.”

And she’s like, “Wait a minute. We got in a fight. I don’t want to.” And he might be like, “Even though you travel with me, now that you’re not having sex with me on this trip.” They’re always going to move the goal posts. Her husband gaslighting her will continue.

Dr. Robin Stern: Right.

Anne: So tell me about the three types of gaslighters.

1. The Glamour Gaslighter

Dr. Robin Stern: The three types of gaslighters I identified in my 30 years: 1. The glamour gaslighter, who is like it sounds. He brings glamour into your life, buys you gifts, showers you with love and affection, and tells you you’re amazing. He makes you feel like the most special person in the world, and that the two of you are soulmates. You have something so special. Then your husband gaslighting you will start. After he has been missing for a couple of days.

Or after he won’t answer your questions or has lied to you. And you’re feeling confused and crazy and complaining about that. He will come in and shower you with everything I just said. How amazing you are. Don’t you know how much I love you? Oh my goodness. Don’t focus on that. Tonight we’re going to the theater. We’re going out for dinner. I love you. This is candlelight. This is magic for us.

Any way that he can use love with a capital L, romance and his big personality to distract you from what’s just happened. So, what you’re focusing on, then, when you look at the picture of your lover, husband, or boyfriend. You’re focusing on, like, yeah, he did that, and that totally sucks. But he told me I’m the most special person he’s ever met, and he adores me, and I can feel our connection. That connection’s amazing, so I’m just gonna move on from this.

Anne: We call that grooming too. That’s the grooming part of the abuse.

Dr. Robin Stern: Of course, like getting into a cult, right?

Anne: Right, yeah, gaslighting is such a perfect word for when you feel like you’re losing touch with reality. But it also covers grooming, emotional and psychological abuse. It overlaps.

2. The Good Guy Gaslighter

Dr. Robin Stern: You know, people are not born gaslighters. But it works. It’s effective in keeping somebody connected to you, and keeping someone dependent on you. And looking to you for a standard setting, for reality setting. Because when you are feeling anxious and don’t know what reality is. If you’re with somebody who’s telling you that they are certain of what reality is, you don’t learn what reality is.

The second type of gaslighter is the good guy gaslighter. If that good guy gaslighter were right here with us now, he would be affable and pleasant. And he’s someone who people like. It’s very accommodating.

Even in the way he approaches you and talks through things. It’s hard to spot the good guy gaslighter because often you get what you want on the surface. For example, if the woman, let’s call her Janine, decides she wants to visit her family for the weekend, and her husband, Doug, doesn’t want to go. And says, “I don’t want to go, and I don’t know why you want to go, we never have a good time.”

They start like that, but he’s pleasant, and they continue to talk about what they think and feel about going to visit. And the conversation is going on for hours and hours, and she’s exhausted from it. She says, “I just want to go.” And so finally he says, all right, we’re just going to go. They go.

And while they’re there, he’s basically pouting and not engaging in conversation. And then in the car ride home, he’s basically punishing her and telling her they didn’t want us to be there, and it wasn’t fun anyway, and it was basically miserable.

Is Her Husband Gaslighting when he Punishes Her When She Visits Her Family?

Dr. Robin Stern: But at night, when she gets into bed and is exhausted, she doesn’t want to be intimate. I’m just not feeling great about this weekend. He says, I don’t understand. What’s your problem? You got exactly what you wanted. So he’s manipulating her into feeling like, What is wrong with me?

He’s right, I got to go. Never mind the conversation about whether they should go, or whether she’s wanted. Or whether it will be good lasted so long that she was depleted and exhausted. Never mind that he punished her when they were there and on the way home. But there’s something wrong with her for complaining. Exactly, I just hear you breathing.

Anne: Frustrating, right?

Dr. Robin Stern: And then you say to your friends, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Because he does everything I want I get my way, but I’m just not happy.

3. The Intimidator Gaslighter

Dr. Robin Stern: And then, of course, there’s the intimidator gaslighter. The intimidator gaslighter is just, as it says, somebody who’s a bully, somebody who uses verbal abuse. Somebody who might be on the threshold of using physical violence. And like in the example I shared earlier. Somebody said, I don’t know if I’m being abused Dr. Stern, because I came home late from work and my husband doesn’t like it when I come home late.

So he feels abused, and he tells me I’m abusing him. Then when he puts his hand around my throat or is physically violent with me, he says he’s not abusing me during that time. He’s just reacting to my abuse. And so…

Anne: Even without the physical assault.

Dr. Robin Stern: …telling you you’re a moron, and being critical, screaming and cornering you perhaps. I was studying subjectivity and reality at that time, and several people in my class were talking about how you can’t tell someone they’re not being abusive. Like, I couldn’t tell someone, they said. They’re not being abusive, because the guy felt abused. So she maybe was abusing him because he felt abused. We got caught up in this high level conversation about it.

I ended up saying in class, and along with several of my colleagues supporting me. Whatever you want to call it, this woman has to move out of that house. Because she’s in danger, with her husband gaslighting her. If you’re saying she ought to stay till they figure it out, which is what I heard from them, I just don’t agree. Maybe this is a confusing example.

But there’s something important about that, people will try to convince you of realities that may be different than the way you see the world.

Some Abusers Feel Oppressed When They Can’t Do What They Want With Impunity

Anne: Well, that are frankly false. She might be like, why aren’t we having sex? Are you having an affair? Or why aren’t we having sex? Is it because you’re masturbating to pornography? And he’ll be like, no, it’s because you’re emotionally abusive to me. He might say something like that, which is not true, she isn’t. She’s asking questions, curious, and wondering what’s going on, because she genuinely cares. She’s trying to figure it out.

We have found that these types of psychological abusers feel oppressed when they can’t do what they want with impunity. It actually feels oppressive to them, because they’re like, she’s stopping me from soliciting prostitutes. It feels like she’s oppressing me, not realizing that he actually oppresses her with her husband gaslighting as well. The reversal of victim and perpetrator roles when perpetrators attempt to defend themselves is gaslighting in and of itself.

It’s also abuse. So when people listen to these two people and they’re like, “Oh, we don’t know who the abuser is because she says he’s abusive and he says she’s abusive. We can’t figure it out.” I want to say she’s telling the truth. She is being abused. And his accusations that she is abusive are abuse. With her husband gaslighting. He’s doing it to destabilize the situation, like you talked about before.

Dr. Robin Stern: Absolutely, it reminds me of when I was in high school. People would sit around at the end of the party, and people would say, what do you think reality is? And they would have these conversations that could go on for hours.

When He Calls Her Abusive, Justifying His Abuse, he Is Gaslighting

Dr. Robin Stern: But in a situation where you can’t confront the person you’re living with, because it will result in abuse. Or you can’t move out of the lane he has set up for you. Because he will decide it’s abuse and begin to abuse you about it. There’s no question who the abuser is and who the target of that abuse is.

Anne: Yeah, it’s also what they’re trying to achieve. So for example, on this podcast, I will get men who write bad reviews or angry emails, and they’ll say two contradictory things. They’ll say, number one, I am not the abuser. My wife is, and you convinced her that I’m abusive when I’m not. She’s terrible and awful, and she lies, and they’ll say all these terrible things about her. Then they’ll say and it’s your fault that our marriage is over. Like you were the one that caused this to happen.

And the same thing to the people you were having that discussion with at the school. It’s like, hold on a minute. If he genuinely believes she is abusing him. Rather than physically intimidating her or abuse her back, wouldn’t he want to get to safety? Wouldn’t he want to move away?

But then they lose control, so they don’t want to move away, they want to stay close. And that’s also an indicator that, like, no, the end result you want is to maintain control. Whereas the end result she wants is safety. Those are two totally different things.

Dr. Robin Stern: That’s a very important point.

Feelings & What The Abuser Does With Them

Dr. Robin Stern: And, in the work I do at the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, we encourage people to give themselves and others permission to feel. It’s important that you allow all your feelings, and that you don’t judge the feelings you’re having. So maybe it is true that in that moment, maybe we would say to the abuser, what are your feelings?

But then, importantly, what you do with your feelings is another story. So we want people to have their feelings. We want people to own when they feel unpleasant things, as well as when they feel pleasant things. And explore all of it. But it’s what you do about your feelings, and with your feelings and in a relationship. How you bring your feelings in those moments of co-regulating that is what we’re talking about.

Anne: There’s a pitfall with abusers and intensive couple therapy. And the pitfall is that they know what the right answer is. They know that if they say, “I’m feeling abused.” Then someone will be like, “Oh, well, those are your feelings.” It could just be the husband gaslighting. I truly believe these husbands won’t stop lying.

most of the time. Because they know what they need to say to gain empathy or validation. A known compulsive liar and abuser will lie about their own feelings to manipulate people.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes, very often, absolutely.

Anne: For someone to say, I’m going to take this known manipulative, compulsive liar and be like, “Oh, you’re feeling sad? Okay.” And not be like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, this is how they manipulate. So they might not feel sad at all. We don’t actually know how they actually feel, because they won’t ever tell you.

You were Feeling Abused Or Sad, So What Did You Do?

Dr. Robin Stern: And we don’t know how other people feel. We can only know when they tell us. And if they lie, there’s no authentic communication. The goal is not to sit there and say, oh, so you’re feeling abused or sad. Let’s talk more about that. So then what did you do?

If somebody tells you in a moment about an interaction, what was the interaction? What are the consequences with your wife when you feel that? Well, the consequence in this case was violence, and that’s not okay. That’s abuse.

Anne: To just follow that a little bit farther, they think that their emotions will justify their choices when they don’t justify them at all, because I feel shame and I might eat ice cream. I mean shame does not cause infidelity.

I’m not going to yell at someone. I might feel sad, and I’m not going to lie to them and solicit a prostitute. There is no logical connection between their feeling and their choice to lie. But they like to make some logical connection there, which is that the husband gaslighting caused this when it’s no reality at all.

Dr. Robin Stern: Absolutely, absolutely, it reminds me of somebody I’ve worked with. Their boyfriend was very controlling and jealous. So they would walk around the neighborhood, and she would be friendly and talk to people who said hello to her on the street. Then they’d go for dinner, and she would sometimes see people they knew, and she would be friendly.

He didn’t like her diverting her attention to anyone else, and accused her of not caring about him and loving him enough to be focused on him.

Husband Gaslighting by Using Abusive Logic To Control

Dr. Robin Stern: He accused her of flirting. Ultimately, he came to the conclusion that it would be good for their relationship. If when they walked down the street, she kept her head down, and didn’t make eye contact with anyone. When they went to dinner, it would be good for their relationship if she always took the seat where she looked at the wall.

Anne: Wow

Dr. Robin Stern: The first time he said it to her, she said, “What? That’s crazy.” When he stepped her through the “logic,” his reality, she thought it made sense. Her husband gaslighting her was to control.

Anne: When you said logic, did you use air quotes?

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah.

Anne: To me, that’s not logical at all. Logic is high up on my value system. These are like red flags to me. But have you found that gaslightees start thinking it is logical, even though it’s not even remotely logical?

Dr. Robin Stern: Absolutely, I mean, this is how she presented in therapy. It was heartbreaking. “So, Dr. Stern, when we walk down the street, I look down at the ground, we sit in a restaurant, and I face the wall. We aren’t fighting anymore. He’s loving, he’s wonderful. But I feel weird about it. Because I thought it was ridiculous when he told me. And I didn’t think it was right.

And why should I have to look down? But then when I tell him that, he reminds me that it’s just an easy one, two, three. You look down at the street, and you sit and face the wall. We’re a loving couple. Then you look up at other people. You are friendly in the restaurant, and we’re fighting all the time. Don’t you see? It just makes sense.

She Clearly Sees Her Husband Gaslighting Her

Anne: My guess is, I don’t know what happened after this. But there were going to be other things that he was like, “Okay, now that you look down and sit and face the wall, now I’m going to tell you that if you loaded the dishwasher differently, we wouldn’t fight.” Then it’s gonna continue. Did she notice that this was spilling over into other things, or did this solve literally all their problems?

Dr. Robin Stern: It solved their problems until the next thing.

Anne: Yeah.

Dr. Robin Stern: When it was about what she should wear on the street.

Anne: Right.

Dr. Robin Stern: And the thing that was so hard for her was getting the courage to simply say, I’m not going to do that anymore. And we’re just going to have to talk through what happens when I don’t. And it took a long time for her to feel ready to say that sentence. Because in that kind of relationship, if you can see it clearly, which she came to see clearly. That doesn’t mean you’re ready to do it differently. Because the price you’re paying is the loss of the relationship.

And one of the things that I say to people all the time is that you have to be willing to make a sacrifice. Because often in these very manipulative, husband gaslighting relationships. There is something you’re there for that feels good to you, sometimes. Maybe it’s just having a partner. After a while, it doesn’t feel good.

Of course, when you’re devastated, but through the stages of gaslighting, you may still think that guy is so handsome. He’s my soulmate, and I love the way he looks at me. So no, I’m not going to risk that.

Trying To Resolve Differences In The Concept Of Being On Time

Dr. Robin Stern: Or he’s a good guy. After all, we made a life together, so he’s a little difficult. And so I feel depressed sometimes, like maybe I’m too sensitive.

Anne: Or no relationship’s perfect. I hear that a lot. In our community. We don’t see a certain type of woman who is more likely to be a victim of husband gaslighting. Because at least in my community, it happens to victims of betrayal across the board, even women with otherwise healthy attachment styles with their family or other people.

So because our community is comprised of women of every demographic, and it’s happening to business executives, teachers and therapists and everyone. In your view, why do confident, competent, and even emotionally intelligent women in all walks of life find themselves in these situations? Where they’re being gaslit?

Dr. Robin Stern: I’m going to use myself as an example, because in my former marriage, note former, I was married to a good guy gaslighter. He would resort to husband gaslighting as a technique to control the moment. He and I had a very different conception of being on time and what that meant. And so he was always late, but not just five minutes late. It could be 25 minutes late or 40 minutes late.

We’re sitting down to dinner. I’m waiting for him, and I would say to him, I don’t like that, it feels disrespectful. It is disrespectful. What can I do to help this not happen anymore? Is there anything I can do? Can you work on this? Whatever lovely, kind but firm communication I could come up with. And this was the time when I took a lot of notes and kept track of the gaslighting going on.

The Reason I Had To Write My Book Now

Dr. Robin Stern: And he would say to me, I’m not the one who has a problem with time, you are. Your parents were very uptight, and they taught you that people had to be on time, and it meant something different than it actually means in the world. And there are many women who wouldn’t care.

You’re uptight, so don’t give me a hard time. And I thought, no, that’s not right. I may have had a different upbringing than you and you may have learned different things, but it’s disrespectful. Being a few minutes late is different than being consistently very late. So no, I’m not the one with the problem.

And if we have a different conception, we need to organize our dinners differently. No, no, no, you’re the one with the problem. And here I was, somebody confident in my own opinions. You’re writing about gaslighting, knowing that this was a husband gaslighting interaction that we were having, and simultaneously, beginning to think, maybe he’s right.

It was the reason I said I need to write this book now. Because if I experienced that, knowing what I knew, knowing that gaslighting takes time, that you can go through stages. I was writing about it. I was taking notes on my patients who were going through these terrible husband gaslighting interactions. And some of them feeling really distraught most of the time, sad and joyless in their life. I thought that was happening to me.

What’s happening to people when they don’t even have a word to put to it? So when I began to unpack that, it wasn’t about attachment styles. It wasn’t about early learning, but because I learned, and most women have learned, to be empathic, to stand in somebody else’s shoes.

Accommodating Appropriately For A Husband Gaslighting You

Dr. Robin Stern: Most women have learned to try to understand, to try to accommodate. And accommodating in a relationship is a wonderful thing. We all have to accommodate at one time or another. But accommodating so much that you’re living in somebody else’s shoes. And not paying attention to your feelings is, I believe, why I ended up second guessing myself. Even though I knew he was wrong. I could feel that shift inside, too.

Anne: One thing that struck me is that you also need to know what you are accommodating. It’s one thing to accommodate someone who’s telling the truth. It’s another thing to accommodate lies and a husband gaslighting. Like, that’s a totally different scenario. So if someone says, “I’m so sorry I was late, uh, my tire blew out on the freeway and I had to stop and change my tire,” and it’s true, then it’s easy to be accommodating.

Then that’s an understandable thing, and you’re empathetic. And everybody’s got problems, and we all want to work together. It’s an entirely different thing for someone to say, “I’m so sorry I was late. My tire blew out on the freeway, and that’s why I’m late.” When they were with a prostitute.

That is an entirely different thing to accommodate. Sometimes you don’t know what is what for a while. It takes paying attention to what we call your sacred internal warning system, that like something is not right here. This sounds like I should be accommodating, because I should be kind and understanding when someone’s late, but like it doesn’t feel right.

Falling For The Explanation Trap

Dr. Robin Stern: Yes, and sometimes accommodating is not the story you’re told, which he probably lies. But then, you’re going into what I call the explanation trap, where you’re more interested in explaining his behavior. Well, I wonder why he felt like he had to lie tonight. Maybe his mother was all over him. I don’t know if he’s lying or not. He’s probably lying, but I’m just going to let it go. I don’t want to be like his controlling mother.

So, rather than thinking, do I want to be with somebody who’s lying? You are trying to figure out his psychology, and it keeps you connected.

Anne: When you say it keeps you connected, for our listeners, what that means is it keeps you in proximity to the abuse. Because they’re not going to stop being abusive, well they might, hopefully they will at some point. But they haven’t stopped right now. So you’re experiencing the harm from husband gaslighting in real time.

The only thing you can do as a victim of this type of abuse is to separate yourself through mental space or physical space. Some degree of separation from the harm, because if you’re in proximity to it, it’s going to hurt you no matter what you think about it. Just like Robin, an amazing, super smart professor at Yale, thinking, well, maybe he’s got a point. Even though you knew he didn’t.

Dr. Robin Stern: I heard from people all over the country when I published my book. People would say things to me like, are you in my living room? Are you like listening in the kitchen? And people who were super smart, super successful would call me and say, I know he’s lying. I know it.

Calling Out Lies & Being Convinced You Are Crazy Because Of A Husband Gaslighting You

Dr. Robin Stern: When we’re together and I say, you are lying. He convinces me that I must be crazy. To the point where someone told this wonderful woman I was working with, that it wasn’t him that her friend saw on a dating site. Even though her friend saw him on a dating site while they were together. It wasn’t him. Her friend must have seen an old picture of his cousin, who looks like him. And she knew it was. She absolutely knew it was.

But she sat with him while he showered her with husband gaslighting, “You’re so special to me, and how could you ever think I would do that?” Time and time again, until finally, she said, I just can’t be with you anymore. I don’t know if you’re right or not, but I know I can’t be with you anymore.

So to your point of being proximal to the abuse. As long as you stay, you’re at risk, but the minute you can get away, you’ll at least have some contact with your inner knowing. What did you say you call it?

Anne: We call it your sacred internal warning system. We teach all about that in our Living Free Workshop.

Dr. Robin Stern: Yeah, so it’s hard to contact that when there’s so much noise and when you’re fighting so hard.

The Wake Up Call To Listen & Do Something About The Abuse

Anne: It’s our experience that when women get some distance. They can see it so much more clearly and answer the question, Is my husband gaslighting me?

Dr. Robin Stern: I encourage people to go shopping on your own. Just go to your friend’s house, take a pause. Just get away to clear some space to hear yourself. When you listen to yourself and access your sacred knowing, you will begin to think this is not okay. And it’s often in my experience why people have that wake up call just in a moment that they’re pausing. Somebody described to me that it was in a gas station where something happened with the credit card.

So she had to sit in the car longer than a normal time, and I don’t know what, maybe a half hour. And she said in that space and time, it was the first half hour she’d been without him for days. She heard herself saying, “This is not okay.”

And after that, she left him. In that case, she never looked back. It’s not usually that clean a break, and that immediate response. But often, it’s a third person who will say, wait a minute, what are you doing? I haven’t seen you in months. You don’t seem like yourself. And then you have to answer to that inside of yourself. If you’re willing to listen, that no, I’m not the same self I was. Maybe I’m not even the same strong self that I was.

Gratitude For All Who Work To Help Victims

Anne: I remember my sister telling me, when you talk on the phone with your husband, you sound like a completely different person. That was at the beginning, and I brushed it off at that point. But I think back on that now and think, wow, had I really listened at that point and recognized a husband gasllighting. That would have maybe saved me five more years of abuse.

Robin, Dr. Stern, you are incredible. I am so appreciative for your time and all your hard work. So thank you for your life’s work that has helped women get to safety and deal with a husband gaslighting all over the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Dr. Robin Stern: Anne, thank you. I’m loving our conversation. I’m loving your filling in where I left it blank, and I’m loving your saying to me, but wait a minute. Thank you for your wisdom, your deep knowledge, and for giving that to so many victims of emotional abuse.