Unintentional gaslighting husband? For real? Chances are YOU’RE the one unaware. Here are 5 examples of how he’ll use unintentional gaslighting to manipulate you.

What Is AN Unintentional Gaslighting HUSBAND?

Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse. It tears at your sense of self, making you feel confused, small, and unsure about your own reality. What if I told you that your husband could be gaslighting you without even realizing it?

Just because you don’t realize it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. And if he claims it was unintentional, that’s likely just one more layer of gaslighting.

But here’s the hard truth—it doesn’t matter if it’s intentional or not. Gaslighting is still gaslighting. And yes, it’s still abuse.

Examples of an Unintentional Gaslighting husband

Here are just a few ways an “unaware” husband might gaslight you:

• Dismissive Language: He might say, “You’re overreacting,” or “That’s not a big deal.” These phrases make you feel like your emotions don’t matter. If he actually genuinely intended to be empathetic, he wouldn’t use that type of language.
• Blame-Shifting: When something goes wrong, he might respond, “That only happened because you…” making you feel at fault for situations beyond your control. If he intended to support you and mourn with you, he wouldn’t blame you for honest mistakes anyone could make.
• Minimizing Your Feelings: He might downplay your struggles by saying things like, “Other people have it worse.” If he intended to help you feel better, he’d empathize with you.
• Contradicting You: Ever had him tell you, “That’s not how it happened,” when you know you’re remembering correctly? If he intended to come to understanding, he might ask, “That’s not how I remember it. Tell me more about how you remember it? Maybe I’m remembering it incorrectly.”
• Forgetting Significant Details: Maybe he “forgets” key moments or dismisses past conversations as if they never occurred. If he intended to live in truth, he’d believe you when you remember things he doesn’t.

Does any of this sound familiar? If so, consider taking our free emotional abuse test to see if you’ve experienced this type of abuse.

Why Does He Do It?

Gaslighting typically stems from:

• Lack of Awareness: If he’s focused on his affair partner, pornography, hiding his gambling, he won’t be thinking about how damaging his words or actions are. He’ll only think about what he wants to do and how he can do it.
• Self-Preservation: A psychological abuser will downplay your experiences to protect his ability to control the narrative so they can exploit your emotions to get what they want.
• Control: It doesn’t take huge lies to create a power imbalance. Small, subtle behaviors can hide reality and cause you to doubt yourself.

But here’s what you need to know—his ignorance doesn’t excuse the harm. To hear other women share their stories, listen to The Free Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast.

Signs You’re Being Gaslighted

Not sure if it is an unintentional gaslighting husband or on purpose? Watch for these signs:

• You feel drained, unheard, and constantly questioning yourself.
• He dismisses your concerns or emotions as dramatic or irrelevant.
• You avoid confronting him because he always shifts the blame back onto you.
• Your confidence has taken a hit since being in this relationship.
• Arguments about past events always seem to rewrite history in his favor.

Why “Unintentional” Gaslighting Is Just Gaslighting

It doesn’t matter whether your husband intends to gaslight you or not. What matters is how the behavior affects you. It’s abusive to undermine someone’s reality, feelings, or worth—unintentional gaslighting husband or not.

Unintentional gaslighting is still manipulation in action. And the most manipulative part? His claim that it’s intentional. If he cared about protecting you, his words and actions just don’t make sense. Your best friend or your sister who loves you, don’t gaslight you accidentally. Ever.

What You Can Do About Your UNINTENTIONAL GASLIGHTING Husband

You deserve to be heard—don’t settle for anything less.

• Learn Protective Strategies: The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop consistently teaches women how to see reality and use protective thought, communication, and boundary strategies.
• Seek The Right Support: This is so important. Talk to trusted friends, family, but only people who really understand this type of abuse. Our Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions are a safe place to discuss your situation and receive the support you need.

If he denies it, blames you, or makes you feel like your feelings don’t matter, it’s important to take care of yourself. Whether he means to or not, he’s showing that he doesn’t mind hurting you to get what he wants.

You deserve a relationship built on respect, equality, and empathy—not confusion, doubt, and blame.

Need more clarity about emotional abuse or what to do next? Take our Free Emotional Abuse Quiz to uncover the truth. Your safety and peace of mind are worth it.

Transcript: Unintentional Gaslighting From Your Husband?

Anne: You’re about to hear an interview that I did years ago. Before I get to that interview. So many women wonder if their spouse is an unintentional gaslighting husband or is it intentional. Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse, and it tears at women’s sense of self because we don’t know what is true. All the lies, turning tables, and crazy-making make it hard to determine reality. But just because you don’t realize it’s happening, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.

And if he’s an “unintentional gaslighting husband,” that’s likely just one more layer of gaslighting. I mean, here are some examples of things that he will tell you are “unintentional” gas lighting. He might say like you’re overreacting or that’s not big of a deal. I didn’t intend to make you feel bad. But when you’re around someone who cares about you, maybe your sister or mom, or a good friend. They genuinely intend to be empathetic. People who intend to be empathetic don’t use that type of language generally speaking.

I mean, we all make mistakes from time to time, but it’s not necessarily this pattern of behavior over and over. Same thing with blame shifting, you know, all of us make honest mistakes from time to time. If he responds with anger or blame, that’s not unintentional, because someone who intended to support you and mourn with you and be like, oh, my word, we’ve all done that. I’m so sorry. They wouldn’t blame you for honest mistakes, they would empathize with you.

The Impact of an unintentional Gaslighting husband

Anne: He might minimize your feelings. If he downplays your struggles and says things like other people have it worse. I mean, he might be trying to make you feel better, but he might say things like you don’t feel that way. Or of course, you don’t think that. If he intended to care about you he’d want to know what you were thinking and feeling.

Another one that he might claim as an unintentional gaslighting husband, is contradicting you. He might say, that’s not how that happened. If he intended to understand and resolve something. He might not say what that tone is, or he might say it differently. He might be like, Hey, that’s not how I remember it. Can you tell me more about how you remember it? That’s crazy that we remember it so differently without that accusatory tone. Another thing psychological abusers who use gaslighting will do is “forget” significant details”.

And I put that in quotes, because they often say they forgot when they didn’t. They intentionally didn’t do anything about it. It’s true that people forget things. But it’s also true that abusers selectively forget things they want to forget to exploit you. And minimize your feelings, and why does he do that?

Reasons Behind Gaslighting

Anne: Well, there’s three reasons. The first one is a lack of awareness. Now this is not just some harmless, lack of awareness. If he’s focused on an affair partner or his pornography or hiding his gambling. He’s not going to think about how damaging his words or actions are.

He’s only going to think about what he wants to do and how he can do it. And he’s doing this out of self preservation. A psychological abuser will downplay your experiences to protect his ability to control the narrative, so he can continue to exploit your emotions to get what he wants. All of this is about control. It doesn’t even take huge lies to create a power imbalance. Small, subtle lies can hide reality and cause you to doubt yourself.

And if he says this is unintentional, consider the effects of this psychological abuse to you. Do you feel drained and unheard, constantly questioning yourself? Maybe you feel like he dismisses your concerns or emotions as dramatic or irrelevant? Do you avoid confronting him, because he always shifts the blame back onto you?

Do arguments about past events always seem to rewrite history in his favor or benefit him somehow? I mean, let’s just say that his gaslighting is actually unintentional for just a minute. It doesn’t matter if he intends to lie or not. He’s still lying. What matters is how his behavior affects you. Gaslighting is manipulation in action. And if he manipulates you, but then makes an excuse. And then makes the excuse that it’s unintentional. It’s still just gaslighting.

Personal Story: The Beginning

Anne: You’re about to hear one of the first interviews I ever did. I was still in the thick of my trauma, and thank goodness since then I discovered and implemented the Living Free strategies in my life. And now my children and I are delivered from his abuse. You’ll hear the pain in my voice as I talk with another shero we’ll call Charlotte.

Charlotte: Anne, thank you. It’s so great to be here with you today.

Anne: Let’s start with your story,

Charlotte: Prior to our engagement and subsequent marriage, he disclosed to me that in his teens and twenties, he had struggled with pornography and compulsive sexual behaviors. And I was young and naive, so I said, well, that’s fine. It’s in the past, but it’s not okay once we marry. And for the first year he was “sober,” if you will,

But then it was during our second year of marriage that he started to act out unbeknownst to me. Relationally, I felt a disconnection. We celebrated our anniversary, and he’s professing his love to me and had this gift.

And I remember thinking, oh, this is a bunch of bull. Like, I don’t believe what you’re saying. You’re saying one thing, but I’m feeling something different. So I think what I picked up on was that there was a real disconnect emotionally in our marriage. He was saying all the right things, but I didn’t feel it in my gut. I just didn’t put the two together.

An Unintentional gaslighting husband: The Unraveling of the Marriage

Charlotte: And it was shortly after our third wedding anniversary, when I caught him in a lie, that things started to unravel. I had no idea, what was going on. Three weeks later, I found out the truth. I was devastated, I was angry. It was brutal. It was devastating. I think gaslighting is absolutely abusive. I would hear the outright lies, this doesn’t make sense to me.

For lack of a better term, we just called it crazy making. I think what was crazy making for me was here, on one hand, this respectable, responsible man that I admired, respected and trusted. On the other hand, here was this double life, this secret life, that I didn’t know about. That his friends didn’t know about, that was secret and hidden. And that just existing was crazy making, was gaslighting.

And some of it was direct, as in, I’m working when he wasn’t working. He was caught before his behaviors got worse. At that point, the gaslighting, psychological trauma, or psychological abuse, and the betrayal trauma just increase exponentially the longer a woman is subject to that man living a lie.

My husband was a trained therapist at the time. He had worked in clinical mental health and then got his master’s degree the first year we were married. And then the third year of our marriage, right before all this came out, I was supposed to start my master’s degree.

Really, by the grace of God, I just didn’t have peace about doing the degree that summer.

The Aftermath & Realizations

Charlotte: It had been a goal for almost five years. I withdrew from the program. And almost to the day the program would have started, I caught him in a lie, and there’s no way I could go through this. I call it my master’s degree in trauma from God. I couldn’t have done that and actually been in school in a master’s program, so I would have ended up withdrawing anyway.

And then everyone would have known, and the shame. Because even though we haven’t done anything shameful, so many of us feel ashamed of what our husbands have done, and somehow feel like we’re shamed. How come I didn’t know, you know, what’s wrong with me that I didn’t see this? Our only crime is that we trusted. Nobody ever marries somebody they don’t trust.

I didn’t feel like I was released to divorce. Looking back, it was probably that trauma state that I was in. I can’t make a decision right now. So I’m going to watch and wait and see what happens. Is he angry, defensive, blaming and evasive? Does he continue to lie and gaslight? Was he like, look, I don’t like you. I don’t love you.

Anne: Yeah, I was in that boat too.

Setting Boundaries with an unintentional gaslighting husband

Anne: I encourage women to set boundaries immediately, whatever those are. Because with me, the gaslighting and emotional abuse was so extreme in the denial, the blaming and blame shifting, and all that, that I had to set a no contact boundary. There was literally no interaction where I wasn’t somehow blamed or gaslit. And so I set a no contact boundary, but I didn’t want to get divorced. And I waited, and then he didn’t do anything. He didn’t pursue me in any way. And then he filed for divorce.

It also felt emotionally disturbing to watch what he was doing from a safe distance. I mean, it was heart wrenching because he did everything I didn’t want him to do. First shut down the bank account, then files for divorce, then lies to everybody about what happened. Everything that is like a nightmare happened, and is actually still happening. In fact, I recently found out that he is becoming a mediator, and I think he’s doing that to prove to everyone that he’s the one that’s healthy. Even that he’s doing that, I’m like, he is full blown gone.

Like, there’s no part of him that recognizes the truth. We do not want women psychologically abused or emotionally abused for a year while thinking about what to do. You can set a boundary immediately and then make those life altering decisions later, or in my case, he, like, made his way out of my life. So the unintentional gaslighting husband was doing it on purpose.

Charlotte: Mm hmm. Yes, I agree. We had separate bedrooms. He slept on the floor in the living room, and I had the bedroom in the apartment to myself. And let me say to you, Anne, I’m so sorry.

Emotional & Psychological Damage

Charlotte: I’ve heard your podcast, but to hear your story today, my heart just breaks for the gaslighting and the blaming. It is so emotionally and psychologically damaging. That the person you’ve trusted that’s supposed to have your back is actually the one that’s turned against you in such a vicious way. I’m so sorry.

Anne: Right back at you, Charlotte. I’m so sorry for everything you went through, it’s such a difficult situation. Dealing with an unintentional gaslighting husband. Knowing what you know, now, if you could talk to your younger self, what would you tell her?

Charlotte: Well, you know, I would tell her it’s not her fault. I think I would reiterate that to my younger self. You know, it’s not your fault, whether it’s pornography use or other acting out. It’s not my fault that I trusted. And it’s not our fault if they’re compulsive liars, deceive us and gaslight us.

Anne: Thank you so much, for coming on today’s episode

Charlotte: Absolutely.

Anne: I’m so grateful that I’m not in that same place where I used to be. And that’s all thanks to the strategies I discovered and implemented. And then I wrote the Living Free Workshop so that you can benefit from them too. To learn more, click on this link.