Yes, I have experienced it. Not in the way that he was trying to make it out to be that he was my hero though.
My husband had a different purpose. He was trying to make me distrust myself and cover for his own actions.
I didn‘t realize it was gaslighting until my counselor pointed it out to me. The way she explained it was that he was trying to make me second guess myself. "Maybe I over reacted". "Maybe it wasn‘t so bad, because he is adamant that it didn‘t happen that way".
He was great at minimizing and switching gears when he messed up. Flat out lying was his speciatly. The bigger the lie the angrier he became. And he came off as such a nice guy to everyone else. My best friend saw through him though. Always consult your best friend BEFORE getting married.
Here are some of my experiences with gaslighting:
1. While on a trip with his family he got angry with me. I ended up going back to the hotel room to get away from him and try to figure out just what had happened. He came back and was screaming at me, yelling at the top of his lungs and repeatedly calling me a bitch and telling me I was selfish. I was sure his mother could hear him from the room next door, but she never came over. All of my children were in the room watching and hearing every word he said to me.
The next day he DENIED ever calling me a bitch or any other name or even yelling at me. My children didn‘t say anything in front of him for fear of the retribution. Later, My 14 year old said "Mom, he was too calling you a bitch". We were all here for it.
There were many instances like that one I will write down a few.
Another one was I had broken my foot while at work. I work nights. I called him and told him that I was in the emergency room and that I thought I had broken something. He was agitated and saying "what do you want me to do about it?" He was getting crabby. I was sad, hurt and in somewhat disbelief that my own husband would not come to the emergency room.
I did indeed break it. I called and told him that I did. He was angry with me and shouting what the hell do you want from me? I tried to remain calm and not bust out in tears in the emergency room in front of the doctor and nurses. I told him that I had a pair of crutches in a closet and we could save some money if I didn‘t buy a pair at the ER. I tried to make things easier on him by getting someone to wheel me out to my car. I had broken my left foot thankfully. I asked him to meet me in the driveway with my crutches and help me in.
He did not meet me in the driveway. In fact he did‘t even answer the phone when I got home. I hobbled into the house and tried to climb the steps. I yelled for him because I was in pain. My husband got out of bed stormed past me after asking what the hell I wanted. He pushed me on the stairs on his way to get me the crutches. He brought the crutches up from the downstairs closet and threw them violently at me...hitting my broken foot.
I had enough. As he was going down the hallway in tears I finally just said to him that I wanted a divorce. This is where he finally realized that his actions might cost him something. He didn‘t want that! So he returns, offeres to help me get the crutches to the right size. He doesn‘t apologize. He claims that I didn‘t or wouldn‘t explain to him properly what I wanted. He also says at this time it isn‘t his fault because he was in a deep sleep and didn‘t want to be woken.
The next day he has this grand idea that he is going to take a week off and help me out around the house. We had 4 children at the time two of them were only two and one years old.
So, he talks to his boss, takes a week vacation. He then tells everyone he knows how he is taking a weeks vacation to help me because of my broken foot. What he really does is play endless hours of online computer games. This is a vacation for him. My 12 year old ends up learning how to cook. The most he actually does is throw some laundry in the machines and then bring them to me to fold.
I was in a cast for 3 1/2 months. During which time was my 40th birthday. He didn‘t throw me a party, even though I asked for one. Instead he said he was going to have it at a place with steps, but didn‘t figure I could make it up the stairs in crutches. ....hello We have steps I had been doing in our house on crutches. At the last minute and while I am in tears he grudgingly takes us out for dinner.
This one is the creme de le creme of gaslighting. Totally blew my mind.
I will refer to this one as the "Crazy Dishwasher Incident".
Like I said before, I worked nights on the weekends. As for normal with my husband he would not do any cleaning or helping of anything while he was home alone. On this particular weekend my two oldest children were visiting their father. DLB (my soon to be ex husband) was home alone with our two young children. I put in about 32 hours in two days on the weekends.
I was upset when on Sunday morning I find that there isn‘t a clean bowl in the house to give my child cereal in. My husband comes out of the bedroom angry because I had to tell my 5 year old that I had to wash a dish before I could feed him...and clear off the table from every meal eaten while I was gone.
My husband blew up. He started taking all the dishes that my mother gave us and threw them on the floor busting them. My 5 year old son was in tears. From there my husband turned to kicking in our dishwasher. I could see the fear in my little boys eyes. I needed to make my husband stop his tantrum. I told him that I was going to call the police on him if he didn‘t leave to go calm down right now! DLB (this stands for DumbLazyBastard, my now preferred nickname for him) After yelling and calling me a ****, bitch and anything else he could think of he finally left.
DLB comes back a few hours later with two new boxes of dishes from walmart. He places them in our entryway with a card apologizing and then leaves for another hour or so.
In the card he states that he knows he has done wrong but he just doesn‘t want to talk about it when he comes home because it will make him angry.
He does come home. I am of course upset. I try to talk to him and explain that I don‘t like him calling me names, throwing things etc. He says he doesn‘t want to hear about it. I picked up a comic book off of our coffee table. I smacked it down like you would with a newspaper to make a point. I was telling him that the rules to our arguing were not to include names anymore and that this was hurting me!
This is when my husband stood up from the loveseat we were sitting on, whipped out his cell phone and called the police. I sat there in amazement as I listened to him tell them that I HIT him!
At this point I considered actually hitting him to make it true, but realized that he had called them and reported me, so he could now hit me and make it self defense.
I got up and went into the kitchen where I finished making pork chops that I had been making and waited for the police to arrive.
The police did show up. I told the officer what had happened. This hadn‘t been the first crazy phone call my husband had made to them. They asked him to leave for the evening after I explained what had been going on.
My husband swore that I hit him...even to ME. DLB then informed me that I was lucky I didn‘t leave a mark because they would have thrown me in jail....and maybe he shouldn‘t call the police next time.
I then began to realize that my husband had been trying to set me up.
I have quite a few more stories about my toxic husband, and his gaslighting attempts. I am still psychologically messed up from this stuff. I have a hard time realizing that THIS was my reality..and yes he was gutsy enough to pull this crap.
There are too many to write. But this has actually been good therapy for me. I had been so depressed about my failed marriage, and there is nothing I can do about it. I had to leave him to survive.