Battling A Gaslighting Wolf In ‘Woke’ Clothes
In a country where rape is considered a husband’s conjugal right, what if abuse is emotional and the scars mental?
Almost a year ago, a landmark judgement in Ireland announced that psychological and emotional abuse in intimate relationships would be considered a crime in that country. While I know I will not live to see the day when India acknowledges emotional abuse, let alone consider it a crime, it does seem like the beginning of a revolution.
Because there is no policy in place to persecute someone of it, I did not report my abuser either. Emotional abuse has a way of paralysing its victims as it is. So, after three attempts to end my life, and a tattoo to remind me that I am alive, I decided I didn’t want to be in hiding anymore. And if you are in an emotionally abusive relationship, I hope you find strength through my story.
I dated (for a year) and married my ex-husband with unanimous support from both families. He was charming, smart, and knew just the words to say to me. He said he loved me, and that he had never met someone so “right” for him. It made me believe in the age-old cliche of him being “the one” — a textbook requirement for a happy marriage, perhaps. Almost ten years later, I am still struggling to put in words how it was anything but happy, and how I am still met with suspecting frowns from even close family members when I call this an “abusive relationship.”
Emotionally abusive behaviour is never obvious
- Abuse begins slowly.
At first, my ex-husband left no stone unturned to make sure I was happy. He would run to the pharmacy to buy sanitary pad/pain meds in the middle of the night. He kept accumulating these cookie points until I didn’t even realise he was no longer that guy. He started manipulating me by exploiting my gratitude.
- Abusers are intelligent and conniving.
Abusers are thorough in what they do — they leverage traits that are allegedly easy to manipulate. He knew that I was desperate for approval from a male figure because of my past, and made the most of it.
- Kind of abuse varies from person to person.
Unlike physical abuse that entails scars, gaslighting doesn’t have any external ramifications. Abuse could mean belting you by calling you names or berating you in front of others. Some of the serious ones involve physical or sexual violence and/or abstinence.
Some abusers abstain from having sex despite being “loving” to their spouses. While I never dared to confront him about it, the one time that I did, he gaslighted me further claiming that this “arrangement” was mutually agreed upon. Some abusers who find women not fitting a certain “type” — submissive or servile — use sex abstinence as a control tactic.
- Guilt.
Whenever I mustered the courage to call him out for his callous attitude towards me, he would always threaten to kill himself. He would make me feel guilty about something he did, and I would end up grovelling all night outside his closed door. His entire charade was dependent on how guilty he made me feel. Even if I bent backward to please him, he would make me feel remorseful for falling short of some asinine detail.
- Abusers snatch your agency.
My abuser preferred to never lose control over me. If I gathered motivation to achieve something on my own without him, he created a giant subversion by scaring me. Once when I was away, he falsely claimed that he was “suicidal and bleeding,’’ which made me terrified of leaving him. He might appreciate my work enough to have me hooked to him, but if he believed I might walk away, he would berate me (and my work) till I am left stifled by self-doubt.
- The ‘Mad Woman’ paradox.
He would always either deny, deflect or ignore my words until such a point that I lost my mind over it. He would downplay my obvious breakdowns by claiming that I was “making it about myself”. A massive red flag. Even during my breakdowns, he would blame me for not caring about his “feelings”. He would use it against me to provoke me further saying, “I don’t want to have this conversation with you when you are yelling.” — a classic gaslighting technique that women know only too well about.
- Making excuses for him.
When my ex-husband finally came clean and ended the marriage, I started covering up his mess. I did not tell my family that I was in an abusive marriage. Instead, I tried to explain why he is a “nice guy” and that our separation was just “unfortunate but amicable!” I did not even refute the claims my extended family made about my “overtly progressive” lifestyle that cost me my marriage.
How does he get away with it, how does he veil it?
Even when men are blatantly abusive, society questions the woman about what she did to incite it. It becomes harder when the abuser is a wolf wearing ‘woke’ clothes. This ‘woke man’ phenomenon is a hard one to beat, especially when he is in full agreement with you about the inequalities in our society, skewed gender roles, etc. His ‘wokeness’ was his biggest veil.
Abusers always find allies because gaslighting is a difficult job to be done alone. These allies may include your family and friends. A significant percentage of women do not have the courage to stand up against their abusers because she is stripped of a support system from their own family the moment she is married off. In a gaslighting relationship, where your abuser has charmed your family, you are on your own.
Knowing that there is nothing that would penalise him, enables him more. There is no way you can prove intent or display bruises, and that’s his biggest cover.
How do you seek help when nobody is on your side?
An experiment conducted by American psychologist Martin Seligman called “learned helplessness,” where the victim is unable to escape or avoid abuse made complete sense to me. I was afraid of leaving him; I was worried that if he did something to himself, I would be held responsible. But the first step is to believe that what is happening to you is NOT on you and move out when there is a clear indication of abuse.
The longer you stay, the harder it will be to get out. In my case, he left town to be with someone else, and continued to claim I was his “best friend!” read: no alimony. Find a friend or family member you can trust, and confide in them. When you can’t figure a way to help yourself, let them help you. Do not fall for the baits he might use to make you stay.
As I sit here chronicling a small portion of what happened to me, a chill runs down my spine remembering what it was like to be knocking at a door that he slammed shut claiming he will kill himself.
I won’t claim that it was easy. I had given up a million times before I even took the first step towards recovery. It will be a long time before I am healed of these invisible bruises. But as I am stumbling in the process, I am learning to be kind to myself, to love and to finally move on.
It might seem like an arduous and futile exercise to ruminate and remind ourselves that we deserve to be happy, but this painful introspection would also rid us of any remnant self-doubt, and false assumptions of our traumatic experience.
Vaishnavi is a feminist writer and activist with a background in mental health advocacy. Subscribe to get her latest posts directly in your inbox.
