Gaslight or be gaslit

In the wide spectrum of domestic abuse, none so nebulous as gaslighting. This is when A writes the script and B is a bit actor. This is when A calls morning midnight and B meekly curls up to sleep.

For a while the gaslighter and the gaslit are a match made in heaven; yin and yang, Romeo and Juliet. Everything is hunky dory as long as hunky calls the shots and dory does as bid. The world can largely be divided – based on muscle, money and occasionally matrimony – into bullies and victims. Low self-esteem and insecurities, childhood abuse and dependency issues, marrying ‘up’ or ‘down’ can all culminate in stark couplings of brutal contrasts that remain invisible to everyone except the two involved.

The serpent in this Eden is one person’s sense of superiority, of entitlement. It could start small, with temper tantrums and homely gripes, of the picture not being nailed straight or the floor not being swept right or the curry being too salty. It tends to be dismissed as a case of OCD or a critiquing persona – one party turns supervisor while the other is staff. The patsy will apologise and promise to do better.

For the tyrant this is her/his narrative. In this story no wrong can be done by the storyteller, no aspersions cast on them. By the time the so-called ‘bumbler’ is alerted to facts, the relationship is cast in stone. To turn the tide would take superhuman strength and the victim is usually by now weak and worn out. They are no longer who they used to be, but have become a shadowy insubstantial nobody with no voice.