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I try my best to do the opposite for my partner, giving her a safe space and empower her to advocate for herself. Even when we have disagreements, I go out of my way to make sure she knows her point of view's valid and that I care about what she thinks.
I've been in gaslighting relationships before, so I strive to foster an environment that's the opposite of that for both of us. ❤️
Excellent point. Allowing space for reflection and self discovery is important.
It's tough because she has a lot of trauma too. Sometimes there's power imbalance caused by perception and trauma, wherein she feels like even if I say she should speak her mind, I'll get upset if she does. Vigilance is necessary to regain balance. ^^
Yep, trauma is a powerful beast. My partner has also been working on this and she's made some amazing progress. Despite that, she still recognizes the triggers are still there and works through them
What do you do when your partner accuses you of gaslighting because they have zero self confidence?
Example, the wife accused me of throwing away the kid’s pacifier, which I didn’t do.
She keeps badgering me so i just said ok, i did, I threw it away.
So she looks in the trash, and it was in there. And I literally, honestly, had nothing to do with it, our 2yo put it in the trash, which I didn’t know.
She was all twisted up and I had nothing to say 🤷♂️
I suspect there's something else potentially going on. I'm not a therapist, so I can't offer advice, but I can share experiences.
I had a partner at one point that would jump to conclusions without context. She would assume I had done things that I had not, and blame me for it. Later in life, I learned that she had been projecting her insecurities on me. This may have been the easier route compared to dealing with the root causes.
Dealing with those root causes would have been incredibly painful and would require some serious reevaluation of her value structure and decision making. That's not a journey for the lighthearted.
My partner refused to go to therapy, and I think that was a mistake. I've been seeing a therapist for almost a year now and it's the best thing I could have done.
I hope my story helps you in some way.