Can we please stop mis-using this term already? This isn't gas lighting. Gas lighting is when you specifically manipulate someone into questioning their own perception of reality. The pic is avoiding accountability, it's victim blaming, but is it gas lighting? no.
For example, if they had said "You're being paranoid, I could never cheat on you. Why can't you ever trust me?" THAT would be gas lighting.
So considering someone a dickhead isn't a perception of reality, it's an opinion. When we talk about someone questioning their perception of reality, we're talking about OBJECTIVE reality - absolute facts e.g. Seeing something happen with your own eyes, and then being told that it never happened.
What you're saying isn't an example of gas lighting because it's not doing that at all, it's just someone shifting responsibility for their own actions to the victim. The so called gas lighter is making no attempts at making the person question if they're crazy or delusional, or any attempts at trying to convince them that something that is objectively real never happened or isn't happening.
The guy doesn't deny objective reality, he doesn't deny cheating. He justifies his actions.
Thank you. Some people think their conclusions are facts and any denial or alternative explanation of them is gaslighting. It dilutes the true meaning of the word, and can even itself be a manipulative tactic. Telling someone what his/her thoughts, motives, intentions, or feelings are, and calling it gaslighting when they don’t agree, is its own form of manipulation and attempting to control the other person.
The example here isn’t the easiest one for explaining this because cheating is clearly fucked up and blame-shifting for it is, too, and that still doesn’t change the reality that words mean things.
Actually text book gaslighting is when you relight a gas lantern after a person already put out the flame, making them question if they really extinguished the flame or if they are losing their sanity.
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u/AmadeoSendiulo 2d ago