I mostly improv blues or stuff like Rob Martino (no idea what this genre would be called) on the guitar. With drums, I play along to any type of rock.

Asking people online if your partner is gaslighting you is serious concern for your situation, whether her behaviors were actually gaslighting or not. Your intuition is telling you something is wayyyyy off. Also, that you had to ask us and not close friends, family, or her herself is another major red flag. Either you are socially isolated and have no one to ask or you are protecting her reputation because you know that those behaviors would be judged quite poorly by people that care about you.

As someone that has dated something like that before, I know my words will not mean much to you. You will undoubtedly rationalize her behavior as her being justifiably triggered, reacting to childhood trauma, making a good point, cute because that’s how she communicates love, etc. Regardless, make a note of what everyone here is telling you. Her behaviors were not acceptable at all. There is no justification for them, and that you said it was the usual is troubling.

The best anyone can do for you now is be a voice of reason and direct you to learn about psychological and emotional abuse so you can see it and decide for yourself. Here are 2 resources that I found helpful when I was in your situation:

• Save Your Sanity is a series of videos/podcasts on being in a relationship with difficult people. She has all sorts of topics that are relevant, including how to spot gaslighting.

• The other is the book Should I Stay or Should I Go? Surviving a Relationship with a Narcissist by Ramani Durvasula. I like this one in particular because it has a questionnaire in it you can take to help you notice of you’re in a toxic relationship. Taking that questionnaire was the catalyst that started my escape. Check it out and be truthful. If she’s okay and this was just a unique experience, then there is nothing to worry about and the book will help you confirm that.

I highly recommend that you don’t tell you partner you are looking into this. Ask anyone that’s been in an abusive relationship. Shoot, make another AskLemmy post asking this. Telling a potential abuser/narcissist/manipulator that you are on to them is a HUGE mistake. Instead, look into it on your own during your free time. If she accidentally catches you, say you ran into this online and it seemed interesting. A healthy partner won’t even think about it anymore. If she starts with an interrogation, gets upset, or suddenly becomes the best girlfriend ever, that’s manipulation.

Certainly, she will commit more odd and questionable behaviors in the future. I urge you to maintain a secret log of her behaviors so that you can stay sane and notice. Please feel free to reach out. Don’t stay isolated. You can make another post, and you can even contact me directly via Matrix (see my profile). Good luck!

It’s true that the place may be dangerous. However, if it were, (1) you’d think OP would have known that already and not made the mistake of letting her walk in alone, and (2) she didn’t have to start with the absurd questioning in the middle of the night. She could have waited for a time when both of them were more mentally available.

I’ve been in dangerous cities and situations. You either address issues in the moment or if it’s no longer an immediate issue, whenever it’s a good time. They sleep in separate rooms, yet was standing over him in the kiddle of the night, then once he woke up, she started with an angry guilt trip disguised as fear. That was 100% her punishing him so that he wouldn’t ever not make her the priority at all times again.

Ok

👉

I forgot about people in the 90s selling out! That was so prominent at the time among artists.

plus, he’s definitely taking an adhd stimulant since Fox News et al. has been accusing Biden of doing that.

thanks!

So the new President just picks whomever they want to be Vice President? It doesn’t automatically become the Speaker of the House? Also, is there a confirmation process that the VP nominee has to complete similar to Supreme Court Justices?

What a useless deterrent

I bet they already have the conspiracy theories prepped for when Trump dies. It would be interesting for someone to make a Reddit post asking for MAGA to share their theories that someone is trying to terminate Trump, so that when he eventually passes from natural causes, we could pull that up as relevant info to see why no one did anything beforehand to prevent the attempt or if the conspiracy that emerges wasn’t stated before it happened.

I would start watching Fox News just to get the petty sense of revenge from watching them shit bricks over an all PoC cabinet.

Am American. Can someone explain the meaning of the departure and destination cities?

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4L56DPmFl8w&si=a_K_09lxXgRrlndG

omg, thank you very much!!

I think it’s because we are designed with a somewhat blank idea of what love is. We are born with a system that will become love, but we are born with it undefined. It’s similar to how we are born with a need for food, but not our culinary culture. It is during our formative years that we learn what love is just like we learn what delicious food is. Btw, in Spanish, when a kid doesn’t like to eat a specific food, it’s said that they haven’t learned to eat it yet. Back to the topic, the part that does come predefined is that we are to attach to our caregivers. Thus, we don’t leave them because we are designed to not leave them and have them teach us love.

Another issue is that as children, we don’t know we are being abused. What we’ve experienced in our families is all we know. From the perspective at this age, that’s just how life is. There’s no reason to leave.

Once we start realizing that not everyone goes through our experiences and that there are much nicer ways of relating to family, we can start recognizing that our familial situation is terrible and we want it to be different. The issue here is that there are only two options. Either you suffer the bad parts of the abuse while surviving on the breadcrumbs, or you lose any possibility of ever having a childhood family. The person basically has to decide to lose a major part of life. That is an immense amount of grief to endure, and they have to do it without the support of family. In these situations, the victim usually just kind of learns to manage the relationship unless there is a major catastrophic event that forces a decision. Otherwise, they’re learning how to overcome the frequent but comparatively tolerable difficulties. You’ll hear them say things like, “My dad is cool as long as you don’t expect him to…” or, “I love my mom, but I know not to…” They’re consolations to salvage their one opportunity. The decision is then to either (a) take a humongous hit by losing childhood family or (b) learn to deal with the most recent difficulty. The latter is much easier to brunt.

tl;dr: We don’t know it’s abuse. Instead, we are taught abuse is love. We are designed by birth to attach to our parents. And once we figure out it’s abuse, it’s a terribly difficult lose-lose decision to make where one option is addressing a recent issue and the other is nuclear.

I’d argue that your mind is learning what love it at that age. However you are treated by your caretakers is what you believe is love because we are born with no definition so that we can adapt to whatever circumstances. Adopting your family’s schema on love, when you age out of that family, you’ll find yourself in a similar situation.

As evidence, most adults in abusive relationships were abused as children. People often ask why adults stay in abusive relationships that are clearly terrible from the outside expecting practical reasons, like finances or kids. In reality, the victim will likely fall into another abusive relationship if they left because that’s what they think love is. Adults that were raised in non-abusive households would have left at the first red flags, whereas the adults raised in abusive households would find those red flags as signs they are loved. To them, they’re not red flags; they’re green flags. It isn’t after a string of these relationships or a really bad one that they seek help to change this pattern. The path is hard and burdensome because they have to tear down what they unconsciously learned and re-raise themselves without the guidance of a parent.

Same thing happens with the abusers, but they took on the identity of the abusive parent. They feel that love is allowing them to control and devalue their partner by whatever means. These people have much less chance of recovery because they don’t see a reason to change. If their relationships fail, then in their mind, it’s the victim’s fault. The abuser’s only lessons are how to change their abuse strategies so that victims don’t leave.

In conclusion, it’s not only that the child can’t leave. It’s that they’re completing a major developmental stage: learning what love is. They have no other options because we are designed that way.

@667@lemmy.radio roger 👍

Good idea! I have been at sea for over a month at a time, but that was with the Navy, so definitely not the same as sailing for pleasure. I know I really liked the peace of the sea. I can’t imagine how much nicer it is with the freedom to go anywhere there is a shore.

I think most female to male abuse comes in the form of emotional coercion. So, something like, if the guy doesn’t have sex with her how she wants, there will be consequences. Sometimes they’re explicit, such as when she actually says it openly. Other times, she communicates it implicitly for plausible deniability. For example, every time a guy is not interested in the moment, she does something that hurts him soon after. This could be from throwing a fit about some regular chore, to shaming them to their friends, to actively seeking attention from or cheating with other men.

I knew a girl that would tell everyone she was being abused before her boyfriend even knew it was happening. She would ask everyone to not say anything because she was scared he would abuse her more. She would also do things to make him angry in public so people would think he had an anger problem. People would start treating the boyfriend like shit, so he would start being isolated, which allowed her to abuse him more. If the boyfriend came out seeking help, no one would believe him and gaslight him further. The girl even went as far as telling relationship therapists that he was abusing her so that he had no escape while she now how documentation that he was abusing her. The girl was a completely deranged psychopath that did this with all her boyfriends. Of course, her friends were similar. One of her friend’s boyfriends committed suicide after they had an argument. The girl then milked that for pity points every chance she got.

I really advise everyone to learn about relationship abuse and vulnerable narcissists. They’re incredibly sneaky and brutally perverse, and anyone can fall for one. It takes a while for even trained relationship abuse therapists to catch on to them. Look it up on YouTube. There are many therapists and survivors that share their stories and guidance.