What Is Gaslighting? Meaning, Examples and Signs in Relationships

What is gaslighting?

Gaslighting is a pattern of manipulation in which one person repeatedly denies, twists or rewrites what happened, until the other person starts doubting their own memory, perception and judgement. The gaslighting meaning, in one line: they make you distrust your own mind, so you rely on theirs.

It rarely starts big. It starts with "That's not what I said." Then "You're overreacting." Then, months later, you find yourself apologising for a fight you are fairly sure they started, and keeping screenshots so you can check your own memory.

That last part is the giveaway. What makes gaslighting in relationships so hard to see is what the pattern does to you over time: you stop trusting yourself.

If you can't tell whether you are being gaslit or just stuck in a messy argument, it helps to lay the whole thing out for someone outside it. Adoree, an AI relationship assistant, gives you a private place to do that by voice or text, remembers what you shared last week, and helps you see whether you are looking at a one-off or a pattern.

Where the word comes from: Gas Light (1938)

The term comes from Gas Light, a play by the British writer Patrick Hamilton that premiered at the Richmond Theatre in London on 5 December 1938. In it, a husband in Victorian London sets out to convince his wife she is losing her mind. When the gas lamps in their house dim, he insists she is imagining it.

The play became two films called Gaslight: a British version in 1940 and George Cukor's 1944 Hollywood version, for which Ingrid Bergman won the Academy Award for Best Actress.

The word has had a second life since. Merriam-Webster named "gaslighting" its 2022 Word of the Year after lookups on its site rose 1,740% on the year before. That popularity cuts both ways. More people can now name what is happening to them. And the word gets used for far more than it means.

What gaslighting is not

Gaslighting is a repeated pattern of denying your reality to control you. It is not the same as disagreeing with you, misremembering, getting defensive in a fight, or telling one lie. Those can hurt, and some need addressing, but calling them gaslighting makes real gaslighting harder to spot and turns ordinary arguments into accusations.

Here is how to tell them apart:

The test comes down to three questions. Is it repeated? Does it attack your sanity or memory rather than your point? Does it always leave them right and you doubting? If the answer to all three is yes, take it seriously.

Defensiveness in particular gets mislabelled. If your partner tends to shoot back with excuses during a row, that is one of the patterns John Gottman calls the Four Horsemen, along with contempt in relationships. Worth fixing. Different problem.

Gaslighting examples and phrases

These are common gaslighting examples. The National Domestic Violence Hotline groups the tactics into withholding, countering, blocking or diverting, trivialising, and forgetting or denial. Here is what each tends to sound like in a couple:

And some real-life shapes it takes:

• The moved keys. Things are moved, hidden or "lost", then you are told you misplaced them. Again.
• The rewritten fight. They shouted; by the next morning, you were the one who "lost it".
• The public doubt. They tell friends you have been "struggling lately", so your account sounds unreliable before you give it.
• The flipped complaint. You raise a concern and leave apologising for raising it. If that is the main pattern, read about blame-shifting.

Any one of these phrases on a bad day proves very little. Heard on repeat, aimed at your memory, they are the pattern.

Signs you are being gaslit

The clearest sign of gaslighting is what it does to you. You second-guess yourself constantly, feel confused after ordinary conversations, apologise without knowing what for, and start collecting proof of your own memory. Psychology Today describes how it wears people down until they rely on the gaslighter's version of reality instead of their own.

Other signs to notice:

• You rehearse conversations in your head before having them.
• You make excuses for your partner's behaviour to friends or family.
• You often wonder if you are "too sensitive".
• You can't remember the last time you felt sure of something about the relationship.
• You feel calmer and clearer when you are away from them.

You don't need to be certain before you trust these signs. Gaslighting works precisely by making you uncertain.

Why people gaslight

Most people who gaslight want control: over the relationship, the story of what happened, or how others see them. Some learned it growing up. Some reach for it in panic when they feel caught. According to Psychology Today, it can be learned in childhood and is linked to some personality disorders, and some people do it without full awareness.

Sociologist Paige Sweet adds a layer most guides skip. In a 2019 study in the American Sociological Review, she interviewed women who had survived domestic violence and found that gaslighting leans on wider stereotypes, especially the old idea that women are irrational. It works best where the target is already easy to doubt, so the abuser's version sounds plausible to police, family and friends. Several of the women told her they preferred physical abuse to the psychological kind.

That doesn't mean only men gaslight or only women are targets. Anyone can do it, in any kind of relationship. It means the tactic gets its power from whoever is already less likely to be believed.

When you both say "you're gaslighting me"

Here is the part most articles miss. In a lot of couples, both people use the word. One remembers a promise; the other remembers a maybe. Each feels the other is rewriting history. Each calls it gaslighting.

Often, neither is. Two honest memories can disagree, and the word becomes a weapon in an ordinary argument about what was said. The way through is to stop arguing about the transcript and talk about the feeling: "I left that conversation thinking we'd agreed, and it hurt when we hadn't." Agree to write down big decisions in the shared notes app from now on.

This is where hearing both sides helps. Adoree talks with each partner separately and privately, so each of you can tell your version in full without being interrupted. Over time, it becomes clearer whether you are two people with different memories, or whether one person's account keeps erasing the other's.

How to respond to gaslighting

The most useful response to gaslighting is to stop trying to win the argument about what happened. A gaslighter can always produce another version. Instead, trust your record, state your view once, step out of the debate, and get an outside perspective from people who know you.

1. Keep a private record. Dates, what was said, what happened next. Keep it somewhere only you can reach. This is for you, so you can check your memory against something steady.
2. Use a short line, then stop. "I remember it differently, and I'm not going to argue about my memory." You don't need them to agree.
3. Name the pattern once, calmly. "When I raise something, I'm told I imagined it. That keeps happening." Watch whether anything changes.
4. Stay close to your people. Friends and family are a reality check gaslighting tries to remove.
5. Talk it through. Saying it out loud to someone outside the relationship makes the pattern easier to see. Adoree is one place to do that, privately, at any hour. Your conversations stay yours.
6. Notice what changes when you push back. Someone who loves you might be defensive at first, then listen. Someone controlling you tends to escalate.

If you feel afraid, skip steps 2, 3 and 6 and go straight to getting support. Confronting someone controlling can make things more dangerous.

When gaslighting is part of coercive control

Gaslighting often sits inside a wider pattern called coercive control: isolating you from friends, monitoring your phone, controlling money, making threats. Together they are domestic abuse, even when nobody has been hit. When these cycles repeat over time, they can also produce trauma bonding: an attachment that forms when harm and relief keep coming from the same source, making it very hard to leave.

In England and Wales, a pattern of controlling or coercive behaviour in an intimate or family relationship has been a criminal offence under section 76 of the Serious Crime Act 2015 since 29 December 2015. According to the Crown Prosecution Service, it carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

You don't need to fit every row for it to matter. If any of this feels familiar, support is free and confidential:

• US: National Domestic Violence Hotline, 1-800-799-7233, text START to 88788, or chat at thehotline.org. Open 24/7.
• UK: Refuge's National Domestic Abuse Helpline, 0808 2000 247, free and open 24 hours (nationaldahelpline.org.uk).
• UK, for men: Men's Advice Line, 0808 8010 327, a freephone line open on weekdays (mensadviceline.org.uk).

If you are in immediate danger, call 999 in the UK or 911 in the US.

For trust that has been shaken by something other than control, our trust and cheating hub has more. And if you are early in something new and the warmth feels a little too intense, read about love bombing, which often comes before gaslighting.

When you're ready to say what has been happening, start small. Talk to Adoree, and begin with the moment that didn't add up.