Signs your partner manipulates you: How to spot gaslighting
Explore the main relationship warning signs you shouldn't ignore (photo: Styler)
After talking to your partner, you may feel a difficult-to-explain discomfort. Constant guilt, doubts about your own memory, and violations of personal boundaries are all reasons to take a closer look at the relationship.
Life coach Vitalii Kursik told RBC-Ukraine exclusively how to recognize manipulation.
Feeling guilty and doubts
The expert says the first warning sign may be a situation in which a person constantly feels guilty after a conversation, even though they did nothing wrong.
Manipulation is not always obvious. In particular, the other person may repeatedly deny your memories of events.
"You remember one thing, they tell you something else happened, and after a few rounds like that, you no longer trust your own memory," the life coach explains.
He describes this as gaslighting: gradually, a person becomes accustomed to doubting their own perception.
Crossing boundaries under guise of jokes
Another sign is repeated violations of personal boundaries that a partner keeps justifying. For example, by saying, "I was just joking" or "It's not that serious."
The expert advises paying attention specifically to how often this behavior occurs.
"Healthy relationships are when your 'no' is reason enough, and you don't have to justify it over three pages for it to be respected," he emphasizes.
Feeling drained after conversations
The life coach also suggests paying attention to how you feel after conversations with your partner.
"After talking to your partner, you have less energy, not more. Consistently, time after time, not just because you've had a difficult day," Vitalii Kursik says.
He is referring to recurring exhaustion combined with the other signs of pressure described above. According to the life coach, people may blame this kind of fatigue on outside factors for a long time rather than linking it to the relationship.
The expert emphasizes that conflicts also occur in emotionally healthy relationships. What matters is how a person feels in the relationship overall.
"Emotionally healthy relationships, even when there are conflicts, give you energy. Manipulative ones take it away, and you don't notice it for a long time because you're used to blaming the exhaustion on something else," he concludes.
This material is for informational purposes only and should not be used for medical diagnosis or self-treatment. Our goal is to provide readers with accurate information about symptoms, causes, and methods of detecting diseases. RBС-Ukraine is not responsible for any diagnoses that readers may make based on materials from the resource. We do not recommend self-treatment and advise consulting a doctor in case of any health concerns.
