By Lisa S. Tarno

Another year passed and another year of being gaslit by said person in previous article happened again. Gaslighting is defined as, “To cause (a person) to doubt their judgement, memory, or sanity through the use of psychological manipulation. To deceive ( a person or group of people) through repetition of a constructed false narrative.” Einstein has quoted, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I had to re-read my own advice to help navigate my emotions this year as well. Right smack dab in Einstein’s quote is the key word: EXPECTING!

For the case of not appearing insane, I was HOPING for different results…which is a form of expecting. Hoping is the more soft sided part of expecting. I convince myself that hoping for one’s change is more palatable than the hard and fast tone of expecting. Ugh! How many times have I proverbially felt like Charlie Brown with that stupid football that Lucy kept swiping away? Too many!

The subject of so much of my pain is a mentally broken person. They are a different version of someone I used to know. I’ve had to compartmentalize them this way to protect my heart and mind. I once held them in higher regard but now I have to force myself to remember the good. There was some goodness mixed in with all the dysfunction. When asked about why they do what they do or don’t do, I’m at a loss for an explanation. I wish it were explained to me as well. 

I tried my own advice from last year:

“I can carefully share my feelings on what happened and what I desired to happen instead and work from there to evaluate how to proceed in our relationship.

This year’s analysis: There didn’t seem to be a bandwidth of reasoning in this relationship. Any concerns shared from the heart were seemingly acknowledged but dismissed just as quickly. A head snap back to gaslighting of “I’m sorry YOU felt that way.” 

Asking good open ended questions was a start: 

What do you want from our relationship?

This year’s analysis: It’s obvious they don’t want to change or even think they need to. The burden is supposedly mine and mine alone. What I point out as truth is taken as me “stirring things up”. They want me to call their behavior normal when it is not. 

What do you envision our relationship to be? 

This year’s analysis: I now see that my hopes and/or expectations of what our relationship would be at this season are drastically different and shockingly fall short of anything beneficial. Now, I see it as falling into the shallow, obligatory and meaningless politeness.

What do we need to tweak to make it work better?

This year’s analysis: Nothing could be and still cannot be planned! We tried spontaneity. 

That didn’t work.

How can we continue to get together and what does that look like?”

This year’s analysis: Getting together proved to be more laborious than not. It was often on their limited time table and controlled by them and the overarching elephant in the room (their abnormal behavior and mindset). If by chance we did get together, then the ultimate gaslighting: they acted AS IF NOTHING EVER HAPPENED! 

This is the part of the equation that throws me off. Acting as if nothing happened…sweeping things under the rug….wrongful advice of forgive and FORGET. Forgive…YES, but the problem is we don’t forget. Some people can do this to maintain a status quo of a dysfunctional relationship. Some view it as being mentally tough…I see it as being glaringly dysfunctional and alarmingly wrong. Some do it to KEEP THE PEACE but we were never called to keep the peace…as believers we are PEACE MAKERS! Making peace involves revealing the truth and living with the tension and hopefully the resolution. 

I understand that we must choose our battles and some are just not worth fighting because the end result will be that nothing changes. So there we stand, alone on our island of truth-be-told, wondering if anyone else sees what we see. And in this case, they do but our desired resolution, a healthier relationship, is but a distant ship sailing away! Our hopes (a softer form of expectations) are diminished. This is what I wrestle with!

What would Einstein say? I surmise that I need to do something different and have no expectations. This would be the inverse definition of insanity and how to be a sane person. For the friends of mine counseling such advice, there is a resounding…”YES…THIS is what we have been telling you!!!” I will say it is much easier SAID than DONE! It’s like my heart believes this to be true but I get stuck of putting it into practice. I am like Charlie Brown! I, too, would counsel him to stop trusting Lucy with the football no matter how it looks because past behavior is a future predictor of one’s behavior.

My family of origin is so broken and I often look up to God and wonder what can be done. I realized that my moorings, i.e. my stability or security, cannot come from a broken family system. Really they can’t be from anything outside of God because people are fallible and will let us down. They can certainly help prop us up to engage in life more successfully but ultimately, they can’t sustain us indefinitely. This is such a bizarre path and really I don’t know of anyone close to me who has traveled this particular path. My hope is that as God gives me light for my path, in time I can share the lessons and help light the path for others. 

New year….new leaf! I’m going to behave like a sane person. I choose to do different, live my life to the fullest, really try to have no expectations on anyone. I resolve to be healthier all around. Just like when my kids were gnarly teenagers with their attitudes, I said to myself, “I’ll see you on the other side” meaning that one day they would mature and our relationship would be better. In this case, with some people, I have to mentally say, “I will see you on the other side” and hope for restored person in eternity.