The Lingering Wounds of Gaslighting: How Doubting My Own Memory Became My Default

Trigger Warning: This post discusses emotional abuse, gaslighting, and the lasting psychological effects of manipulation. Please take care while reading.

Note: As always, I write under the name Flynn to preserve my own privacy and the privacy of those involved. Names have been changed.

A few months ago, I joined a polyamory Facebook group, just looking for a sense of community again. I’d left my last one after a long, painful campaign against me—something I’ll write about another time—but I missed feeling like I belonged somewhere.

Through the group, I started chatting with a woman I’ll call Ruth. She was dating someone named Nadine, and we started having group conversations in a chat together. It felt friendly, open, kind. Eventually, we made plans to go for a walk around a lake in a nearby village. It was a gorgeous day, and we all just talked and walked. That’s it. No drama. No intimacy beyond friendly conversation. Or so I thought.

Fast forward a couple of months, and a friend messages me out of the blue:

“Hey, did you guys have a threesome when you first met up?”

I froze. What?

To be clear: I hadn’t kissed, touched, or slept with either of these women. So I responded: “No… why?”

Apparently, there was a rumor going around that we had had a threesome. I reached out to Nadine to ask if she’d heard anything. She said she hadn’t. I was still confused, but I let it go for the moment.

More time passed. I was supposed to hang out with my partner, Ruth, and Nadine for a board game night—but it got cancelled. I later learned that Ruth had been making up multiple stories and lying to different people about what had happened between us, including the threesome rumor.

Now, the details of this story aren’t the main point. What is important is what happened in my head the moment my friend asked me:

“Did you guys have a threesome?”

My immediate reaction wasn’t certainty. It wasn’t a laugh or a “of course not.”
It was:

“Wait... how do I know that didn’t happen? What if it did and I just don’t remember it?”

That shook me. And I realized something really painful: I no longer fully trust my own memory.

I have aphantasia, which means I can’t visualize things in my mind’s eye. It also means that my memory is extremely tied to visual cues. I can watch the first 5 seconds of an episode of House MD I haven’t seen in years and suddenly recall the entire plot—but if you asked me to tell you what happens in “the one with the guy who coughs blood,” I’d draw a blank. That’s how my brain works.

This carries into my real life, too. Without photos or specific environmental triggers, I really struggle to recall specific events. So when someone tells me I said or did something I don’t remember… I sometimes just believe them. Even if it doesn’t feel right.

And that’s the part that ties back to Sammy.

That relationship only lasted six months, but I’m still untangling the damage. I was gaslit constantly. Sammy would claim I said things I hadn’t, done things I hadn’t, agreed to things I hadn’t. I would doubt myself, fawn, try to make things right, blame myself, and sink deeper into confusion and guilt. I’d bring these conversations to therapy—screenshots and all—and my therapist would help me walk back through the evidence. We’d look at what I had actually said. And over and over, it would turn out I hadn’t said or done any of the things I was being blamed for.

She just needed me to be wrong to justify her outbursts and behaviour.

And now? Even outside of that relationship, I still feel like I can’t trust myself. That incident with Ruth triggered it again—this deep, horrible sense that my own mind isn’t reliable. That maybe I did something terrible and just forgot. That I’m inherently untrustworthy, even to myself.

I keep wondering how something that short—a six-month relationship—can still hurt me like this. Still affect how I see myself, how I engage with other people, how I function in relationships. How I still feel broken and small, months or even years later.

In relationships, I want to trust my partner. I want to believe we’re on the same team. And because of that desire, I end up giving people so much room to hurt me. I extend so much grace that I lose track of what I actually need to feel safe.

But I also don’t want to become closed-off, suspicious, or defensive. I don’t want to act like a different person before and after trust is earned. I want to stay open, honest, vulnerable—but I also want to be safe.

So how do I find that balance?

How do I protect myself just enough, without shutting down or becoming someone I’m not? How do I rebuild a relationship with my own memory—my own sense of truth—so that I’m not always wondering whether I’m the unreliable narrator of my own life?

I don’t have answers yet. But I’m starting here—with this story, this post, this truth. Because even if my memory falters, my pain remembers. And I think that’s worth listening to.