Am I Being Gaslit or Am I the Problem

I don’t know what I want from writing this, apart from a place to vent, to be heard and understood.

Yet again, I’m trying to talk to my wayward wife and tell her how I’m feeling, only to be shut down. The whole conversation gets turned around, blamed on me, and then ends up being all about her.

It’s getting to a hard part of the year for me, and for the first three years she was there for me and understood. However, things started to change ever so slightly a couple of years ago. I always told my wife that I knew all the signs and I would look out for them. One of the signs was that she started to lose weight.

I have been noticing her losing weight for some time, and I have said this to her directly. After all, this was the first thing I noticed at the start of her affair all those years ago. I started noticing this about 12 months ago. When I used to bring this up, she would reassure me that she isn’t losing weight and has no intention to lose weight as she didn't need to which I agreed. I listened and sort of accepted what she was saying, but I never really believed it.

Fast forward to now. I understand that this could all be because of the time of year we are about to enter. I also understand that I have no right to say what my wife does with her own body. But this isn’t about that. This is about more than that in my head.

Instead of her understanding now, it feels like she is gaslighting me. She is saying that she knows she isn’t losing weight and that’s all that matters. She has basically said that I’m hurting her feelings. She says it’s wrong of me to question her weight when she knows she doesn’t need to lose any. That’s the thing—she doesn’t need to lose any weight, and I’m questioning why she is losing it and for who. She is 100% loosing weight and i have shown her pictures to show this.

She is now saying that I don’t understand how this affects her and that it’s wrong for me to say she is losing weight when she isn’t. She is using phrases like I’m constantly on at her and that I don’t do anything around the house— the exact words she was using last time.

I don’t think she is having another affair, but I do think I’m starting to annoy her more and more. She holds it against me that I’m not further along than I should be after all these years. She knows I’m struggling. I have told her this, and she has left me to deal with it alone. She ignores my cries for help when she can see I’m having an off day. Things have changed in the bedroom. It feels more like she is doing it once a week just to say we are doing something, rather than because she wants to.

Whenever I say how I’m feeling, she turns it around and says, "Well, what about me?" She seems to think that my feelings don’t matter anymore because it’s all about her. She believes I should be past this by now. SHe has used these words.

People say you should talk to your spouse about how you’re feeling. But what do you do when the person you are talking to doesn’t listen, or worse, turns it around so you become the one in the wrong and it becomes all about them?

Don’t get me wrong—if she were here now, she would probably say exactly the same about me. But the fact is, I’m struggling and I need her to listen and understand without judgment or making it about herself. If it wasn’t for the affair, we wouldn’t be where we are now. The way she sees it is that if it wasn’t for me acting the way I am now, we would be past this. Her words are that it’s not her that’s breaking up our family—it’s me, because of how I’m acting now.

It feels like I’m being manipulated and gaslit into questioning myself. Is this really my fault, is she really loosing weight or is it really in my head.

4 comments posted: Tuesday, March 17th, 2026

Am I making a mountain out of a mole hill?

Would you be annoyed if your wife valued everyone’s opinions, but yours?

My wife got a tattoo. She didn’t show me the designs. She didn’t say, "This is the design I’m getting — what do you think?" She didn’t even tell me when she was having it done.

I questioned my wife about this, and her response was that I didn’t ask and that I took no interest in it. The only reason I knew she was getting a tattoo was because I said I would buy it for her birthday.

She showed her family, our daughter, and her friends at work. But all I got was the bill. I would have liked to have seen the designs and talked about her thoughts with her. I wanted to feel included.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Before she had the affair five years ago, I remember her saying that she doesn’t care what I think. If she likes something, my opinion doesn’t matter to her. It hurt then, and I still remember that day today. I thought we were past that, but after her acting like this, it makes me feel that I’m irrelevant and that my opinion really doesn’t matter with regards to her life.

This isn’t about control or saying she can or can’t have a tattoo — it’s her body, she is her own person, and she makes her own decisions. But it’s about the fact that a tattoo, which will be clearly visible and is permanent, is something you would at least talk to your husband about with regards to designs.

I brought this up, and she is now saying that it’s my fault. I should have asked, and I wasn’t interested. If she really felt that way, why hasn’t she brought this up before now? Why is she only bringing this up now that I’ve expressed feeling excluded and like I don’t matter?

Ever since her affair, I have been feeling second best — left out, always like I’m at the bottom of the queue. Everyone else seems more important.

It feels like I’m no longer allowed to express how I feel, and she shuts me down or turns it back onto me.

Am I being unreasonable? Am I making a big deal out of nothing?

22 comments posted: Friday, February 20th, 2026

Stuck with no support and feel manipulated...

I don’t know what I really want from posting this but feel like I just need to off load.

I feel like I’m being manipulated by my WW. Im told I need to move on and I cant keep doing this. I tried to tell my WW that I am struggling. Her response was that "you are always struggling".

I feel when I need to look to her for support, she turns defensive, then accuses me of starting an argument. It feels like she made her choices and now wants me to accept them under her terms and in her time scale.

When we are fine she says that she understands how I feel and that I never treated her badly or give her any reason to have an affair. But then when we argue she is telling me that Im being horrible to her. I have noticed a pattern. When she says I’m horrible is when I have brought up the affair or tried to get some reassurance about the state of our marraige.

I feel like I cant talk to her anymore. At times she has even said I chose to stay. So I have made my choice and I have to let it go. She has said that I never think how she feels. Her words were i only ever thing about myself and its all me, me, me.

I have asked how she thinks I feel trying to move on after what she did. Her response was how do I think she feels because she lives this every day too.

It feels like anything I say to her she finds a way of putting it back on to me. She says she loves me, but I’m hard work. She keeps asking why am I doing this? Why I I bring up the affair, why am I looking for reassurance when she has said she isn’t going anywhere.

She even said that it’s not her affair destroying our marriage its me. Because I won’t let it go.

I just don’t know how to get out of this slump that we are in.

22 comments posted: Friday, December 12th, 2025

Left to deal with things on my own when all I need is answers...

Hello,

I really need some advice from people who understand and have been where I am now.

I feel that four years after my wife’s affair, things should be better — and they were, for a period of time. But this seems to be eating me up inside. The resentment and the feeling of being "not enough" are getting the better of me.

I have no friends apart from people I work with. I have no money for therapy. I don’t attend a gym. I don’t have any social life whatsoever, and neither does my wife. I’m a family man — my family is all I have, and I’m happy with that.

I have never really gotten answers from my wife, apart from her saying she was stupid and it was a mistake. But something inside me still feels uneasy.

There probably isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t think about the affair or mention it in some form or another to my wife. Whether that’s me bringing it up directly or expressing that I feel unwanted, unloved, and second-best — but most of all, stupid.

She has always said that she didn’t like her AP, that they just got on, had fun, and it was a laugh. She has always maintained that — even though I knew it was a lie. But a few nights ago, she admitted that she did like him. Even though I already knew, hearing it makes me feel uncomfortable. It feels like she has been lying to me all this time.

Her defense is that "that was then, and this is now." She liked him, but she doesn’t like him anymore.

This is something that’s playing on my mind. But it’s also the way she has dealt with my pain over the past few days that worries me. She used to be there when I needed to talk. She would always reassure me. But now, her words feel hollow. They’re just words.

She has turned cold.

She got really defensive and told me, "You can’t keep doing this. It has to stop." I questioned why she spent four years trying to convince me she didn’t like him — only now to admit that she did. Her answer was, "I did like him, but I don’t now."

I asked her to sit down and talk with me. She went mad. She told me that I’m destroying our family. She said, "Yes, I did what I did, but now we’re fixing things and you are destroying everything." She even called me a "dickhead" for acting like this.

Acting like what? I was just questioning why she told me she liked someone else.

The real problem for me is how she reacted. The way she spoke to me. The fact she walked away, even when I begged her to talk to me. She left the house and left me sitting there, thinking all sorts of things.

When she got home, I tried to speak to her calmly. She just said, "Here we go again. I thought you’d stop, but you keep asking questions. I’ve told you everything." She told me I can’t keep doing this — to man up, get over it, or get out.

Where did this come from?

When things calmed down, I asked her why she blew up like that. She blamed me. She said I’m destroying our family, and if I don’t stop, I’ll start losing things. She was threatening me.

In four years, she’s never been this harsh or this cold. She later said she just got angry and didn’t mean it. She said she knows I need to talk and she wouldn’t silence me.

But I’m struggling…

I don’t see this as my fault — and neither does she, at least not openly. But she says I have to stop, and I can’t keep doing this. I don’t feel like I’ve had the answers I need.

I don’t want to leave her. She says she doesn’t want to leave me — that if she wanted to, she would have gone by now. She says she’s going nowhere. But things feel strained. Our communication is fine, as long as we’re not talking about the affair.

But now, all I can think about is that she liked him.

When we argue, she tells me how bad I am — how I’m miserable, how we never do anything, how we never go anywhere. She even said I wasn’t a very good father figure. She puts me down — and then when we talk about the affair, she tells me how her AP made her feel good, how they had fun, and how it was a laugh.

In my head, all I see is that she liked him, they had sex, and they had fun.

Meanwhile, with me, she puts me down and tells me how bad I am. After an argument, she says she didn’t mean it and she just gets angry — but in my mind, that’s not right.

I don’t know what to do from here. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want her to leave. I want to get on with our lives — and she says she does too. But when she thinks things are going well, I start all over again, asking questions she says I’ve already had the answers to.

But I haven’t had the answers.

I don’t know what to do. I’m lost. I don’t know which way to turn.

Things are just a mess.

Im sure many people have felt like I do. But how did it get any better? I don't want to leave. I don't want a divorce. I want the truth. I want to fix things and get our lives back on track.

Is that even possible? I just need to talk with someone that understands.

16 comments posted: Tuesday, October 7th, 2025

The mind games to don't allow you to move forward...

First time poster, long time follower of many of the stories on this forum.

My wife cheated just over 4 years ago and had a very short couple of months affair. I have been struggling ever since. Things haven’t got any easier, they have just changed. In fact everything about my life and about my marriage has changed.

One of the things that has stuck in my mind and I can’t seem to get away from is the fact that she had sex with another man.

For the people that are in the same posistion, how did you allow you mind to move away from the fact that they have stayed, they have said they are sorry, but they still have been else where. How do you feel less stupid while the affair was going on, but just as stupid for trying to accept it and forgive knowing what you know.

I look at my wife and she says she loves me but some where inside my mind keeps reminding me that she was with another man. It’s like he was better, he was more fun, she desired him sexually.

Im never going to be as exciting as an affair. But all I think of is she is making do with me. Im not what she wants.

How do you move past the feelings and not let is destroy what you have left or what your trying to fix?

19 comments posted: Friday, August 29th, 2025