S2 E20 The Stuff Under the Stuff: Gaslighting (Part 1)

As I prepare to get married in just a few weeks, I've found myself looking back at a chapter of my life that changed everything. In this deeply personal episode, I share the story of how I learned what gaslighting really is—and the shocking moment I realized I had been living it for years.

What began as innocent jokes and confusing conversations slowly became something much darker. I found myself questioning my memory, doubting my judgment, and wondering if something was wrong with me. Then one Google search changed everything.

We'll talk about what gaslighting is, how it works, why it is so damaging, and how the enemy uses confusion to separate us from truth. I'll share my own story of deception, the painful discovery that followed, and the biblical connection between gaslighting and the very first deception in the Garden of Eden.

If you've ever questioned your reality, ignored red flags, doubted yourself, or wondered how you ended up in a situation you never saw coming, this episode is for you.

The stuff under the stuff isn't always what happened to us. Sometimes it's what happened inside us because of it.

Thanks for listening to Me Again, God with Charlene Condu.
If today connected with you, I’d love to hear your story.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

He said I took it wrong again. He said, girl, that's not what I said. But I remember every detail. Why you gotta mess with my head? I was just kidding. He said with a smile. Like I'm supposed to laugh alone, but I don't get what's so funny. Why does it feel so wrong? Do I was a Christian woman? Still you play me with your devil tongue. Said you were washed in the blood, but your life said something.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Welcome back to Me Again, God. I'm your host, Charlene Condue. And today we're continuing our series, The Stuff Under the Stuff. I'm excited to announce, in just a couple weeks, I'm getting married. And if you've been listening for a while, you know that statement carries a lot more weight than it might sound like. Because this isn't my first wedding. I've planned a wedding before. I bought the dress, I've stood in front of family and friends before. I've looked at a man and believed with everything in me that forever meant forever. And yet here I am planning another wedding. And that has brought up some unexpected emotions. Not because I don't love Jason, not because I'm unsure I don't believe in marriage, but because planning a wedding has a funny way of making you look backward before you move forward. It forces you to look at where you've been and where God has brought you from. I have been right here before. I got on my knees and earnestly prayed. I've asked God if I was making the right decision before. And as I've been planning this wedding, I realized something. The stuff under the stuff isn't wedding planning. The stuff under the stuff is trust. Trusting God, trusting yourself, trusting your instincts, trusting what you know, trusting what God is showing you. And that led me to today's topic. Gaslighting. And if you're like I was several years ago, you may have heard the word and thought it sounded like a utility company problem. Gaslighting. What does that even mean? I had never heard the term before, not once. But I had been living it and I didn't know it. You see, gaslighting is when someone manipulates you into doubting your memory, your perception, your judgment, or your reality. The goal isn't simply to tell a lie. The goal is to make you question yourself. And once someone can make you doubt yourself, they don't have to convince you anymore. You start doing that for them. That's exactly what happened to me. For years, my husband would tell me about conversations I supposedly had. Conversations I had absolutely no memory of. Not occasionally, not once in a while, regularly, he would tell me, You said this. We talked about that. Oh, you agreed to that. And I would sit there trying desperately to remember. Nothing. No memory, no recollection. So I'd lean in, I'd ask questions, I'd challenge him, and every single time he would smile. It wasn't a nervous smile, he wasn't embarrassed, it was a confident smile. And he'd say, Honey, I'm just kidding. Then he'd laugh. What happened to you? He used to have a sense of humor. Every single time. And somehow the focus shifted, not to what he said, but to how I reacted. And if he wasn't telling me he was joking, he had another favorite response. He'd look concerned, almost caring and loving, and he'd say, I'm worried about you. Now that sounds compassionate, it sounds loving, and it sounds like concern. But after hearing it enough time, something started to happen. I became worried about me too. Maybe I wasn't remembering things. Maybe my memory was getting worse. Maybe something was wrong. Maybe I wasn't seeing reality correctly. And here's the thing about gaslighting: it doesn't work because the lies are believable. It works because it's repeated over and over and over again until eventually you stop trusting yourself. And once that happens, the gaslighter doesn't have to convince you anymore. You'll do it yourself. There was another layer to all this that made it even harder. Shortly after we got married, I learned something that changed my life. I learned I was legally deaf. Not because of an accident or an illness, it was genetic. My hearing had slowly declined over years until I found myself sitting in a doctor's office hearing words I never expected to hear. Legally deaf. Even today with hearing aids, hearing isn't easy for me. Crowded rooms are difficult, phone calls can be challenging, conversations can be exhausting. And at the time, my husband became my lifeline to the hearing world. Or at least I thought he was. Looking back, I think part of me believed I couldn't make it without him. Maybe he believed that too. Because when someone spends years making you question your reality and you already feel vulnerable in another area of your life, the fear multiplies. I wasn't just scared of losing my marriage. I was scared of losing my ability to navigate life, being a hearing-challenged girl in a hearing world. I remember thinking, how am I gonna do this? How am I how am I gonna manage on my own? What if I can't? What if he's right? What if something really is wrong with me? Then one day I found myself needing to look for a new job. And I had a secret fear. A fear I wasn't telling anyone. I was genuinely worried that something was wrong with my memory. One day I Googled, why can't I remember things? I wasn't searching marriage problems, I wasn't searching manipulation, I wasn't searching infidelity, I was searching, why am I having trouble remembering things? And the first thing that popped up was a word I had never seen before, gaslighting. I almost didn't click on it, but I did. I still get goosebumps thinking about that moment because as I started reading, it felt like somebody had secretly been sitting in my living room for years taking notes. Every example, every tactic, every conversation, every feeling, it was all there, verbatim. I remember staring at the screen thinking, oh my gosh, this is my life. This is exactly what has been happening. And for the first time in so many years, I didn't feel crazy. I felt validated. The problem wasn't my memory, it wasn't me. The problem was deception. As I kept reading, something else caught my attention. Many of the articles connecting gaslighting with infidelity. People creating confusion to cover behavior they didn't want discovered. And I remember laughing, actually laughing out loud. Not my husband, no way. I used to joke that if I walked into a room and he was standing there naked with another woman, I would probably assume a tornado had blown their clothes off. That's how much I trusted him. That's how convinced I was that he was faithful. I believed it to my core. And shortly after discovering the word gaslighting, the affairs came to light. Not one, multiple, and not for a short period of time for the entire marriage. The articles have been right. I don't know if I can fully explain the level of betrayal that comes with realizing someone isn't who you thought they were. Not because I I missed him, not because I wanted the marriage back, but because I suddenly realized I had trusted a perception, not a person, a perception. And eventually during one of our conversations, he had something that still sticks with me today. Maybe because it was one of the only honest things he ever said. He looked at me and said, I created a perception of myself. That is all that matters. That's it. No apology, no explanation, no accountability, just I created a perception of myself, accept it. And I remember sitting there thinking, wow, you really did. The person I thought I married never existed. The person I defended never existed. The person I trusted never existed. What existed was a carefully crafted image. Then I asked him something. I've spent all this time talking about what happened and how I feel. You've never once told me what I did wrong. What could I have done differently? And I'll never forget his answer. He leaned back in the chair, he crossed his arms with that confident, charming smile, and he said, That's easy. He had my attention. I sat up. Finally, maybe now we're gonna have an honest conversation. He said, You and your boys are the same. I asked him what he meant. And he said, You're too honest. I was stunned. Too honest. You would rather we lied? You'd rather we deceived you? You would have rather had a family, a wife, you couldn't trust. And all he could say was, I'm just telling you, you're too honest. It took me years. Years of coming to terms, years of praying, years of reading and understanding. Honesty isn't the problem. Truth isn't the problem. Light is never the problem. Jesus said in John 3.20, everyone who does evil hates the light. Not because the light is cruel, because the light reveals. Honesty reveals. Truth reveals, and deception hates being revealed. I started looking back over my marriage differently. When we dated, he knew I was a Christian woman. He asked the right questions, which gave him the power to give the right answers. Then we got married. He didn't own a Bible, worship music irritated him, Sunday mornings became excuses. We would make plans to go to church. He was always an early riser, and somehow I couldn't wake him up on those Sunday mornings. I'd go by myself. Then I'd come home and he'd be sitting in his chair watching TV and scrolling through social media like church never happened. He acted like I I had been in the kitchen the entire morning. No apology, no questions, no interest, and suddenly God opened my eyes. Wide. The signs weren't subtle. They were there. I just I didn't want to see them. And maybe that's another lesson for all of us. Sometimes God answers our prayers. We just don't like the answer. Sometimes the conviction is there. The warning's there, the discomfort's there, and we talk ourselves out of listening because the answer we want is louder than the answer God is giving. Eventually I rented a UHL, I packed everything, and when I drove away, I never saw him. No goodbye. No apology. No fight. No explanation. Nothing. And for a long time that bothered me. I wanted answers. I wanted closure. I wanted something that made sense. But here's what I eventually learned. There was no answer that would make deception make sense. There was no conversation that would suddenly make betrayal logical. The answer wasn't in hand. The answer was in healing. And as the miles passed underneath the U-Haul, something unexpected happened. The farther I got from the life I was leaving, the closer I felt to God. Not because I suddenly had answers, I didn't. Not because I suddenly understood why everything happened, I didn't. But because for the first time in a very long time I wasn't listening to someone else's version of reality. I was listening to God. And he was about to begin restoring things I thought were gone forever. But that's the next episode. The story doesn't end with a U-Haul. The story ends with redemption. And redemption deserves its own episode. Until next time. Remember, but the enemy's first question in the garden wasn't a lie. It was simply a question. And he's still asking it today. Don't let confusion steal what God has already made clear. We'll wrap up next time. And the song in this episode, God Don't Do You Like That, that's on my album. It's a soundtrack on there. Please go ahead and listen to it in its entirety. If you like it, share it with somebody that might benefit from hearing it. Sometimes it just really helps to know you're not alone.

SPEAKER_00 15:29

You wouldn't sit in a church, didn't have a Bible at home, said worship music got on your nerves. Still claimed heaven as your own.