My way out of the darkness of a gay abusive relationship
Suddenly depression! IWWIT employee Jeff Mannes had to deal with this. IWWIT (I Know What I’m Doing) is the nationwide gay prevention campaign run by the German AIDS Aid organization. However, he couldn’t understand why he suddenly had depression. Until his closest friend suspected that his partner was a narcissist.
He has now published the story of his traumatic struggle for liberation in the IWWIT blog as part of the #MyMentalMe micro-campaign about mental health in the queer community. We document an abridged excerpt.
First love bombing, then humiliation
I should have recognized the gigantic red flag early on. Here I was, around 10,000 kilometers from home, in the middle of the night in an unknown city, emotionally distraught, confused and almost traumatized. Thrown out by the man I trusted. This should have been the alarm signal that opened my eyes. But it wasn’t. It was just the beginning of a long-lasting, traumatic relationship that plunged me deep into depression.
I met Mike, whose real name is different, two months earlier in Berlin. He was charming, almost too charming. A little gut feeling told me that this exaggerated charm was suspect, but I didn’t listen to it. Today I know: He was love bombing. On the last day of his Berlin vacation, I confessed to him that I had fallen in love with him, and he invited me to his hometown. Two months later, I was there. The first few days were nice, then the warning sign happened that should have spared me further suffering.
We went to dinner with two of his friends. Mike asked me unexpected questions to embarrass me in front of his friends. I didn’t understand why he suddenly humiliated me. After dinner, when we were alone in the car, I told him that I didn’t think his behavior was right. He exploded: “You ruined the whole evening! I can’t stand you, you’re just too much!” Then he threw me out of the car. There I was, in the middle of the night in an unknown city. Confused, scared, afraid.
Today, with my knowledge of narcissism and abusive relationships, I would see through it. But back then, I didn’t have that knowledge. Instead of judging Mike’s behavior, I doubted myself. Had I overreacted? Was it really just harmless fun? Am I “too much”? I tried calling him to apologize, texting him that I was sorry and that I had reacted wrongly. No answer. At least an hour passed, wandering around the city alone, abandoned, shocked and scared. And then he finally answered and picked me up. He didn’t say a word to me in the car. I thought I would be lucky if he ever spoke to me again. But the opposite would have been true. Because it was only the beginning.
A fight against gaslighting and the shadows of depression
Almost three years later, I was just a shadow of my former self. Diagnosis: moderate depression. Mike had emotionally and psychologically destroyed me to the point where I no longer recognized myself. I didn’t understand why I was depressed. Shouldn’t I actually consider myself lucky? I lived in Berlin, my favorite city, in a great apartment, had good friendships and a fulfilling job. And Mike constantly told me that our relationship was so special that the whole world was jealous of us. Today I know that this was megalomania and a projection.
For months I tried to get rid of the depression: endurance sports, changing my diet, meditation – nothing helped. I didn’t understand that my relationship was the cause. There was even a technical term for it: gaslighting.
Gaslighting is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. It is often a very hidden, secret form of abuse that can end in severe depression. Gaslighting works especially when the victim does not realize that they are being gaslighted. It is a form of manipulation in which the gaslighter tries to convince their victim that they are misremembering, misunderstanding or misinterpreting their own behavior or motives, thereby creating doubts in them that make them vulnerable and confused. Gaslighters exploit this vulnerability to make their victim doubt themselves over and over again, with the goal of binding them to themselves and their version of the “truth” and making them emotionally dependent. “You don’t know who you are. But I do,” Mike once said to me, word for word.
Gaslighting is often a very hidden form of abuse (Image: “Krishan Rajapakshe / 2024 – krishanrajapakshe.blog)”
Gaslighting often occurs within close, trusted relationships over a long period of time. At first, the victim may just be confused. After a while, however, they begin to completely doubt themselves and their mental state and accept the gaslighter’s false “reality”. In extreme cases, the victim no longer trusts their own perception at all and what the gaslighter says about the victim becomes the complete truth. With the result of severe depression.
Mike had gaslighted me in many different ways over the past three years, but by far the most destructive—and the one that would expose him—was his projection of jealousy.
Mike always turned the tables when I expressed my dissatisfaction with something. I was actually consumed by jealousy without realizing it. Mike’s emotional abuse and gaslighting led to me doubting myself and believing his “truth” about me more than I believed myself. Little by little, over several months, he chipped away at my self-esteem, my confidence and my happiness in life, bit by bit. Without me noticing.
But then Mike did something that would expose his abuse of my closest friend and set my fight for freedom in motion. Romina, my closest friend since school, had watched my decline over the past two years but no longer knew how to help me. But at some point Mike made a mistake. And Romina suddenly realized something. The next time we sat alone together, she convinced me, against my initial reservations, to promise her that I would research narcissism.
It was not only the beginning of my painful, traumatic liberation, but also changed my view of humanity forever…
What happened next, how a friend of Mike’s suddenly reported millions in debt, how Mike became threatening and his partner unexpectedly rebelled against him, what the topic of narcissism has to do with us as a queer community and how you can protect yourself from emotional abuse, you can find out here in the IWWIT blog.
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Bridging the world of wellness and science, Ethel Purdy is a professional voice in healthcare with a passion for sharing knowledge. At 36, she stands at the confluence of medical expertise and the written word, holding a pharmacy degree acquired under the rigorous education systems of Germany and Estonia.
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