We only just scratched the surface of the findings of this research, and if you have the time, the full study is published online and worth a poke through if you’ve ever experienced (or are currently experiencing) emotional abuse. But ultimately, these findings make one thing abundantly clear: Emotional manipulation is rampant and it’s essential to be able to spot it.
The good news is, while survivors of gaslighting relationships did report a diminished sense of self and increased guardedness after the relationship ended, some participants experienced post-traumatic growth, in which they focused on establishing healthier relationship boundaries and/or having a clearer and stronger sense of self.
The most reported activity in recovering from a gaslighting relationship was socializing, and namely, re-engaging with others and doing things that helped survivors regain their sense of self, such as creative hobbies like art or writing.
Before we get into how to breakup with someone you love, let’s first focus on the why. All relationships need to be nurtured in order to sustain them, after all, so how can you recognize when it’s just not working anymore?
Firstly, you want to ask yourself if you’ve really given the relationship a fair shot. You might opt to take a break from the relationship and realize that you don’t want to breakup after all, or perhaps one of you is going through a temporary tough time that will pass. Maybe you’re actively working with a couple’s counselor, things are improving, and you both want to save the relationship.
To that end, according to licensed marriage therapist Weena Cullins, LCMFT, your overall wellbeing is the most important factor to consider when assessing whether to end the relationship.
“While all intimate relationships are subject to experiencing rough patches at different times, choosing to remain in a relationship that consistently causes you stress or compromises your physical, emotional, or mental health isn’t the best choice,” Cullins previously told mindbodygreen.
And as licensed psychotherapist Babita Spinelli, L.P. adds, it’s entirely possible to know that someone isn’t a healthy fit for you, even if you love who they are.
That said, if you can’t see a future with this person, they’re weighing you down more than lifting you up, or you’re holding out for them to change, it’s probably time to let the relationship go. (Here’s our full guide to knowing when it’s time to breakup for more information.)
Now, if you’re sure that it’s time to part ways, here’s how to do it.
Occasionally, stray vestiges might pop up, and you might feel uncomfortable. Perhaps you might see it as a repeated lesson, that you’re running into a particular situation or person. But people and situations will always exist, whether or not you have accepted what happened to you. And so maybe it isn’t about you, but rather, a fact of life. Or as Danielle LaPorte pens it so beautifully in her book How To Be Loving, “We can choose to let someone be who they are for us today, not a hologram of yesterday’s issue.”
And even then, it doesn’t mean you have to embrace such a person or situation to prove to yourself you’ve healed. Personally, I dislike people when they are high, rowdy, and drunk. I never liked putting myself in such situations prior to that, but they’ve made me feel especially unsafe in the aftermath of a previous narcissistic relationship. So aware of my needs for safety, I choose to disengage from people when I see them drink a bit too much, and I generally exit such situations anyway because I don’t like staying out too long to drink either.
Bottom line is, I don’t judge these people for what they do, nor myself for feeling and responding the way that I do. It’s the same way I prefer to sit on the aisle seat when flying and don’t judge myself for that.
Sometimes, you may still feel retriggered, and that’s okay. In these situations, ask yourself, what’s going on in your environment? Is a place or thing tarred with a bad memory, and do you want to reclaim it? If so, you can start creating better memories with safe and good people, or with yourself.
Or, are you constantly being exposed to people who make it hard to feel at peace? For instance, are you often seeing toxic family members out of guilt or obligation, and so keep walking on eggshells? Or did you recently run into a naysayer who shamed you for what you went through— that you were stupid, naive, or immature? In the same way that we don’t deliberately put our lives in danger or discomfort— e.g. we will walk away from dark alleyways or streets filled with bins— we can make these exposures temporary.
Last but not least, if your relationship grows, that doesn’t mean you have to completely lose aspects of ludus love. As Page tells mindbodygreen, ludus love in its mature form can maintain stability and commitment while still being flirtatious, seductive, and playful. “These are beautiful qualities that are often the very qualities missing in long-term love,” he adds.
So, if you’re in ludus love, ask yourself if this is the mature form of ludus or the immature form, which involves game-playing, manipulation, and general avoidance. And instead of seeing ludus as a static stage, he says, you can integrate it into the long-term big picture.
“When you get out of that first stage, other kinds of ‘rocket fuel’ are needed—and those include the more mature aspects of building bonds: truthfulness, transparency, vulnerability, honesty, and connection. So, you lose the entrenchment of ludus love, but you try your best to keep the fun part,” Page explains.
Shailene Woodley revealed that shooting her new Showtime series Three Women helped her get through one of the toughest times in her life by offering her a moral compass when she felt like her own was out of whack.
The actress opened up about the role and her romantic life in a new interview with Net-a-Porter. “It was hard to film because I was going through the darkest, hardest time in my life; it was winter in New York, and my personal life was shit, so it felt like a big pain bubble for eight months,” she said. “I was so grateful that at least I could go to work and cry and process my emotions through my character.”
The show, based on Lisa Taddeo‘s 2019 book by the same name in which the journalist spent years profiling three American women about their sexual and emotional lives, was filmed from October 2021 to May 2022. In February 2022, TMZ first reported that Woodley and her then-fiancé Aaron Rodgers had called off their engagement, a little over a year after the football player popped the question. In the months that followed, Woodley and Rodgers were spotted enjoying each other’s company multiple times, including attending a wedding together and visiting a vineyard after a night out at a casino. But by April 2022, People confirmed that the pair had decided to go their separate ways for good.
Woodley went on the explain to the outlet, “Three Women feels like it matters a lot—mostly, I think, because it mattered so much to me. I feel honored to be a part of it, because it genuinely gave me a North Star in a time in my life when my compass…calibration did not exist. And I think it has the potential to provide a North Star for other people out there too.”
She added that the public attention their relationship received also aided in souring the connection between her and the NFL quarterback. “It honestly never really hit me that millions of people around the world were actually watching these things and paid attention to them,” the actor said. “Then, I dated somebody in America who was very, very famous. It was the first time that I’d had a quote-unquote ‘famous’ relationship, and I watched scrutiny, opinions, the desire for people to know my life and his life and our life—it just felt violating in a way that, before, it was fun.” Woodley concluded, “I’m a very private person, and so I found that any time I posted anything, I instantly felt like I was sharing too much of who I am with people I didn’t necessarily trust.”
Perhaps there was a time in your relationship when they would have dropped anything to be with you. Now, they almost seem uninterested in your life and more involved in their routine and schedule. When you ask them out to hang with your friends or see your family, they may shrug you off as they prioritize their own life, friendships, and career. Their attitude has changed, and it’s impacting the relationship. You feel like they’re too busy for you, which may leave you feeling needy and insecure.
It could be a positive sign that your boyfriend is nurturing an interdependent life within the relationship, but be wary if they’re leaning into their own thing without including you in the conversation. If they’re making room for their own life, work, friends, self-care rituals, goals, and new hobbies without you, the decreased desire for connection may be a sign of infidelity and that someone else may be in the picture.
Studies2 show there are a huge variety of reasons men cheat: While sometimes it’s simply about craving variety and having an opportunity presenting itself, oftentimes infidelity is a symptom of a bigger problem in the primary relationship, such as feeling a lack of emotional or physical connection, lingering anger at your partner, or a core incompatibility.
While this may not be the easiest year for your relationships, Leo, that doesn’t mean it all has to be doom and gloom. As the twins explain, those aforementioned issues around power, trust, and control may rear their heads—but sorting through these issues before leaping into binding relationships will save your time, energy, and heart in the long run.
“While you’re a mighty force of nature, you can’t do other people’s emotional work for them,” the twins write, adding that instead of micromanaging, “focus on your own interests—cultivate a new hobby, start a podcast, or draft a few chapters of your memoir.”
And during Venus retrograde this summer especially, they emphasize the importance of taking things slow. “Confusion may not dissipate until after October 8, so go easy on yourself—and everyone around you,” the twins say.
The good news is, where your love life may run up against some difficulty, other areas of your life can thrive this year. Namely, according to the twins, Leo is going to see the most luck on the career and travel front. So if dating and relationships are making you want to bury your head in the sand, consider it an opportunity to focus on your career or take an epic solo vacation.
Gauze, the influential Japanese hardcore punk band, are breaking up after 41 years. They announced the news today (November 26) on the band’s official Twitter. “Report of disbandment of GAUZE,” reads a translated version of their statement. “Ever since I became a current member, I have decided that if even one person leaves the group, it will be disbanded. Postscript: The last T-shirt sale will be held at Koenji Record Shop Base.”
That statement alludes to one of the rare interviews Gauze did during their career. In 1997, bassist Shin told Maximum Rocknroll, “To be honest, if one of the members quit, it won’t be Gauze anymore. We never change the members. It’s not because how good they play, but how they think or feel about these things.”
Gauze formed in 1981 in Tokyo, Japan. Singer Fugu, guitarist Momorin, and Shin remained in the band over its 41-year-long career, with drummer Hiko joining the original members in 1989. They established themselves as a hardcore punk band that played around with D-beat and thrash conventions. Famously, they wanted to capture the feeling of grindcore without maximizing their tempo. “There is a limit to how fast you can play. We wanted to challenge the limit,” Shin told MRR. “To us, the feeling of the speed is the most important part.”
The earliest Gauze recordings appear on the 1982 compilation City Rocker alongside new wave and goth bands. It wasn’t until 1984 that they released their debut album, Fuck Heads. Gauze found greater fame in 1986 with their now-classic sophomore LP, Equalizing Distort. The band later went on to release the full-length albums 限界は何処だ (Genkai wa dokoda) in 1991, 面を洗って出直して来い (Kao O Aratte Denaoshite Koi) in 1997, and Binbou Yusuri No Rizumu Ni Notte in 2007, as well as a self-titled EP in 1997. Last year, Gauze released their sixth and final album, 言いたかねえけど目糞鼻糞, on XXX Records.
Whereas English hardcore punk bands were “motivated by politics,” Gauze believed Japan was too peaceful to complain about, and instead wanted to focus on personal impact. “The lyrics encourage [listeners] to do their best and have courage. It’s about what happens around us and what we feel every day,” Fugu said in a MRR interview. Shin added, “Punk means in English, rebellion, but to us punk means self-responsibility. We should have responsibility at all times for our own actions. You need to be responsible, whatever you do. It’s not that working is good and not working is bad.”
A Chicago man bought a car in his ex-girlfriend’s name and – after the breakup – abandoned it, illegally parked, in O’hare airport. The car then accumulated over $100,000 on 678 parking tickets, which the city asked the ex-girlfriend to pay.
It was our third date. I sat at Brian’s kitchen table while he elegantly multitasked between searing steak au poivre and replenishing my glass of Cote-Rotie. Our mutual friend Wendy had introduced us after a work event. We were both sommeliers, sharing an obsession with wine, and my legs felt like jelly. This man was too gallant, too available, too together. I shifted my gaze toward the door and mentally rehearsed my exit. The following day, I stopped responding to his texts.
This is my ugly secret: I was a serial ghoster. Although ghosting ― or disappearing from a relationship with no warning by ceasing all communication ― is now common (a recent survey found that 30% of American adults identify as victims of ghosting), and perhaps even accepted by many people as an inevitable part of dating, it doesn’t occur without consequences and can leave a path of emotional destruction. Psychologists say ghosting is a character disorder that stems from trauma and conflict evasion. They aren’t wrong. While legendary ghosters immortalized in literature have often been men (think Willoughby from “Sense and Sensibility”), ghosting is actually gender-neutral and equal-opportunity. Anybody with a healthy dose of avoidant-attachment is capable of callously leaving without a trace.
My first ghosting episode was senior year of high school with Fernando, whom I met on an exchange program to Magdalena, Mexico. Sneaking out of my home-stay family’s house, we stayed up talking and making out in the back seat of his parked car until the sun rose over the Sonoran desert. This was before cellphones, so after I returned home, he mailed me love letters in messy cobalt cursive on lined paper and signed, “Te amo mucho.” I was tongue-tied, incapable of expressing my conflicted emotions. I procrastinated writing back. The hurt in his follow-up notes made me want to crawl under the table. Correspondence dwindled until it eventually stopped altogether but I stayed silent. At 17, I’d established a pattern of running away that would haunt me for decades.
In college, ghosting became habitual ― an involuntary muscle movement as natural as blinking or breathing. As soon as someone tried to get close to me, a warning buzzer went off in my brain and I vanished like an apparition.
Once on a blind date at a coffee shop in San Francisco, the man across the table squeezed my hand affectionately while discussing the orphanage where he’d volunteered in Malawi. He was just my type ― kind, witty, a master of the New York Times Sunday crossword, and was like a son to my best friend’s aging mom. I laughed at his jokes and quizzed him about his passion for recumbent bikes. As he drove away, I heard a little voice in my head say, Cut him off now, before things go too far. Easier to mourn something that could have been than the alternative. My next move was to stop returning his calls. Before too long, he stopped trying.
Unlike some other antisocial or destructive behavior, you can ghost almost indefinitely and no one calls you out. At least in the early phase of dating or a relationship, most ghostees won’t stage dramatic Lifetime movie scenes, banging bravely on your door in the rain, demanding to know why you exited without an explanatory word, Post-it note, text, call, smoke signal, or carrier pigeon.
Most people who are ghosted assume they did something wrong or that the ghoster just wasn’t feeling it and wasn’t brave enough to admit it. We’ve allowed this bad behavior because it happens so often that now it just seems normal.
“The ghosting spun even more out of control in my 20s and 30s. It became a coping skill, a magic shield that I used whenever there was conflict, if I felt vulnerable, threatened, or worried about letting somebody down.”
Post-ghost, while others are losing sleep wondering if it was the wine they spilled on the waiter or the story of how they once sharted at a Vegas casino from bad buffet shrimp, the ghoster is already moving on to the next victim. There are no ghost police, no ghost courts, and no ghost “interventions.”
Once it dawned on me that there were no imminent emotional consequences to disappearing, it was even easier to pull a Houdini the next time a romantic prospect invited me to their brother’s bar mitzvah.
Even when I myself was ghosted in the most humiliating ways (e.g., waiting on a street corner in Madrid with matching floral luggage in tow, anticipating a weekend getaway with a guy who would never show), it wasn’t enough to deter me from the dark path.
In fact, the ghosting spun even more out of control in my 20s and 30s. It wasn’t just limited to the romantic context, but spread malignantly throughout my life to friends, co-workers, and even family. It became a coping skill, a magic shield that I used whenever there was conflict, or if I felt vulnerable, threatened, or worried about letting somebody down.
I discovered the more I ghosted, the harder it was to sustain the intimacy and connection I craved. It was a self-perpetuating cycle of self-loathing and shame. Sometimes, I imagined going back in a time machine to Fernando or the guy at the coffee shop and begging for a redo.
I ached to stop running, but first I had to face up to why I ran in the first place.
A skilled therapist helped connect the dots between my childhood trauma and inability to sustain relationships. I pieced together the stories of my life like a horrific, fascinating tapestry. When I was 8, the nanny tasked with raising me since infancy disappeared abruptly, leaving me with trust and abandonment issues. Essentially, I was a ghoster because I had been ghosted as a child. Given my terror of intimacy and rejection, ghosting gave me a sense of control.
The word “ghost” is so apt. What is a ghost but an empty breath of air, incapable of taste or feeling, pathetically doomed to wander the Earth alone like Dickens’ Jacob Marley? This was no way to live.
One year after steak au poivre with Brian, I finally came clean with our mutual friend Wendy about how I’d screwed things up. “Do you think he’ll talk to me?” I pleaded. “You really hurt his feelings,” she responded quietly. “But I think it’s worth a shot.”
This was my first time un-ghosting someone. I cringed while gathering courage to call him. He didn’t pick up. I left an awkward message, stammering an incomprehensible apology. No response ― which was no less than I deserved. A few weeks down the line, we ran into each other unexpectedly in the hallway at a San Diego sommelier convention. We hugged stiffly, while I tried not to wrinkle his suit. “It’s nice to see you,” he said coolly. But later, he texted to invite me for a glass of wine.
At our wedding years later, Brian joked that he had nicknamed me “Casperina” to his friends.
The author and Brian after their wedding in August 2018.
Courtesy of Michelle Powers
I wish I could say that my ghostiness was cured. It’s still a thing, but now it shows up in less extreme ways. Close friends and family have (grudgingly) come to accept it. When I fall off the wagon, I regain course by owning my actions and finding self-compassion, but it’s a constant work in progress. Parts of me will probably always struggle with connection. But now, when it matters most, I choose to do the opposite of ghosting. I show up.
Michelle Powers is an attorney, sommelier and writer in San Diego, where she lives with her husband, Brian, and two dogs.
Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch.
