Paulette Hamilton | February 27, 2025 | Divorce
Do you often feel confused or guilty after a conversation with your spouse? This could be a sign of manipulation or gaslighting. Recognizing emotional manipulation from someone you know can be difficult. Living with manipulation tactics can alter your view of reality and affect your mental health.
There were nearly 674,000 divorces in 2022 alone. While many of the couples involved were likely able to navigate a collaborative divorce, manipulation can turn a friendly breakup into a long, costly, and emotionally taxing experience.
Learning to identify the signs of manipulation will help you protect yourself and navigate the dissolution of your marriage with fewer complications.
What Is Gaslighting?
Gaslighting is a type of emotional abuse that disrupts the recipient’s ability to trust their own judgment. The term has experienced a renaissance in pop culture and is often misused, though. Gaslighting, in psychological terms, is defined as a pattern of repetitive behavior that’s specifically intended to weaken a person’s sanity and sense of self.
Gaslighting can happen in a variety of situations, including the workplace, but manipulation in relationships can be especially destructive. It can leave an individual with poor self-esteem and destroy their confidence.
While it may not always be done purposefully, this type of manipulation puts the “gaslighter” at an advantage when it’s time to discuss decisions like property division or alimony.
Examples of Gaslighting
Emotional manipulation comes in many forms. One thing most manipulative people have in common is that their campaign begins slowly with subtle lies. This behavior is meant to create self-doubt in the other person, leaving them easier to manipulate.
A typical example of gaslighting has to do with making a person doubt their own experiences or feelings. For example, one spouse may mention they feel disrespected by a certain behavior, and the other responds with, “Oh, you know I’m just teasing. You shouldn’t be so sensitive.”
The gaslighting spouse is not only minimizing their partner’s feelings in this situation, but they are also casting doubt on that person’s ability to recognize the difference between humor and disrespect.
Other examples of gaslighting include:
- Subtle or obvious lying
- Withholding affection, information, or attention when conflict arises
- Deflecting during arguments instead of looking for solutions
- Undermining someone by humiliating or belittling them, making them doubt their abilities
- Minimizing someone else’s pain or concerns
- Guilting someone into believing their feelings or thoughts are wrong
- Isolating someone from their support network
- Shaming someone in front of their friends, family, or coworkers
- Minimizing a situation for the purpose of trivializing someone else’s feelings
- Denying fault and making others feel responsible for things they didn’t do
Any one of these behaviors would be an unkind and potentially abusive thing for a partner to do, but when these kinds of behaviors are used collectively for the purpose of manipulation, the result can be particularly destructive.
A partner who’s been emotionally weakened by manipulation may have a more difficult time advocating for themselves or their children during divorce. Without the right legal support, they may agree to unfair child support or child custody arrangements. This is where the guidance of a trusted family lawyer comes in.
In Florida, a divorce lawyer can serve as your advocate every step of the way throughout the proceedings, ensuring you take the right steps to protect your best interests, regardless of any tactics your spouse tries.
Taking Steps To Safeguard Your Future
Marriage is still alive and well in the U.S., with more couples getting married than divorcing each year. However, marriages are also still dissolving, and if you’re divorcing a manipulative spouse, you can expect attempts of manipulation to continue throughout the proceedings.
Hiring a divorce attorney with experience in handling manipulative partners can help you navigate the process with far less stress and much more peace of mind.
Contact our Divorce Lawyers at Law Office Of Paulette Hamilton Divorce Lawyers for Help Today
Contact the Law Office Of Paulette Hamilton Divorce Lawyers for a free consultation with our Orlando alimony lawyers. We help clients fight for fair alimony payments to ensure they have the resources they need as they move on to the next phase of their lives.
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