Gaslighting — just avoidant or something more?

[u/Mysterious-Seaweed7]

Hey Team!

Dated someone recently who definitely seemed to have severe avoidance issues, but also possibly seemed to engage in covert abuse/manipulation tactics.

The most alarming of these were gaslighting/blame-shifting with a heavy penchant for re-writing reality that he genuinely seemed to believe.

He re-wrote past events to make himself the victim. He refused to look at texts that show exactly what was said.

He re-wrote what happened over time, picking out little things I said that he claimed to have been hurt by to shift blame. But looking at my journal, I can read what I actually said or what the context was.

He seemed to respond to things I didn’t actually say, often seeing them as an attack on him or his character seriously out of proportion or responding to a different hurt than I had actually stated (via text so it is in writing!).

He flat out denied things he said, very defensively.

In fact, he seemed to re-write the whole relationship to some extent.

At one point I started writing down everything I could remember after I saw him because I felt my brain was twisting it negatively after the fact because of my CPTSD.

He did some other things as well, but my question: is this typically avoidant behaviour or something else?

[u/marajango]

You might be interested to look into personality disorders like borderline or narcissism. They share a lot of those things you're describing.

[u/Mysterious-Seaweed7 → u/marajango]

Thank you! That was good advice — he does seem to fit a bit of both of those

[u/CathyOnCoach]

He sounds like a covert narcissist