When You Can No Longer Trust Your Own Reality
Rachel, the girl on the train, is confused. Her ex-husband has undermined her confidence in herself so profoundly that she can no longer rely on her own judgement.
In the film, Rachel’s ex-husband Tom exploits her vulnerability to persuade her that she cannot trust her memories. At first, we are encouraged to suspect that she is unstable and that her account of events is unreliable.
But as the story unfolds, something important shifts. We discover that Rachel is considerably more trustworthy than we—and Rachel herself—have been led to believe. Her memories may be incomplete, but her sense that something is terribly wrong is not.
This is what The Girl on the Train captures so well about gaslighting. The damage isn’t simply that someone lies to you. It is that, over time, you can begin to distrust your own capacity to know what happened.
Rachel repeatedly asks herself whether she really saw what she thinks she saw. Are her fears for another woman’s safety justified, or are they simply the product of jealousy, obsession or an unreliable memory?
The audience is drawn into the same uncertainty. We don’t simply watch Rachel doubt herself; for a considerable part of the story, we doubt her too.
That is what makes the film such an interesting portrayal of gaslighting in an intimate relationship. The question is no longer simply “Is Tom telling the truth?” It becomes “Can Rachel trust herself?”
What Gaslighting Actually Does
Gaslighting is more than lying. And it is more than two people remembering the same conversation differently—which happens in perfectly ordinary relationships all the time.
Something more troubling is happening when one person repeatedly undermines the other’s understanding of events and insists that their own version of reality must dominate.
Healthy relationships have room for difference. We misunderstand one another, remember things differently, get defensive, get things wrong and occasionally behave rather badly. None of that, by itself, is gaslighting.
What concerns me is the pattern. When you repeatedly come away from conversations wondering whether you imagined something, whether you’re being unreasonable, whether you’re “too sensitive”, or whether perhaps the problem really is you, it’s worth becoming curious about what is happening.
The Girl on the Train takes this process to an extreme. Rachel has become so unsure of herself that Tom’s account of who she is has begun to carry more authority than her own.
And that, I think, is one of the most damaging things about gaslighting. Someone else’s interpretation of you can gradually become more believable than your own experience of yourself.
Narcissistic Abuse in Intimate Relationships
The term narcissistic abuse is used to describe patterns of emotional abuse involving someone with strong narcissistic traits. It can include coercion, intimidation, manipulation, humiliation, threats, persistent blame or attempts to control another person’s behaviour and perceptions.
I think it’s important to be a little careful with this language. Not every selfish, difficult or narcissistic behaviour is abuse. Nor does every painful relationship with someone who has narcissistic traits become an abusive one.
Relationships are messy. People behave badly sometimes. We become defensive, say things we regret, misunderstand one another and occasionally try to get our own way. The question is what happens when these things become a pattern—and particularly when one person increasingly has to accommodate the other in order to keep the peace.
If you feel frightened to say what you think, find yourself abandoning your own interests, constantly monitor your partner’s moods, or feel that you have to carefully manage what you say to avoid their reaction, I think it’s worth paying attention to that.
You don’t necessarily need to decide immediately whether your partner is a narcissist, or even whether the relationship fits neatly into a particular category. Sometimes a more useful place to begin is simply to ask: What is happening to me in this relationship?
When You Begin to Lose Yourself in a Relationship
One of the things I find particularly troubling about relationships like this is how gradually your world can become smaller.
It doesn’t necessarily happen because somebody explicitly tells you who you are allowed to be. You may simply begin accommodating more. You don’t raise the subject because you know where it will lead. You see less of someone your partner dislikes. You stop doing something because it’s easier than dealing with the reaction. You become more careful about what you say, and perhaps even about what you think.
Eventually, you may find yourself wondering what happened to the person you were before the relationship.
For some people, earlier relationships matter here. If you grew up with a parent whose moods had to be monitored, whose approval felt conditional, or who had difficulty allowing you to be separate, accommodation may already feel strangely familiar. You may be particularly practised at preserving a relationship by making room for somebody else.
Some of us are also more sensitive to anger, disapproval or withdrawal than others. If you have learned, for whatever reason, to anticipate another person’s displeasure very quickly, you may begin accommodating them before they have even asked you to. You know that particular silence, the change in tone, the look on their face. You know where this is probably going, and you adjust yourself accordingly.
Sometimes this can look from the outside as though nobody is actually controlling you. Your partner hasn’t explicitly told you not to see that friend, raise that subject or disagree with them. But if experience has taught you that doing so will be followed by anger, contempt, withdrawal or days of tension, you may begin to make those choices in advance.
This is important because vulnerability is not the same thing as responsibility. Being frightened of anger, highly sensitive to rejection, conflict-avoidant or particularly motivated to preserve a relationship doesn’t make you responsible for another person’s intimidation or controlling behaviour. But these things can help us understand why two people exposed to similar behaviour might respond to it very differently.
But I think we need to be careful about turning this into a simple story about childhood. You do not need to have had a narcissistic parent to lose confidence in yourself within a difficult adult relationship. Relationships affect us. Persistent criticism, manipulation, intimidation or the repeated dismissal of your experience can change the way almost anyone behaves over time.
Nor do I think it is particularly helpful to say that people unconsciously “choose narcissists” because they are trying to repeat or repair their childhood. Our relationship histories may influence what feels familiar to us, what we notice and what we tolerate, but that is a long way from saying that somebody somehow chose to be mistreated.
What interests me more is what happens once you are there. Perhaps you entered the relationship feeling quite sure of yourself. Perhaps you didn’t. Either way, you may gradually find yourself working harder and harder to maintain the relationship while becoming less and less present within it.
This is what I think of as a constriction of the self. You haven’t necessarily lost who you are. But there may be less and less room in the relationship for you to actually be that person.
What Happens When You Begin to Push Back?
Sometimes you don’t fully see the shape of a relationship until you begin to change your part in it.
You start saying no. You disagree. You spend more time with other people. You stop explaining yourself quite so much. Perhaps you simply begin to take your own feelings more seriously.
In a reasonably healthy relationship, change can certainly create friction. Your partner may not like every boundary you set, and they may complain about changes that don’t suit them. But there is usually some capacity for negotiation—for both people to be inconvenienced occasionally, to tolerate disappointment and eventually find a way of living with difference.
In a more controlling or narcissistic relationship, your attempts to become more separate may be experienced quite differently. A partner who was comfortable with the old arrangement may become angry, critical, cold or unusually persuasive when you begin to change it. There may be pressure—sometimes obvious, sometimes remarkably subtle—to get things back to the way they were.
This is where people can become confused again. Am I being selfish? Have I changed? Am I asking too much? Was everything actually fine until I started making a fuss?
Well, perhaps you have changed. Sometimes that’s the point.
If a relationship only works while one person remains accommodating, quiet or willing to doubt themselves, then the difficulty that appears when they begin to assert themselves tells us something important about the relationship.
Boundaries don’t necessarily destroy relationships. Sometimes they reveal them.
What Happens When You Begin to See What Is Happening?
Realising that something is wrong in a relationship doesn’t necessarily tell you what to do about it.
Sometimes recognition comes slowly. You notice that you are frightened of your partner’s reactions. You realise how much time you spend anticipating their moods. Perhaps you hear yourself explaining an incident to somebody you trust and suddenly think, This actually sounds terrible. Or perhaps, like Rachel, you begin to wonder whether the version of yourself you’ve been given is really true.
Seeing the pattern can bring relief, but it can also bring grief, anger and an enormous amount of uncertainty. You may begin looking back over years of your life and seeing particular interactions differently. Things that once seemed inexplicable begin to make rather more sense.
And knowing that a relationship is harmful doesn’t necessarily make leaving it straightforward. There may be children, finances, housing, isolation, fear, love, loyalty and years of shared history involved. Sometimes there are genuine concerns about what will happen if you try to leave.
Nor is everybody who recognises narcissistic or controlling patterns necessarily going to leave their relationship. Some people stay, at least for a time, and begin by changing what they can: strengthening relationships outside the partnership, becoming clearer about their own boundaries, paying attention to what happens when they assert themselves, and gradually rebuilding confidence in their own judgement.
If you are frightened of your partner or concerned about your safety, though, this is no longer simply a question of improving communication or setting better boundaries. Seeking appropriate support and thinking carefully about safety becomes important.
What matters initially is that you don’t have to solve the whole relationship in order to begin taking your own experience seriously.
Gaslighting works partly by making you look away from what you know and towards somebody else’s explanation of it. Recovery begins, I think, with becoming curious about your own experience again.
What do I actually think happened? What do I feel? What have I been frightened to say? And what happens in this relationship when I say it?
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