Is it gaslighting or am I overreacting?

If you are asking the question, you are already doing the thing a confident person does: checking. People who are simply wrong tend not to wonder whether they are wrong. So start from this. The doubt you feel is not, on its own, evidence that your memory has failed.

Two people remembering differently

Everyone edits memory. Couples disagree about who said what, who started it, and whether a tone was sharp. In an ordinary relationship those disagreements go in both directions: sometimes you were right, sometimes they were, and both of you can say "maybe I've got that wrong" without it costing anything.

One person rewriting what happened

The pattern that concerns the people who do this work looks different. You raise something and are told it did not happen. You quote them and are told you are making it up. You describe what you saw and are told you are too sensitive, too tired, too emotional to be trusted on it. Over months this happens in one direction only, and it tends to happen most about the things that would otherwise count against them.

The mechanism is simple. If your account of events can always be overruled, you lose the ground to object to anything. You start checking with them before trusting yourself. Some people start recording conversations or writing things down just to feel sane, then feel ashamed of doing it. That shame is part of the effect.

A test you can run

For four weeks, write down what happened on the days something is disputed. Date, what was said, what you did, what they did. Keep it where they cannot find it (a notes app with a passcode, a friend's email, a paper notebook at work). Then read it back. You are looking for a direction. Does your record keep being contradicted in ways that favour them? Or does it show you were sometimes mistaken and sometimes not, as anyone would be?

Turn the same test on yourself. If you find you have been insisting on your version and dismissing theirs, that matters too, and the Respect Phoneline (0808 8024 040) is there for people worried about how they treat a partner.

What this might mean for you

If your record shows a one-way pattern, you are not overreacting, and the answer is to trust your own notes over the argument in the room. The member module The four-week log gives you a private place to keep that record on this site, with a reminder each week. If the pattern is wider than memory, When the problem is control describes the shape it usually sits inside. The assessment asks eight safety questions first.

If you are frightened of your partner, or they monitor your phone, be careful where you keep any record, and talk to someone trained before confronting them with it: National Domestic Abuse Helpline 0808 2000 247 (24 hours, free), Men's Advice Line 0808 801 0327, Galop (LGBT+) 0800 999 5428. In an emergency, 999, and press 55 if you cannot speak. Pressing Escape twice takes you off this site immediately.