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They’re NOT gaslighting you! Dr. Isabelle Morley on the weaponization of therapy speak

2025-05-20

I’ve never highlighted a book as much as They’re Not Gaslighting You: Ditch the Therapy Speak and Stop Hunting for Red Flags in Every Relationship. It's my favorite book in 2025! Watch the Video Interview Author Dr. Isabelle Morley gives us a timely book that rejects the reckless proliferation of the following terms: Sociopath Psychopath Love bomb

I’ve never highlighted a book as much as They’re Not Gaslighting You: Ditch the Therapy Speak and Stop Hunting for Red Flags in Every Relationship.

It's my favorite book in 2025!

Watch the Video Interview

Author Dr. Isabelle Morley gives us a timely book that rejects the reckless proliferation of the following terms:

Sociopath
Psychopath
Love bomb
Narcissist
Boundaries
Borderline
Toxic
Gaslighting

Who is Dr. Isabelle Morley?

Dr. Morley is not a chronic gaslighter trying to convince the world that she doesn't gaslight by writing a book about it. Here's her resume:

Author of Navigating Intimacy and They’re Not Gaslighting You
Co-host of the podcast Romcom Rescue
Contributor to Psychology Today
Advisory Board Member of the Keepler app
Founding Board Member of UCAN
Member of the American Psychological Association
Certified in Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT)
The Gottman Method – Completed Levels 1 and 2
Relational Life Therapy – Completed Level 1
PsyD in Clinical Psychology from William James College, 2015
Doctoral project researching hookup culture’s impact on relationship formation, 2015
Master's in Professional Psychology from William James College, 2013
Bachelor of Arts from Tufts University, 2011

My Fatima Story

I dated a woman for two years. Let’s call her Fatima.

In the second half of our relationship, Fatima bombarded me with many of the highly charged and often misused words listed above.

After she dumped me the fifth and final time, I finally pushed back on her barrage of accusations. I said to her, “So, you truly believe I’m a narcissist? Let’s look up the clinical definition of a narcissist and see how I stack up.”

She agreed. Perplexity wrote:

To be clinically considered as having Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) according to the DSM-5, an individual must exhibit at least five out of nine specific characteristics. These characteristics, as summarized by the acronym “SPECIAL ME,” include:

Sense of self-importance Exaggerating achievements and expecting to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements.
Preoccupation Being preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
Entitled Having unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations.
Can only be around people who are important or special Believing that they are “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).
Interpersonally exploitative Taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends.
Arrogant Showing arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
Lack empathy Being unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
Must be admired Requiring excessive admiration.
Envious Often being envious of others or believing that others are envious of them.

These symptoms must be pervasive, apparent in various social situations, and consistently rigid over time. A qualified healthcare professional typically diagnoses NPD through a clinical interview. The traits should also substantially differ from social norms.

I asked her how many of these nine characteristics I exhibited consistently, pervasively, and in many social situations. She agreed that I was nowhere near five of the nine.

Admittedly, I sometimes exhibited some of these nine characteristics in my intimate relationship with Fatima. I’m certainly guilty of that.

However, to qualify as a true narcissist, you must display at least five of these nine characteristics often and with most people, not just your partner.

To her credit, my ex-girlfriend sheepishly backed down from that accusation, saying, “You’re right, Francis, you’re not a narcissist.”

Later, I would educate her (or, as she would say, “mansplain”) about another of her favorite words: gaslighting. I mansplained by sending her a video clip of renowned couples therapist Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, who explained why standard disagreements and having different perspectives aren’t gaslighting. Soon after explaining that, Mrs. Gottman explains why, in some ways, “everybody is narcissistic.” Watch 6 minutes from 1:35:30 to 1:41:30:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9kPmiV0B34&t=5730s

After listening to an expert define gaslighting, Fatima apologized for incorrectly using the term. This is what I loved about Fatima: she wouldn’t stubbornly cling to her position when presented with compelling evidence to the contrary. This is a rare trait I cherish.

Narcissists and sociopaths are about 1% of the population, so it’s highly unlikely that all your exes are narcissists and sociopaths.

Still, Fatima flung other popular, misused terms at me. She loved talking about “boundaries” and “red flags.” According to Dr. Morley, my ex “weaponized therapy speak.”

Dr. Morley writes, “It’s not a new phenomenon for people to use therapy terms casually, even flippantly, to describe themselves or other people. How long have we referred to someone as a ‘psycho’ when they’re acting irrationally or being mean?”

Although weaponized therapy speak isn’t new, it’s ubiquitous nowadays. Dr. Morley’s book sounds the alarm that it’s out of control and dangerous.

Three types of people would benefit from Dr. Morley’s book:

People like Fatima: Does someone you know tend to denigrate people using therapy speak? Are they intelligent, rational, and open-minded like Fatima? If so, they must read this book to recalibrate how they use these powerful words.
People like me: Are you (or someone you know) accused of being a psychopath, a gaslighter, or a person with OCD?
Actual victims: The explosion of use of these powerful words has diluted their meaning. As a result, the real victims of narcissists and sociopaths are now belittled. Their true suffering is minimized when every other person has a sociopath in their life. Their grievances are severe. Let’s not equate our relationship problems with their terror.

I’ll list some of my favorite chapter titles, which will give you a flavor of the book’s message:

Chapter 4: Are They Gaslighting You, or Do They Just Disagree?
Chapter 5: Do They Have OCD, or Are They Just Particular?
Chapter 6: Is It a Red Flag, or Are They Just Imperfect?
Chapter 7: Are They a Narcissist, or Did They Just Hurt Your Feelings?
Chapter 9: Are They a Sociopath, or Do They Just Like You Less Than you Like Them?
Chapter 11: Did They Violate Your Boundaries, or Did They Just Not Know How You Felt?

I will quote extensively to encourage everyone to buy Dr. Mosley’s book. Most quotations are self-explanatory, but sometimes I will offer personal commentary.

Excerpts

The trend of weaponized therapy speak marks something very different. These days, clinical words are wielded, sincerely and self-righteously, to lay unilateral blame on one person in a relationship while excusing the other from any wrongdoing.
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Many times, we use these words as protective measures to help us avoid abusive partners and reduce our risk of “wasting” time or emotional energy on family or friends who don’t deserve it. But using these terms can also absolve people from taking responsibility for their actions in their relationships. They can say, “I had to do that because of my obsessive-compulsive disorder” or “We didn’t work out because she’s a narcissist,” instead of doing the hard work of seeing their part in the problem and addressing the issues behind it. As a couples therapist, I’m particularly concerned with how the enthusiastic but inaccurate embrace of clinical terminology has made it harder to sustain healthy romantic attachments.

With Fatima, our relationship woes were always my fault because I crossed her “boundaries” and I was a “narcissist.” If I disagreed, I was “gaslighting” her. Or I was being “defensive” instead of apologizing. And when I apologized, I did so incorrectly because I offered excuses after saying I’m sorry (she was right about that). The point is that she used weaponized therapy speak to demonize me, alleviating herself from the burden of considering that perhaps she shared some of the responsibility for our woes.
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Their friend doesn’t agree with their warped view of an event or their disproportionate reaction? The friend is an empathy-lacking narcissist who is actively gaslighting them.
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In one memorable session of mine, a client managed to accuse their partner of narcissism, gaslighting, love bombing, blaming the victim, lacking accountability, having no empathy, and being generally abusive, manipulative, and toxic . . . all within twenty minutes.

Although Fatima and I went to couples therapy, I don’t remember Dr. Mosley being our facilitator, but that sure sounds like Fatima! LOL!
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I’m certified in emotionally focused couples therapy (EFCT), which is a type of couples therapy based on attachment theory.
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For example, if you feel like a failure for letting your partner down, you might immediately minimize your partner’s feelings and tell them they shouldn’t react so strongly to such a small issue. (For anyone wondering, this isn’t gaslighting.) That makes them feel unheard and unimportant, so they get even more upset, which makes you dismiss their reaction as dramatic, and round and round it goes.

Welcome to my world with Fatima!
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You could claim your partner is toxic and borderline because they’re emotionally volatile and unforgiving. You could say their feelings are disproportionate to the problem, and their verbal assault is bordering on abusive. But your partner could say that you are a narcissist who is gaslighting them by refusing to acknowledge their feelings, showing no empathy for the distress your tardiness caused, and shifting the blame to them (just like a narcissist would!). You’d both be wrong, of course, but you can see how these conclusions could happen.
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Weaponized therapy speak is our attempt to understand people and situations in our lives, yes, but it is also a strategy to avoid responsibility. It puts the blame solely on the other person and allows us to ignore our part.
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However, the vast majority of partners and friends are not sociopaths, narcissists, or abusers. They’re just flawed. They’re insecure, demanding, controlling, emotional, or any number of adjectives, but these traits alone aren’t pathological.
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But doing such things now and then in our relational histories, or doing them often in just one relationship, doesn’t mean we have a personality disorder. These diagnoses are reserved for people who exhibit a persistent pattern of maladaptive behaviors in most or all of their close relationships.
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I wasn’t an abusive partner. I was a messy newcomer to relationships, as we usually are in our teens and twenties, trying my best to navigate my feelings while following bad examples from television and making plenty of other blunders along the way. Stonewalling was immature and an unhelpful way of coping, but it wasn’t abuse.
==========
If we’re looking for a partner who will always do the right thing, even in the hardest moments, we’re only setting ourselves up for disappointment. As I mentioned before, really good people can behave really badly.
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If we don’t know the difference between abusive behavior and normal problematic behavior, we’re at risk for either accepting abuse (thinking that it’s just a hard time) or, alternatively, throwing away a perfectly good relationship because we can’t accept any flaws or mistakes.

Alas, Fatima threw away a perfectly good relationship. I was her second boyfriend. Her lack of experience made her underappreciate what we had. She’ll figure it out with the next guy.
==========
Disagreeing with someone, thinking your loved one is objectively wrong, arguing about what really happened and what was actually said, trying to find your way to the one and only “truth”—these are things that most people do. They are not helpful or effective, but they also are not gaslighting.
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“What? I didn’t say yes to seeing it, Cece. I said yes to finding houses we both liked and visiting them. Sometimes you just hear what you want to and then get mad at me when you realize it’s not what I actually said,” Meg answers.
“Stop gaslighting me! Don’t tell me what happened. I remember exactly what you said! You told me yes to this open house and then changed your mind, and I’m upset about it. I’m allowed to be upset about it; don’t invalidate my feelings!” Cece says, her frustration growing.
Meg feels surprised and nervous. She didn’t think she was gaslighting Cece, which is exactly what she says. “I didn’t mean to gaslight you. I just remember this differently. I don’t remember saying I would go to this open house, so that’s why I don’t understand why you’re this upset.”
“Yes, you are gaslighting me because you’re trying to convince me that what I clearly remember happening didn’t happen. But you can’t gaslight me because I’m positive I’m right.”
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Cece’s accusation of gaslighting quickly shut down the conversation, labeling Meg as a terrible partner and allowing Cece to exit the conversation as the victor.
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I find gaslighting to be one of the harder labels to deal with in my clinical work for three reasons: 1. Accusations of gaslighting are incredibly common. I hear accusations of gaslighting at least once a week, and yet it’s only been accurate about five times in my entire clinical career. Boyfriend didn’t agree with what time you were meeting for dinner? Gaslighting. Spouse said you didn’t tell them to pick up milk on the way home, but you swear you did? Gaslighting.
==========
You could say, “I want you to know that I really understand your perspective on this. I see things differently, but your experience is valid, and it makes sense. I’m not trying to convince you that you’re wrong and I’m right, and I’m sorry if I came across that way.” WHAT IS VALIDATION? Validation is another word that suffers from frequent misuse. People demand validation, but what they’re really asking for is agreement. And if someone doesn’t agree, they call it toxic. Here’s the thing, though: Validation is not the same as agreement.
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You can disagree in your head but still validate how they feel: “Hey, you’re not crazy. I see why you’d feel that way. It makes sense to me. I’d probably feel that way too if I were in your shoes, experiencing our interaction the way you did. I care about your feelings.”

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“I bet it felt really awful to have me challenge your experience and make you feel like it wasn’t right or valid.”

I regret I learned this lesson too late with Fatima. I was too slow to validate her feelings. We learn something in every relationship. Ideally, our partner is patient with us as we stumble through the learning process, often repeating the same error until we form a new habit. However, Fatima ran out of patience with me. I couldn’t change fast enough for her, even though I was eager to learn and dying to please her. By the time I began to learn about proper validation and apologies, she had given up on me.

==========
My husband, Lucas, hates it when lids aren’t properly put on jars. You know, when a lid is half on and still loose or haphazardly tightened and askew? I, on the other hand, could not care less. I am the only perpetrator of putting lids on wrong in our house. I barely screw on the top to the pickles, peanut butter, medications, water bottles, or food storage containers. I don’t even realize that I do it because I care so little about it. This drives Lucas absolutely crazy.

I love this example because it’s what I would repeatedly tell Fatima: some habits are hard to break. Dr. Mosley knows her husband hates half-closed jars, but she struggles to comply with his wishes. We’re imperfect creatures.
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Is your partner always leaving a wet towel on the floor after showering? Red flag—they’re irresponsible and will expect you to clean up after them. Is your friend bad at texting to let you know when they’re behind schedule? Red flag—they’re selfish, inconsiderate, and don’t value your time. It’s all too easy to weaponize this term in a relationship, in hopes that it will shame the other person into changing.
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People aren’t perfect. Individually, we’re messy, and in relationships, we’re much messier. We all make mistakes, sometimes repeatedly for our entire lives. Instead of labeling all unwanted behaviors as red flags and expecting change or running away altogether, try a new approach: Identify why those behaviors hurt you and share that with your loved one instead.
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When confronted with the knowledge that we’ve hurt someone, many of us become defensive. We hate the idea of hurting the person we love and since we usually didn’t intend to hurt them, we start explaining why our actions weren’t that bad and why they shouldn’t feel upset. It comes from a place of inadequacy, self-criticism, and remorse. If the other person responds like this but you can tell they care about your pain, this may be a good time to give them some grace in the form of empathy and time. Wait a few hours or even a few days, then try the conversation again.

For every criticism I had about Fatima’s behavior, she had 20 criticisms about my behavior. As a result, I had many more opportunities to fall into the trap of becoming defensive. It’s so hard to resist. I’m still working on that front.
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We all have a touch of narcissism, which can get bigger at certain points in life,
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Conflicts are upsetting, and we’ve all developed ways of protecting ourselves, whether it’s getting loud to be heard or emotionally withdrawing to prevent a panic attack. Underneath these less-than-ideal responses, though, we feel awful. We feel scared, insecure, inadequate, unimportant, and alone. We hate fighting with our loved ones, and we really hate that we’ve hurt them, especially unknowingly. We’re not being defensive because we have a narcissistic belief in our own superiority; we’re doing it because we’re terrified that the person won’t understand us and will see us negatively, so we need to show them our side and explain to them why we aren’t to blame.
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But whether it’s an inflated ego, vanity, self-absorption, or just unusually healthy confidence, these traits do not make a narcissist. To have NPD, the person must also require external validation and admiration, and to be seen as superior to others. This is the difference between a big ego and grandiosity. Grandiosity goes several steps beyond confidence—it’s a near-delusional sense of importance, where someone exaggerates their achievements and expects others to see them as superior.
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Some people suck. They’re immature, mean, selfish, and unremorseful. Some people don’t respect other people in their lives. They lie and they cheat, and they don’t care that it hurts others. But they can be all these things and still not be a narcissist. There’s a lot of room for people to be awful without meeting the criteria for a personality disorder, and that’s because (you guessed it!) people are flawed. Some people feel justified in behaving badly, while others just don’t know any better yet. Our growth is messy and not linear.
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The reality is that anyone who genuinely worries that they are a narcissist, probably isn’t. That level of openness and willingness to self-reflect is not typical of a narcissist. Plus, narcissists don’t tend to believe or care that they’ve hurt others, whereas my clients are deeply distressed by the possibility that they’ve unknowingly caused others pain.
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As with gaslighting, I have rarely seen people accurately diagnose narcissism. To put it bluntly, I have never seen a client in a couples therapy session call their partner a narcissist and be right. In fact, the person misusing the label usually tends to be more narcissistic and have more therapy work to do than their partner.
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person involved with a narcissist to accurately identify the disorder because people with NPD are great at making other people think they are the problem. It’s an insidious process, and rarely do people realize what’s happening until others point it out to them or the narcissist harshly devalues or leaves them. Now, you might be in a relationship with someone who has NPD, but instead of jumping to “narcissist!” it’s helpful to use other adjectives and be more specific about your concerns. Saying that a certain behavior was selfish or that a person seems unremorseful is more exact than calling them a narcissist.
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Love bombing can happen at any point in a relationship, but it’s most often seen at the start.
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Love bombing is also a typical follow-up to fights.
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Humans are a complicated species. Despite our amazing cognitive capacities and our innate desire to be good (well, most of us anyway), we often cause harm. People act in ways that can damage their relationships, both intentionally and unknowingly, but that doesn’t make them sociopaths. In fact, anyone in a close and meaningful relationship will end up hurting the other person and will also end up getting hurt at some point because close relationships inevitably involve a degree of pain, be it disappointment, sadness, anger, or frustration. Even when we’re doing our best, we hurt each other. We can’t equate normal missteps and hurt with sociopathy.
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People love to call their exes sociopaths, just like they love calling them narcissists.

Dr. Mosley focuses on the term sociopath because it’s more popular nowadays than the term psychopath, but they both suffer from misuse and overuse, she says. If your partner (or you) use the term psychopath often, then in the following excerpts, replace the word “sociopath” with “psychopath.”
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calling someone a sociopath is extreme. You’re calling them out as a human who has an underdeveloped (or nonexistent) capacity to be a law-abiding, respectful, moral member of society. And in doing so, you’re saying they were the entire problem in your relationship. Unless you were with a person who displayed a variety of extreme behaviors that qualify as ASPD, that conclusion isn’t fair, accurate, or serving you. Again, you’re missing out on the opportunity to reflect on your part in the problem, examine how you could have been more effective in the relationship, and identify how you can change for the better in your next relationship. If you label your ex a sociopath and call it a day, you’re cutting yourself short.
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Let the record show that I have never seen someone use the term sociopath correctly in their relationship.
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some boundaries are universal and uncrossable, but the majority are personal preferences that need to be expressed and, at times, negotiated. Claiming a boundary violation is a quick and easy way to control someone’s behavior, and that’s why it’s important to clarify what this phrase means and how to healthily navigate boundaries in a relationship.

Fatima loved to remind me of and enforce her “boundaries.” It was a long list, so I inevitably crossed them, which led to drama.
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There are some boundaries we all agree are important and should be uncrossable—I call these universal boundaries. Violating universal boundaries, especially when done repeatedly without remorse or regard for the impact it has on the other person, amounts to abuse.
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The main [universal boundaries] are emotional, physical, sexual, and financial boundaries
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Outside of these universal, uncrossable boundaries, there are also individual boundaries. Rather than applying to all people, these boundaries are specific to the person and defined by their own preferences and needs. As such, they are flexible, fluid over time, and full of nuance. If they are crossed, it can be uncomfortable, but it isn’t necessarily abuse.
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boundary is a line drawn to ensure safety and autonomy, whereas a preference is something that would make you feel happy but is not integral to your sense of relational security or independence.
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While a well-adjusted person might start a dialogue about how to negotiate an individual boundary in a way that honors both partners’ needs, an abusive person will never consider if their boundary can be shifted or why it might be damaging or significantly limiting to the other person. Instead, they will accuse, blame, and manipulate their partner as their way of keeping that person within their controlling limits.
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The point is that as we go through life, our boundaries shift. As you can see, this is part of what makes it difficult for people to anticipate or assess boundary violations. If you expect and demand that the people close to you honor your specific boundaries on certain topics, but you’re not telling them what the boundaries are or when and how they’ve changed, you’re setting your loved ones up for failure.
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And again, people unknowingly cross each other’s individual boundaries all the time. It’s simply inevitable.
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It will create an unnecessary and unproductive rift.
3. We Mistake Preferences for Boundaries
Boundaries protect our needs for safety and security. Preferences promote feelings of happiness, pleasure, or calm. When someone crosses a boundary, it compromises our physical or mental health. When someone disregards a preference, we may feel annoyed, but it doesn’t pose a risk to our well-being.
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You’ve Been Accused of Violating a Boundary
If you’re in a close relationship, chances are you’re going to violate the other person’s boundaries at some point. This is especially likely if the person has not told you what boundaries are important to them. However, you might also be unjustly accused of violating a boundary, perhaps a boundary you didn’t know about or a preference masquerading as a boundary, and you’ll need to know what to do.
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I never thought of telling Fatima that she was “borderline.” It helps that I didn’t know what the term meant. Dr. Mosley says that a person must have several of the “borderline” characteristics to have borderline personality disorder (BPD). Fatima only had one of them, so she did not have BPD. Here’s the only BPD trait she exhibited:

Stormy, intense, and chaotic relationships: Have relationships that tend to be characterized by extremes of idealization and devaluation in which the person with BPD idolizes someone one moment and then vilifies them the next. Because they struggle to see others in a consistent and nuanced way, their relationships go through tumultuous ups and downs, where they desire intense closeness one minute and then reject the person the next.

Fatima promised me, “I will love you forever,” “I want to marry you,” “I will be with you until death,” “I’ll never leave you,” and other similar extreme promises.

Three days later, she would dump me and tell me she never wanted to get back together.

Two days later, she apologized and wanted to reunite. Soon, she would be making her over-the-top romantic declarations again. She’d write them and say them repeatedly, not just while making love.

Eventually, I’d fuck up again. Instead of collaborating to prevent further fuck ups, Fatima would simply break up with me with little to no discussion. This would naturally make me question her sincerity when she repeatedly made her I-will-be-with-you-forever promises.

You might wonder why I was so fucking stupid to reunite with her after she did that a couple of times. Why did I always beg her to reconsider and reunite with me even after we repeated the pattern four times? (The fifth time she dumped me was the last time.)

Humans are messy. I expect imperfection. I know my loved one will repeatedly do stupid shit because I sure will. So, I forgave her knee-jerk breakup reaction because I knew she didn’t do it out of malice. She did it to protect herself. She was in pain. She thought that pulling the plug would halt the pain. That’s reasonable but wrong. That doesn’t matter. She’s learning, I figured. I need to be patient. I was hopeful we’d break the pattern and learn how to deal with conflict maturely. We didn’t. I’m confident she’ll figure it out soon, just like I learned from my mistakes with her.
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If I had to pick one word to describe people with BPD, it would be unstable.

Fatima was unstable in a narrow situation: only with one person (me) and only when the shit hit the fan with me. Aside from that, she was highly stable. Hence, it would have been ludicrous if I accused her of having Borderline Personality Disorder. Luckily, I never knew the overused borderline term; even if I did, I wouldn’t be tempted to use it on her.
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Just as with red flags, we all exhibit some toxic behaviors at times. I don’t know anyone who has lived a toxic-free existence. Sometimes we go through tough phases where our communication and coping skills are down, and we’ll act more toxically than we might normally; this doesn’t make us a toxic person. Indeed, many romantic relationships go through toxic episodes, if you will (should we make “toxic episode” a thing?), where people aren’t communicating well, are escalating conflicts, and are generally behaving badly. We need to normalize a certain level of temporary or situational toxicity while also specifying what we mean by saying “toxic.” This is the only way we can determine whether the relationship needs help or needs ending.
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trauma is itself a heavy, often misunderstood word. Its original meaning referenced what we now call “big T” trauma: life-threatening events such as going to war or surviving a car crash. Nowadays, we also talk about “little t” trauma: events that cause significant distress but aren’t truly life-threatening, like being bullied in school or having an emotionally inconsistent parent.
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Avoiding relationships with anyone who triggers hard feelings will mean a very lonely existence.
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a trauma bond is the connection that survivors feel with their abuser.
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A captured soldier who defends his captors? That person is, in fact, trauma bonded.
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soldiers aren’t trauma bonded after going to war together; they’re socially bonded, albeit in an unusually deep way. A captured soldier who defends his captors? That person is, in fact, trauma bonded.
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None of us get to have a happy relationship without hard times and hard work. It’s normal and okay to sometimes struggle with the person you’re close to or love. When the struggle happens, don’t despair. Within the struggle are opportunities to invest in the relationship and grow, individually and together.
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If you determine your relationship is in a tough spot but not abusive, now’s the time for some hard relational work. A good cocktail for working on your relationship is specificity, vulnerability, and commitment.
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Making a relationship work requires you and your loved ones to self-reflect, take responsibility, and change. This process won’t just happen once; it’s a constant cycle you’ll go through repeatedly over the course of the relationship. You’ll both need to look at yourselves, own what you’ve done wrong or could do better, and work to improve. Nobody is ever finished learning and growing, not individually and certainly not in a relationship. But that’s what can be so great about being in a relationship: It’s a never-ending opportunity to become a better person. And when you mess up (because trust me, you will), be kind to yourself. As I keep saying, humans are wonderfully imperfect. Even when we know what to do, sometimes we just don’t or can’t do it.
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In this world of messy humans, how do you know who will be a good person for you to be with? My answer: Choose someone who wants to keep doing the work with you. There is no perfect person or partner for you, no magical human that won’t ever hurt, irritate, enrage, or overwhelm you. Being in close relationships inevitably leads to big, scary feelings at times, so pick someone who wants to get through the dark times with you. Remember that when people are behaving badly in a desperate attempt to connect—not control—they’ll be able to look at themselves, recognize the bad behavior, and change. Pick someone who has the willingness to self-reflect and grow, even if it’s hard. Someone who will hang in there, even during your worst fights, and ultimately say, “Listen, this is awful, and I don’t want to keep arguing like this, but I love you and I want to figure this out with you.”

Wow. So well said. And this, in a paragraph, explains where Fatima and I failed.

I dislike pointing fingers at my ex when explaining why we broke up. I made 90% of the mistakes in my relationship with Fatima, so I bear most of the responsibility.

However, Fatima was the weaker one on one metric: having someone who wants to collaborate to make a beautiful relationship despite the hardships.

The evident proof is that she dumped me five times, whereas I never dumped her or even threatened to dump her. I always wanted to use our problems as a chance to learn and improve. Fatima used them as an excuse to quit.

She tried. She really did. However, she lacked the commitment Dr. Mosley discussed in that paragraph. Perhaps another man will inspire Fatima to find the strength and courage to bounce back and not throw in the towel. Or maybe she will mature and evolve to a point where she can be with someone less compatible than I was for her.

She would often declare, “Francis, we’re incompatible.”

I’d say, “No, we are compatible; we have incompatibilities. Everyone has incompatibilities. We just need to work through them. If there is a willingness to collaborate, we can solve any incompatibility. The only couples who are truly incompatible are the ones where one or both individuals refuse to budge or learn. We can overcome countless incompatibilities as long as we both want to be together.”
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We have wounds and scars and bad habits. We rely on ineffective but protective coping mechanisms. We push others away when we’re hurt or scared.
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Everyone behaves badly sometimes. But even then, odds are they’re not gaslighting you.

Conclusion

I'll repeat: They’re Not Gaslighting You: Ditch the Therapy Speak and Stop Hunting for Red Flags in Every Relationship is my favorite book in 2025! Buy it!

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