The abuser's selective memory

Abusers tend to forget about thier own wrongs, but tend to remember very well how they "felt" wronged by others and have a way of letting you know months or even years later (through passive-aggressive/ sarcastic remarks).

It's impossible to confront someone with a selective memory [sigh...just venting here].

I am assuming this was spawned (at least a little) from my own posting. One of the hugest obstacles that I had in leaving my abuser was accepting that fact he did indeed abuse me. I spent countless days going over the situations in my head of how or why I could have caused what had happened to me. I wondered if I had over reacted in certain situations and if I was to blame for some of the behaviors he inflicted on me.

The difference between myself and my abuser was the fact that I well...cared. I felt remorse for my own actions(reactive abuse) and a general dislike of how I handled myself...but I have to remember the key thing here...HOW I HANDLED MYSELF WHILE BEING ABUSED. My abuser does not comprehend he abused me, but he is very quick to say I was the verbally abusive partner. He is quick to remember how I wronged him (and yes, I have) but cannot fathom how his own behavior was wrong.

Towards the very end I mentioned I still loved him, but things needed to change if we were to ever continue.

His answer?

Would you like me to just become a loser then? Any time I tried to tell him his behavior wasn't appropriate it turned into "Do you want to date a p*ssy?" Or he would start talking like a "proper" gentleman and mockingly say things like "Oh *myname* would you fancy a tea?"

He had no comprehension he had an anger problem, he justified...every single thing he did. Whereas I remember every time I blew up in frustration(and every time when I over reacted). I was self aware of my own shortcomings.

Yes, your post definitely reminded me of an abuser constantly forgetting and denying what he said a couple of minutes ago, yet mentioning something I said YEARS ago that has already been resolved. There is always a double-standard.

Hope you and your baby are doing well and staying healthy

Sometimes this awareness is that no matter what you said, it did not work. Some people simply do not CARE enough to respect other's boundaries. That is why they tend to forget too. People easily forget things they don't care about, boundaries are not something they care to respect.

The selective memory is just more abuse. It’s gaslighting. I’ve been told an incident never happened. I know the truth. Screw them.

I was often told incidents never happened, or I was "lying" or that I was just plain over embellishing his outbursts of rage and making them more than what they are.

It is definitely an abuse tactic. He literally went around telling everyone I was a complete nut job and nothing happened the way I said it did or not at all. It got so bad that I was getting random facebook messages from some of his friends telling me I was horrible.

I was like wait, what? I get screamed at on a weekly basis and I am horrible? He was a manipulator and definitely showed signs of several mental disorders all in one. He did not understand boundaries or care enough to respect that they were broken.

Example: I filed bankruptcy due to a large credit card bill and a car lease I wanted to get rid of when I found out about my pregnancy. I specifically told him to stop mocking my bankruptcy and my financial situation. He proceeded to bring it up on almost a daily basis, and bringing it into topics at random. When I informed him he was being degrading and verbally abusive, all hell broke loose. Whereas a normal and non abusive person would respect boundaries and care when they hurt another person. He did not. If you were to ask him if he ever verbally abused me or mocked my financial situation he would flat out deny it.

What he did is a ‘smear campaign’. Articles about narcissism covers this. Once you see it for what it is, it feels like the world opens a curtain and the light shines through!

Right now I am in the discard phase of it. I wasn't sure whether or not to call it that as most of the discards involved him hoovering back as a power/control method. However now, he has threatened me with police when I tried to tell him the sex of the child and has blocked me for a while with no reaching out. Which I read happens when the victim no longer tolerates the abuse or the relationship is no longer beneficial to the narcissist.

To me "selective memory" is the ultimate proof that abuse is going on. It's not always easy to tell as some people are just being rude, thoughtless or just being jerks.

However blunt denial of obvious facts just means that there is Intention behind it and this must remain in the dark so that the abuse can continue.

It's definitely very hard to deal with abusers because they NEVER want to admit anything and they gaslight and then gaslight about gaslighting. I am having a VERY hard time with this challenge when it comes to my older sister and my parents and how she has been abusing the powers she has with them.

There are times where I get so angry that I get these huge urges to email her or text her about all the classic abuser tactics she uses. The problem with that is she will just find some way of using it against me. She also is incredibly dismissive where she says "not interested in the past I am ONLY thinking about the NOW". To her the past can be two days ago when she said or did something toxic again.

Actually? It can be a trigger to me when someone says "what about the NOW" to me because this is a method my abusive sister uses when she refuses to discuss how she once again lied or gaslighted. Her aim is to constantly encourage it's YOUR fault too. She also takes EVERY step she can to keep me from getting any information from anyone else but her, so she puts in a lot of effort to ISOLATE.

Selective memory is just an abuse tactic,they never really forget,they lie and revise history,they also gaslight and lie about doing it.It really is true the best way to protect your self from a narcissist abuser is to stay away from them ,do not engage and do not stay in a relationship with them,go 100% no contact.

It’s really scary when you get to the point where the abuse is crystal clear. I know it. They know I know it, even though they will gaslight me until the end of time. I feel afraid they will do worse to maybe physically hurt me once I have stopped allowing the emotional abuse.

The more they get away with emotional abuse the more likely the abuse will become physical,it usually escalates in that way.

Abusers have told me that incidents didn’t happen, that I was “lying” or “blowing things out of proportion”.

They refuse to respect boundaries and are unable to remember or care that THEY have wronged us.. as you said they do tend to remember very well how they “felt” wronged by others.