is that they make you believe that it is your mistake to have any standard with respect to the way you talk with each other, respect each others feelings, spend time with each other, treat each other.

When you believe und trust them LVM will tear you down, leave you in a broken and devastated state, with lowered standards and little to no self-confidence left.

This spiral goes downwards. Endlessly. With each person that uses your trust against you, the following will be worse. So long until you accept shit that you never thought you would ever accept, because at some point you don't feel worthy anymore and are even hungry for crumbs.

Choose carefully whom you trust enough so that you believe their interpretation of a situation and then adjust your perspective with regards to theirs. Remember that it is intrinsic to each living being to have it's own self interest at heart and that the people who consciously and intentionally protect others from their own self-righteousness and self-interest are rare.

Many call it gaslightning, I believe that only very few people intentionally and consciously gaslight. It is a matter of fact that situations, particularly those with emotional meaning, appear differently, depending on whom you ask.

Gaslightning happens when you allow (trust) the other to let him define the emotional content of your interaction.

That is why we loose value, because we loose the ability to trust ourselves, and start to believe that our standards are wrong, that indeed we ourselves are wrong because we have standards at alk.

Trust me, I am just a stranger in the internet, but have experienced and observed it many times, the spiral goes down and the next one is worse if you don't manage to establish your own integrity and learn to communicate this respectfully to the one who respects you and deserves your emotional work.

Men will always to some extend be unable to do emotional work and their ability to understand our complexity is limited. It is unrealistic to expect them to be different, that is not how they are made to be. However, if they cannot even respect who we are and that we are different and at least listen and try to understand even though they will never be able to fully understand (which is the limitation that we also need to accept) they don't deserve that we give ourselves to them.

Don't hand yourself over to the interpretation of someone who is unable to see what you see and does not even attempt to see what you see. This is as LV as it can be.

Sympathy is easy and comes with no cost. Cognitive Empathy requires work and conscious attention. Learn to distinguish the two.