S3 E4: It Comes Through Like a Freaking Bomb
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In Dr. Stephanie Moulton Sarkis' book, Gaslighting, she describes, "'Gaslighters are very seductive. They will sweep you off your feet with love-bombing and then drop you off a cliff. The initial seduction is so strong that when things do go south, it's hard not to feel that you're to blame, or that somehow you should be able to get that wonderful person back. The initial charm is all part of the game."

Relationships with gaslighters are filled with confusion, disorder, and drama, so much so that it's easy to feel shame. But being attracted to a gaslighter is no cause for shame. Even brilliant, successful, and otherwise discerning people can be easily seduced by a gaslighter's many initial charms.

Gaslighters crave newness and attention. Even if you could do everything, quote, perfectly, the gaslighter is still a bottomless pit of need that can never be filled. Taking personal responsibility is not a characteristic of gaslighters. They always believe it is someone else's fault. They rarely feel empathy or remorse.

Love bombing, hoovering, stonewalling, and flying monkeys are tactics gaslighters enjoy using to manipulate those around them. As previously mentioned on the podcast in Season 1, love bombing is a common tactic abusers use to hook their victims.

Love bombers use excessive affection and attention in order to gain control or significantly influence your behavior. This includes showering you with praise, buying you gifts, aligning with your opinions, and spending lots of time together.

Gaslighters are amazingly good at keeping their pathology in check until they know you're hooked. They erode your perception of reality until you feel you cannot function normally without them. When a gaslighter love bombs you, it's hard to get away. The attention you receive is intoxicating. The pedestal they put you on feels damn good, but eventually when you fall off of it, it is a long way down.

Hoovering is a tactic gaslighters use to try and suck you back in when they feel you checking out. If gaslighters get any kind of inkling of perceived abandonment, they work at sucking you back in. They will stop at nothing to get you back in their clutches. Nothing causes fear in gaslighters more than the feeling of abandonment. This is what's known as a narcissistic injury.

Gaslighters have an endless pit of need for attention no matter what you do. You will always be humanly incapable of fulfilling their needs. The gaslighter knows just how to get you hooked back in with the promise of something that you want. Often, they will use objects to try and reel you in. You'll get texts and emails. These are all attempts made with the same intent, to try and get back in contact with you.

Stonewalling is the disappearing act or radio silence gaslighters will treat you to when they get caught, feel they've been done wrong, or simply prefer not to talk about something because it's more convenient for them that way. If you don't live with them, you won't see or hear from them. They will not answer your texts or calls. Meanwhile, you grow more anxious the longer that you don't hear from them. Does it bother the gaslighter that their silent treatment is torturing you?

Far from it. They love that their behavior causes you to get upset.

Once you've left a gaslighter, well-meaning friends and relatives may approach you and tell you they think you should give the gaslighter another chance. They may even tell you that you've always been too sensitive or difficult. Chances are, the gaslighter contacted these people to put them up to this. The people who willingly and sometimes unwittingly do the gaslighter's bidding are known as flying monkeys.

The gaslighter sends these messengers to attempt to guilt you back into the relationship. Healthy people do not stalk or harass others, regardless of whatever reason they may use to attempt to do so.

I'm Tiffany Reese, and this is Something Was Wrong. You think you know me, you don't know me well at all. You think you know me, you don't know me well at all.

Well, I happened to one day share a photo on Facebook. Here's CJ Bishop. And it was of my father-in-law. It was an excellent picture of like a local photographer had snapped a picture of him outside of a working fire one night. And he posted it to his photography page on Facebook and

And I thought, oh, well, my mother-in-law and sister-in-law aren't going to see it if they don't follow him. So I saw it and I shared it and I tagged my mother-in-law and sister-in-law in it. Because at the time, my father-in-law was supposed to be retiring in the next few years. And I thought, oh, man, they have to have that picture of him. So I shared it. And within probably it had to have been within 30 minutes, I get a text from Patty saying,

Oh, well, I saw that picture that you shared. That's nice. I guess I'm just kind of surprised.

at why you'd share that if you, you know, if you hate him so much. And I ended up saying, well, even though, you know, things aren't good between us, like, that's still Victoria's husband and that's still my sister-in-law's father and they deserve to have a good picture of him before he retires. And she basically just, in her own snarky way, had said that I was being, like, a hypocrite because I shouldn't be sharing...

a picture of somebody that I can't stand. And I have the conversation saved because at the time I thought, when the day comes that my father-in-law comes around and snaps out of whatever funk he's in, I am going to show him this conversation and make him see that his friends are not his friends. Patty basically said, "Well, I don't think that anybody should be drawing attention to Ted because we all know that that family loves attention.

And I finally just said, you know what? Like, you are the biggest hypocrite. I know exactly what you're doing. I'm aware that you love the fact that Victoria and Ted are not close with their children and closer to your family. I'm aware that you love it.

Unfortunately, like, I mean, I just told her, I said, I think you're just nuts. Like whatever's going on in your head, you need to get it fixed, which probably wasn't a nice thing, but that's just how I felt. I was like, I'm done. Like I'm done with this. I couldn't believe the reaction that she, I couldn't believe the crap she gave me for sharing a simple picture of my father-in-law. She didn't approve of it.

So I got off the phone. I remember I was I took off work that day to just like spend time with Brad. And I set my phone down. I remember I walked outside of the garage and I said to him, I don't know what's going on. But I have a feeling that whatever the issues are between us and your family, I don't think that Patty is helping it.

Like, I couldn't say at the time, she's the cause of all this. I just knew that she wasn't helping the situation. And I said, that's it. Like, we're done. We're not going over there for holidays. I don't want to be in her home. We're backing away.

You know, since we stopped going to holidays at her house since then, she and her husband noticed. And I think that they really thought we weren't going over there because of my in-laws and the strain between us and my mother and father-in-law. It wasn't my mother and father-in-law. We didn't go because we...

We didn't trust her and we didn't want to be under her roof. So after the whole Facebook incident, the next day she had texted me and apologized. You know, I'm sorry about that, blah, blah, blah. Like, you're right. I was, you know, I was wrong. And that's how it was whenever I would call her out. Whenever I would start calling her out on little things, she would get just mad.

infuriated and start spouting words. And then later on, she'd apologize for it. And I don't know if that's because she was afraid that I'd figure out what was going on and thought, oh, well, I better, I better take a couple steps back. I don't know. I don't know why she would do that. But I can tell you after that whole Facebook incident, I was done. And it wasn't that I didn't have contact with her after that. I mean, we did like,

You know, if we saw her out or at a function or whatever, it's not that we wouldn't talk to her. Like, we talked to her from time to time, but it was about trivial things. You know, oh, this weather. Oh, okay. Yeah, I saw that so-and-so is getting married. That's nice. If you need anything, let me know. You know, it's not that we went no contact, but I did not have...

a friendship with her after that. She was not allowed in my life. I didn't tell her about our troubles and our heartache that she knew. I mean, she knew we were so heartbroken over the situation with my in-laws. She knew how much it killed us. You know, she knew it. You know, my husband is a very, he takes everything to heart. So she knew it was killing him to be in this state with his family. And she loved it.

Here's Brad. My mom was very, like, whatever Patty would say, like, she submitted to. She really would. There, within the last six, eight months or whatever, I was starting to talk to my mom. You know, she would call, or I would call her, you know, maybe once a week or whatever. Again, it's horrible to admit they live a mile away, you know, you just barely even speak to them. But I was, I was really starting to talk to my mom a lot more.

My mom started kind of realizing stuff with Patty. Like, Patty, out of the absolute blue, started to, I guess she started hearing that I was, she was talking, my mom was talking to me. And even my mom, who knew nothing and told Patty everything in her life and more, instantly was like, you know what, I ain't saying nothing to her. She's like, no, I don't.

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Here's Victoria. The morning, March 7th, Ted came off of daylight and he was down reading a paper and normal circumstances he would usually come upstairs and at least say, I'm home, hello, something. Well, this particular morning he didn't. He stayed downstairs and I came downstairs to go outside or to get ready for work, finished getting ready for work.

and he had his nose in the paper and i said you didn't even come up and say hello and and he's like oh are you gonna get ticked off at me for that too i said me get ticked off i said you're the one that didn't come upstairs and say good morning or even hello and i said what's going on with you and he's like nothing the night prior to that i didn't get any kind of text from patty

Patty texts me constantly. What are you doing? Are you sleeping? Because I would fall asleep a lot in the evening because I was depressed. What did you have for dinner? What did you have for snack? What did you, you know, what are you doing at this moment? And so it was constant. I said, I didn't hear at all from you last night. And I said this via text. And she said, well, Kurt found a lot of text from Ted.

and Mr. Johnson, and he's really mad, and we're probably going to end up in a divorce. And I says, so what do you mean you're a lot of texting from Ted? And she's like, well, nothing happened, and there was nothing sexual, but, you know, we're really close, and I text, we text each other a lot, and we joke and have fun, and

And I'm like, wait a minute, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I said, I don't understand. She's like, I swear nothing happens sexually, but you know, we're really close. And I says, all right, I believe you. If you say nothing happened, I believe you. And I thought about it for a little while and I text her back and I says, if you were me, how would you take this? And she's like, well, I don't know if I believe me.

So Patty had texted my mother-in-law saying, hey, I think I owe you an apology last night. My husband, Kurt, had found a bunch of text messages between Ted and I and found it was like inappropriate, inappropriate.

When I swear there was nothing inappropriate about it or there was nothing more sinister about it, she was just trying to help my father-in-law with his marriage. And she had said, Kurt and I may be getting a divorce. He's really upset. But I promise, you know, there was nothing deceitful. I was just trying to help.

I was just trying to help your marriage. What Kurt had told Brad was, I questioned her as to why there was so much text messaging between your dad and Mr. Johnson. Now, from the text message that Patty had sent my mother-in-law, it seemed like he saw what kind of text messages they were because he was really upset and said, you know, oh, we may be getting a divorce over this, but I promise I was just trying to help Ted with your marriage.

So I got on the phone and I called Ted and I said, "Ted, what are you doing?" He's like, "Oh, I'm doing my parents' grocery shopping." I said, "I just got some disturbing texts from Patty regarding you texting her and she texting you." "Yeah?" And I says, "What's going on?" He's like, "Nothing."

I said, "No, I don't think it's nothing." I says, "You know what? I'm to the point now. Ted, I'm here to tell you, you either start going to counseling with me or we're done." And he said, "Okay." He's never said that. And he was calm. He was cool. I thought, "Oh, he must be in some place where he can't talk because he was getting his parents groceries."

And I said, "Okay, all right, I'll talk to you later." He said, "All right." He said, "Bye." I text Ted because we had gotten a puppy a few months prior. I said, "Did you let the pup out?" And I didn't hear from him. So I assumed, oh, he's still at his parents' so it was 12:38. I looked at my watch when I left work. I went home, which takes about 15 minutes.

And I saw Ted's truck in the driveway and I pulled in and I says, oh boy, I better go in or I'll get yelled at. I don't want to listen to it. So I'll go in and I get in the house and I start hollering for Ted, asking him, you know, where are you at? What are you doing? The pup was in the living room and the gates were up and I didn't think too much about it. And I hollowed down in the basement because

Ted does a lot of woodworking and he wasn't down there and you know nothing was out of the norm everything looked normal and um I hollered and I ran upstairs I thought oh maybe he's in the attic and he just can't hear me I hollered up in the attic and he wasn't there and and my daughter's room's door was shut and I opened the door and I smelled this flash of gunpowder

and Ted was on the floor, sitting, and there was blood all over his temple, and coming out of his nose and mouth, and the gun was on his lap. And I ran over and I checked in for a pulse, and I couldn't feel one, so I checked it again, and by that time, I'm really shaky.

And I ran and got the phone, and I called 911. And a lady was just taking forever with me. And I went back and checked him again for a third time. And I knew he was gone. I knew he was gone. I just knew it. And I was so afraid to look at the other side of his head because I was afraid there was something there. But thankfully, in the grace of God, it was there because the bullet didn't leave his head.

And all I could think of that was my children. And I called my children. Well, I called my son because he was so close. He was like a little less than a mile from me. And I called him and he's like, what's wrong? I should come home. I think your dad's dead.

It was that afternoon or morning or whatever. I went to a Bible study, and I'm sitting there with the guys in this Bible study, and my phone rings. I look, and it's Mom. I saw it and stood right away. I'm in the middle of a Bible study. I'll talk to her later. She called back right away, and I thought, oh, man. So I stood up, didn't think anything of it. I picked up that phone, and I could hear her screaming.

I've been a first responder for a while now, and you just know it's bad. So I knew something was bad, and she said, you have to come home quick. I think your dad shot himself. I said, where are you? She says, I'm at home. She's screaming. And I run back into the room with the Bible study. I'll never forget, in the middle of a church. I'm like, how the F do you get out of this place? And they all jumped up and said, out here. I couldn't even remember. It was a big church, and we're in the basement. And I bolted out.

I jumped in my truck and I took off and I floored it. I met up with a city detective at a main intersection. He was going lights and siren at an unmarked cruiser. And we met the intersection and I'm screaming at him to keep going. And he threw his hands up and he told me afterwards, he says, as soon as I saw the truck and I saw the tag, I knew it was you.

Because at first he was like, "What on the heck are you doing?" thinking I was just like a regular citizen, you know, about ready to block him in the intersection. And he kind of like motioned like, "Yeah, come on." And we floored it through the whole city. I was hot on his tail. And when we got to my parents' street, he pulled over and I floored it and went to the house. I was at work. I got a call on my cell phone from Brad and I knew right away something was wrong.

because he usually calls my office number and goes through the system to my extension, but he called my cell phone. And I picked up the phone, and after I said hello, all I heard was, "I need you to come to the house. Mom thinks Dad killed himself." And my boss had to drive me over to his parents' house because I just, I felt like I was going to pass out, so I didn't want to drive.

And in the car in my head, I'm thinking, he's dead. Like, I know he's dead. He wasn't stupid. It sounds morbid, but he knew how to successfully kill himself. I mean, there's just no way he would have botched it. And I just knew he was gone at that point. And there would probably be no closure. And I had this insane feeling of the husband I know now,

Like he's I had this like fear of he's never going to be happy again. He's never going to be fulfilled again. It was so hard for me to grasp like this amazing person that I married is never going to fully be happy in his life again. And that's what I feared because this terrible thing happened. A man that was his father and once his best friend and best man at our wedding is gone. You know, I just had this terrible sadness like for my husband.

And I remember pulling up onto the block. Brad beat me there. And once I could hear, I could hear my mother-in-law, like she sounded like a wounded animal. I could hear her from like the corner of the block. I will never forget the way that sounded.

My mom was on the couch, hysterical. I ran through the door. She's hysterical. My one good buddy of mine, he's on the job. He doesn't live, he lives right, literally not far from my parents' house. He ran down. We get like text alerts on our phones, you know, and he saw the address and knew it was my dad's house. He ran down. He was one of the first ones there. And he yelled at me to stay downstairs. I just bolted upstairs and there was a sea of people.

Our guys, cops, ambulance people in the hallway. And I tried to make my way through and it was a bit of a fight. They didn't know who I was at first. And once they realized it was me, they were like, you know, don't, don't. You know, they kind of grabbed me and I said, is he gone? And they said, yeah.

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I just remember walking into the house and it was so weird because we were so disconnected from his family. And it was like stepping into this house that smells the same from when I remembered it from years prior when I used to practically live there. You know, they had me over all the time and it was like a second home to me. It was so weird walking in there because I hadn't been in that house in so long. And now here I am and there's...

and ambulance and firemen. And my husband is upstairs and his dad's gone. I just remember sitting down with... I sat down with my mother-in-law. She was on the couch just trying to catch her breath. And my husband was still upstairs and thank God he didn't see...

He didn't see his dad in that state. They wouldn't let him. They knew that, you know, he's in public service. So thankfully, all the responders that were at the house that day in some way knew our family and knew my husband. So they didn't let him in to see. And I'm so thankful for that because I would never have wanted my husband's last memory of seeing his dad to be that way.

But I just, I just kept saying to, like, to the first responders and the police and, like, the city detective was there. And I kept saying, are you sure? Are you sure? This doesn't sound right. Like, my father-in-law was not a person that...

that would have committed suicide. There was just no way. I mean, he was in public service himself, and he just kind of always shook his head. As terrible as it sounds, he shook his head at people that did that. I think it's because like, you know, if you don't understand it, you shake your head at it. Like, really, are you that weak? Are you that whatever? That's obviously so not the case. But you just have such a negative perspective of people that do that.

And here he, you know, and then it was him that did it. It just seemed so unbelievable. I guess at first she, my mother-in-law thought that he was cleaning a gun and it went off because it just didn't make sense that he would have shot himself. But that definitely wasn't the case. But they were just 110% positive that it was self-inflicted. It wasn't an accident. It wasn't a murder. He, he did it to himself.

And that was the weird thing, like I didn't even know how to act. And I started to kind of break down a little bit and they were like, go downstairs, you need to be with your mom. And I did. I really composed myself and I was fine. I was talking like I was a couple minutes ago. I wasn't teary eyed. I wasn't crying. I was just there for my mom.

and i started calling people and uh you know my mom threw her coughing and dry heaving and crying she's like you got to get a hold of this person got to get a hold of that get a hold of your sister do not tell her just tell her she has to get here and it wasn't until i had i had called someone in particular and uh and uh i had my mom's phone and uh i called my mom's sister at first and uh she's

probably the oldest second oldest of like seven or eight siblings she didn't answer my uncle answered and i was like listen you just got to get down here i didn't even tell him he's like and they all live hours away and uh and he's like okay he's like what's the matter he's like i just need you down here he said as soon as she gets home we'll head down they didn't ask any questions that's i mean we have we have a great family we really do and uh

And I called somebody else and again I have my mom's phone so they pick up and they're like hello thinking that they're my mom and I'm like hey it's me and uh you know I'm pretty close to this individual one. He said what's wrong and that was the first time that I really started getting upset. I said dad shot himself and this other guy I'm talking to he's a pretty tough guy he's been through a lot too you know just in life in general and I can hear him kind of like like a grown man you know whimpering

hey there's something you don't hear he just did it real quick like and he's like is he dead i said yeah he's dead i said we lost him he said we'll be right down and uh big community and my family of first responders and law enforcement and 911 dispatchers and firefighters we just have a whole line of it you know a family

But you know I guess it's it'll hit anybody here. It doesn't matter how many calls you run doesn't matter How much bad stuff you see you know when it hits the family it comes through like a frickin bomb, so Sorry, um just kind of that whole day. You know think about it all the time I tell my wife all the time like I think about it every single day I'll be thinking about it at dinner. I think about it work don't do anything, but when you talk about it when you actually talk about it and

It makes it pretty real again. I guess just rehashing everything from basically childbirth to that day. You know, it's just...

And that's it. It's over. He's dead. It's over. His life's gone. Every attempt to try to get him the importance of seeing, living for the Lord, living for the family, stopping everything he's doing, the lifestyle, everything. Everything is over. It's done. There's no pass go. There's no collecting $200. There's nothing. It's over. He's done. He made that decision.

And there's no taking that back. That's the hardest thing we struggled with was there is no him pulling in to hash things out. There's no fixing things. It was over. And that is the hardest part. After a little bit, my husband had called. His first call was his sister. I think she was in State College working that day.

So once she came to the house and once she knew, once he called a lot of the immediate family and immediate relatives, and once everybody knew and they were on their way here, I believe it was the city detective that had said, do you guys have somewhere that you can go? Can you make a home base somewhere else? So...

And I brought my sister-in-law and mother-in-law here to our house, which is crazy because all this distance and we only live a mile apart from my in-laws house, which is sad. But I brought them here. And sure enough, you know, the first people to show up here were Patty and Kurt.

Next time.

Something Was Wrong is written, recorded, edited, and produced by me, Tiffany Reese. Thank you so much to the Bishop family for participating in this series. To reference sources, resources, and links that are mentioned on the podcast, check out the show and episode notes. Music on this series by Glad Rags. If you want to help out the podcast, you can leave us a positive review on iTunes. You could support the podcast on Patreon. You could share it on Instagram or Facebook with your friends.

Share the podcast with your Reiki healer, your yoga master, your barista, your, um, I don't mentor, your lover, your baby mama. Um, yeah. They don't know me.

You think you know me, you don't know me well at all. You think you know me, you don't know me well. You think you know me, you don't know me well at all.

If you like Something Was Wrong, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. She struck him with her motor vehicle. She had been under the influence and then she left him there.

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