"I've Been Gaslit and Lied to For Months" — Man Learns Couples Therapist Is Girlfriend's Friend

A man discovered the couples therapist he and his girlfriend, Emma, had been seeing was actually one of Emma's friends. Redditor @Drainmano detailed the situation in a viral post uploaded to the site's r/AITAH sub. In it, he delineates the emotional distress he endured in these group attacks on his character disguised as counseling.

OP begins his piece by stating that he and his girlfriend were together for six years in what was largely a very happy relationship. However, during the last year of the time together, he said that miscommunication increased and they were getting into "small arguments" more and more frequently.

This was a departure from their normal M.O. Oftentimes, they were on the same page, but in spite of these squabbles, OP thought that there really wasn't anything glaringly wrong with their dynamic. That is, until Emma expressed her concerns for the future of their relationship. She recommended couples therapy, which OP was initially reluctant to participate in.

He said that preliminary meetings with the therapist didn't seem to have an inherent bias towards Emma's viewpoints. The therapist listened to both of their issues equitably and even equipped them with some tools that would assist in their communication with one another.

Although he did mention that the entire experience still felt somewhat off.

It didn't take long, however, until the therapist, whom he calls Lily in the post, "was always subtly siding with Emma. If I mentioned being stressed from work, she'd steer the conversation towards how I wasn't giving enough attention to Emma," he explained.

Furthermore, he said that if he disagreed with something Emma had stated, then the topic was redirected towards his inability to communicate effectively.

Further compounding his unease about the couples therapy sessions was how Emma would start invoking Lily's name even outside of therapy sessions. "It felt like everything I did was being scrutinized and dissected by this woman I barely knew."

Consequently, this led him to believe that Lily was "slowly convincing Emma that [he] was the problem in the relationship. And every time I tried to voice my own concerns, they were brushed aside."

The sessions had OP thinking he was paranoid, but he couldn't shake the feeling that Lily was "planting seeds of doubt in Emma's head, and Emma was running with them."

Worse, he began doubting his own actions and intentions in the relationship as he started to begin to wonder whether or not he was the problem. "Was I actually this bad of a partner?" he asked himself.

OP stated that he had been keeping his cool this entire time until Lily recommended that the two of them may want to take a break so that he could get his act together. "I'd been trying so hard to be better, and now she was suggesting we split up? I looked at Emma, waiting for her to disagree or defend me, but she just say there ... quietly nodding along."

Additionally, he went on to state he was disheartened to see that Emma wasn't defending him or their relationship when the suggestion for a break was mentioned. Following the meeting, OP says that he "blew up at Emma when [they] got home. [He] told her [he] didn't trust Lily's judgment, that it felt like she was just feeding Emma reasons to blame me for everything wrong in the relationship."

During their discussion, he says that Emma got on the defense and that Lily was simply attempting to help the two of them work through their issues. After the argument, OP says that he "started feeling guilty for snapping," and considered that their therapy sessions were "exposing some flaws I needed to work on."

However, he soon learned the truth about these sessions while attending a party with his girlfriend. He overheard Emma telling another friend she had from college to pose as a therapist so they could coach him into being a better boyfriend.

Upon approaching Emma at the party about the conversation with her friend, OP says that Emma's face turned pale. While they tried to backtrack what they just said, he says that he "felt completely betrayed [as he] had been spilling [his] heart out to someone who wasn't even qualified to help."

And the dagger was that Emma was in on the betrayal.

After confronting his girlfriend about it, she began saying that she didn't want to hurt him and that she was just trying to help out their relationship. Her friends piled on, stating that he was overreacting to the situation, which hasn't helped his perception of his girlfriend, unfortunately. "I haven't been able to look at her the same since," OP notes.

"I feel like I've been gaslit and lied to for months," he wrote.

While there were several people who were outraged on OP's part, there were other people who thought that the story was made up.

Regardless, there were many people who believed the story to be true and thought that he should take legal action, as the therapist was practicing counseling without a license.