'My husband's ex-wife has been manipulating me for years. I just found out it has a name.'

When Diane* met her husband John*, his ex-wife, Sarah*, asked to meet her for coffee. She had no idea that this would be the beginning of a decade of emotional manipulation.

"It became pretty clear, pretty quickly, what she was like," Diane told Mamamia.

"She wanted to meet me and have a chat, and then when I agreed to that, she turned around and said that she was only going to do that if my husband came along, and I wasn't up for a threesome."

Diane politely declined the invitation. And Sarah wasn't happy.

"She turned around and made out like I was the problem," Diane claimed. "And that is a very mild version of what she's done since then."

What followed has been years of alleged "secondary gaslighting" at the hands of the ex-wife.

Watch: Mamamia Out Loud on gaslighting. Post continues after video.

"While not a legal or clinical term, [secondary gaslighting] describes a phenomenon where the perpetrator recruits others, such as friends, family, professionals, or institutions, to reinforce a distorted version of reality," Angie Gehle, the Senior Policy & Advocacy Officer at DVNSW, told Mamamia.

"This might look like minimising or invalidating the victim's emotional or physical responses, denying the abuse, or rewriting events that occurred to shift blame."

While Diane says there's been no physical abuse, the psychological toll this secondary gaslighting cannot be understated. Diane claims that Sarah has "weaponised her children" — Diane's step-children — against her.

"There's a thing called Golden Uterus syndrome, when people see their children as possessions. That's exactly what she's like," Diane said.

"When my husband and I first started going out with each other, the children would say things to him like, 'Mum wants to know when you're coming home'."

Sarah also allegedly lied to her kids about when she and their father broke up, to make it seem like Diane had stolen him away from her.

"She's always planted in the children's minds that if their father wasn't with me, they'd still be together."

Diane would try to play peacekeeper but, apparently, Sarah wasn't having a bar of it.

"I would say, 'I just want everybody to be happy and to get along', and one of my stepchildren would say, 'Oh, my mum tells me that's not what you want at all'.

"She would tell my step-children — who've known me for years and spent time with me… that she knows me way better than they do," Diane said.

Diane has also received emails from Sarah after the kids have spent the weekend at their dad's house.

"The kids would just have normal kid interactions, like chasing each other around the house. Or they'd sit at the dinner table and they might be pretending to have a sword fight with forks, just pure fun, laughing and giggling. And then we'd get an email as soon as the kids had gone back, calling my daughter a bully, and saying that she'd attacked the children with a fork.

"It just wasn't true, but these kids are just little and impressionable, and she did everything to get between them."

What ensued was a "hectic" custody battle.

"That was when she really ramped it up for everybody and anybody who was available for her to manipulate. She manipulated them into thinking what she wanted them to think."

This is a common tactic used in secondary gaslighting, said Angie Gehle.

"Crucially, perpetrators not only manipulate those close to them, but they also often collude with systems: legal services, child protection, police, and welfare institutions. This systemic collusion can severely undermine the victim's credibility, amplify their isolation, and reinforce the perpetrator's power."

Sarah reportedly also convinced her children to change their answers in court in her favour, prompting Diane and John to drop the court case, knowing what the outcome would be.

"She's so high-conflict that we would have ended up in the High Court because she just kept lying. It would just be so stressful and bad for everybody."

Diane said that she "can always tell when [Sarah has] been in overdrive", because when the children arrive at the house, they'll be "very cold" towards her.

In an ironic twist, Diane alleges that after the custody battle, Sarah kicked one of her daughters out of the house.

"We went through all of that expensive and very upsetting, distressing court case, just so that you could just give her up," she mused.

The daughter ended up moving in with her dad for two months, but the other kids were made to think that Diane was the reason she had been kicked out.

"They wouldn't even speak to me. Somehow she has made it out that it's always me or my (biological) daughter; that we're the problem. That if we weren't around, things would be better. If we weren't around, life would be easier."

Diane added that it is "really hard to explain" how Sarah operates, which is a common occurrence for victims of secondary gaslighting.

"These dynamics are complex and often hard to identify," said Angie Gehle. "Family members and professionals are frequently drawn into the perpetrator's narrative, sometimes without even realising it, which only further strengthens their control and contributes to the victim's loss of agency."

Knowing how to approach the situation with her step-children has proven difficult for Diane.

"You can't say to your kids, 'Your mother's lying', because kids don't want to hear that. And we learned the hard way. We used to say, 'Well, that's not true; that's not what happened'. But now the children are caught between the two of us. Who do they believe? They're probably always going to believe the mother, the person they live with more. And kids love their mums, so of course they're going to believe their mums."

While Diane initially tried to be civil with Sarah, she has since learnt that the best course of action is to not engage.

"I give her absolutely nothing. I haven't communicated with her via text message or anything for years. I've told my husband to keep her away from me. 

"It's taken a long time for my husband to figure it out, but you just have to ignore her. You just can't give a narcissist any oxygen, because they thrive on oxygen. Sometimes my husband would write back to her, and I'd tell him to stop. That's what she wants, because then she thinks, 'Oh, I've still got it over him. I'm still in charge'. For her, it's all about control."

The secondary gaslighting became so bad that Diane considered ending the marriage.

"I didn't sign up for that to be subjected to that horrific narcissism," she said, adding that she once thought John would take his own life.

"Victims often describe feeling like they've lost themself, their self-confidence, identity, support systems, and even their sense of reality," said Angie Gehle. "This erosion is a deliberate outcome of sustained abuse, and it's no exaggeration to say it can be fatal."

Diane has found that the emotional impact has been difficult to escape, even within her own home.

"I have to be honest and say that sometimes her toxicity comes into the house through the children. They've been here for a weekend, and they go back and it's all questions, questions, questions. It's not very nice."

When Diane and John first began dating, she figured "all the families would get along" eventually.

"Maybe you don't love each other, but you're all friends, and you just do that for the kids. I thought it would get better over time too, which is why I always said to the kids, hopefully one day we can all just have birthdays together and hang out. But that hasn't been the case."

For anyone in a similar situation, Diane reiterates that their experience is valid.

"You're not crazy. It's real. It happens. It can happen through children. And I think stepmothers are very under-heard and misunderstood. They love to have the rhetoric of the 'Evil stepmother', and 'She'll never love my children the way I love them'. But I don't understand why you wouldn't want all the love that you can have for your children?"

*Names have been changed for privacy reasons.

Feature Image: Getty (Stock image for illustrative purposes only).