"That's not what happened"
Memory tricks make couples differ in their recollection of events
Ever wonder why your spouse and you recall the same events differently?
Comment: “Remember when you did not want to accompany me to the doctor’s? I was all alone and scared!”
Wife’s narrative: He abandoned me during a moment of crisis.
Husband’s narrative: What? I abandoned her? I had a job interview that day, my first one, months after being laid off.
Neuroscience and psychology offer insights into these memory distortions.
First, watch this video. People unfamiliar with cricket, stick with me. This is former Indian player Ravi Shastri talking about a traumatic event that took place in the West Indies during India’s 1982-83 tour to the country.
You can see that he can actually visualize the event; the teeth on the pitch, the blood, Holding at the end of his runup, and he can also sense the desire to prove himself.
He's not lying.
But that is not what happened.
See the scorecard of the 4th test at Bridgetown, Barbados.
Vengsarkar came into bat in the second innings after Mohinder's blow. The score was 1-96. Gaekwad was at the other end. When Vengsarkar got out, the score was 2-108. Gaekwad got out, and then Yashpal. Possibly, Mohinder had come back to bat between those players. Then Shastri walked in to bat and scored 19. No teeth, no blood on the pitch by then. Brief match description here.
However in the 2nd test at Port of Spain of the same series, Shastri walked in to bat after Yashpal was hit on the head in the first innings. There was no blood. He was hit above the ear. See the scorecard. He got 42.
So, clearly Shastri was in duress during the series as all the batsmen were, no doubt. So the extreme trauma of seeing batsmen getting hit badly on the head/face must've screwed up his memory and then the repeated imagery got conflated in his mind and he mixed the two events. In a sense, he is not lying, because he is not spreading a deliberate falsehood. But I'd fact check every cricketer's (sportsperson’s) autobiography.
Imperfect memory could cause rifts amongst couples
Research at Northwestern University has demonstrated that people do not recall the original event. 1
Every time you remember an event from the past, your brain networks change in ways that can alter the later recall of the event. Thus, the next time you remember it, you might recall not the original event but what you remembered the previous time. The Northwestern study is the first to show this.
An article in Psychology Today cites many different reasons why couples differ. 2
Implicit memory
Negative bias
Focus distortion
Time distortion
Log in your eyes
Memory of memories
Remembering self
The article cites the research of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahnemann to explain the ‘Remembering self’ and why people can take umbrage at being told that they were wrong.
Daniel Kahneman’s landmark work distinguishes between the experiencing self and the remembering self. Each moment of the experiencing self lasts about three seconds, most of them vanishing without a trace. What gets remembered by the remembering self are changes in the story, intense moments in the story, and the ending. The brain tends to color the entire story with the intensity of the ending of it.
The sense of self is constructed from memory rather than experience, which is why partners react so strongly when their memories are disputed. It’s not the accuracy of the facts that matter so much as the perceived assault on the sense of self.
Writing in the same publication, clinical psychologist Lisa Firestone has a detailed explanation of implicit memories. 3
Trauma memories are often implicit because trauma floods our brain with cortisol, the stress hormone, which shuts down the part of our brain that encodes memories and makes them explicit. Our implicit memories can be like invisible forces in our lives, impacting us in powerful ways. The more we can learn about implicit memory, the better we can understand ourselves and not let our experiences and reactions in the present get hijacked by our past.
Because of the nature of implicit memories, they’re often triggered subconsciously and cause reactions we don’t always understand. For example, seeing certain wallpaper can remind a person of a room in which they were abused as a child, leaving them feeling frightened without knowing why.
Waking up after a breakup can trigger the loneliness that person felt waking up alone as a child. Hearing a baby cry on an airplane can cause a person to feel severe discomfort, triggering painful feelings from when they were a baby themselves.
She describes tools people can use to make implicit memories explicit. Read the full thing.
These flawed memories can sabotage marriages. 4
If a partner recalls a story while angry, the details will be more negative. Brains fill in gaps to support the angry version, and memory serves its owner. Details that don’t fit are dropped, and others are added to make the memory coherent and pleasing.
and
The reverse is true as well. When couples feel loving, they recall things more generously. Satisfied partners describe their history in positive terms and will laugh about previous bumps and misunderstandings.
Validation and support
The trick to combating memory distortions is to be compassionate towards your spouse. (See futile and gainful responses). Validate the feeling, comfort them when they are suffering, and support their healing process. Remember, feelings are feelings, they cannot be invalidated. Facts can be disputed.
Comment: “Remember when you did not want to accompany me to the doctor’s? I was all alone and scared!”
Wrong response: “I had my first job interview after 6 months of not working. What could I have done?”
Right response: “Sweetie, I am so sorry that you felt all alone and scared. I wish I could have been there. It must’ve been traumatic wondering whether you had a serious health issue and not having me to lean onto. I was attending a job interview on that day. I wanted the job badly so that I could support our family.”
These discussions are hard and people vary in their reactions.
However, the mere awareness that the partner is not gaslighting and has a genuinely flawed recollection goes a long way towards healing relationships.
Fascinating, no?
Your Memory is like the Telephone Game, Maria Paul, Northwestern University, September 2012
Why You and Your Partner Remember Things Differently, Steven Stosny, Psychology Today, June 2021.
These Invisible Memories Shape Our Lives, Lisa Firestone, Psychology Today, August 2019
How Flawed Memories Can Sabotage Your Marriage, Jason Whiting, LFStudies.org,