Even if you experienced an event together, don’t expect your memories and those of your spouse to be the same. It’s a bit like being at a car accident No two people will see the event the same way. Someone will be able to remember the car and model, maybe even the number plate. Anther person might not have a clue about those things but can tell you the color of the car or what the man or woman involved was wearing, or want time it happened.
Yesterday as Mick and I were talking with a friend, he related an incident. When he mentioned this place with the fuel stove I had no recollection of it at all. It was like it had never happened.
Later when we talked about it further I was able to piece together the event and the house he was talking about. But I often find what I remember from shared times he has completely forgotten about and vice versa. It’s all to do with the differences of personality and gender plus what one person considers important when their spouse may not attach any significance or importance to it at all.
This has happened too many times to discount that Mick will remember certain aspects of an incident, while I remember other things, if I even remember the incident at all. Sometimes with a bit of prodding, as in the house incident, I will end up remembering more details, despite the fact that initially it was not on my radar at all
The truth is our memories are unreliable. We see things always from our own point of view – which means we see them imperfectly. It’s like a filter. Our brains take an experience and filter out what to us is unimportant or irrelevant, yet it may be a vital piece of information to our spouse.
It’s the same as two children growing up in the same house and same family. Their view of a shared childhood and events that happened will be vastly different. One is not true and the other false. Like the situation between you and your spouse they are both versions of the same truth.
Most of the time the truth is that neither of us has the whole story –only a version of events That is as Jane Yolen says in her book about writing Take Joy >‘two people to whom the same incidents happen can have entirely different experiences. Differing points of view. Each version is, in some way, the truth, only told- as Emily Dickinson wrote “on the slant”’
Please visist these related blogs
Personality Differences in Relationships
Gender Differences in Marriage