What lies behind our struggle to accept a memory lapse for what it is? This blog post explores the conflict between being right and staying connected. It draws on personal experiences that most humans will relate to and highlights that our difficulty with misremembering may arise because we believe there is something sinister behind it.

My memory is not perfect. I hope this comes as no surprise to you, my fellow human being. I’m certain you’ve had your share of moments when the way in which you remember something differs from the person standing before you.

Yet, we may be adamant we are right, remembering what happened and what didn’t happen as clear as day. Certainly, it must be the other person who has it wrong…

again…and again…and again…

And perhaps this person with the concerning memory is someone we dearly love.

However, that other person who we are sure has it wrong may well be experiencing the exact same thing as us, believing that it is them that sees things exactly as they really are, and it is in fact you who has it wrong.

Who is right? And what does it even matter? In my experience letting go of being right and focusing on connection is often the surest route to happiness. But what is it that blocks us from letting go of our perspective on what happened for the sake of connection?

Are you prepared to let go of a deeply held belief?

A very good friend of mine, James, once told me that he struggles to have meaningful relationships with people who aren’t prepared to let go of their most deeply help conviction. He was primarily talking about political beliefs, but we have since agreed that it might extend to other things – our senses, our memory…

I trust my senses, at least in the very moment that I am sensing. What I don’t always trust, is my memory of what I sensed, or my interpretation of what I sensed. Let alone someone else’s interpretation of what I sensed.

And as time elapses, as it inevitably does, the clarity around what I saw and heard diminishes, and just weeks later only fragments of what happened remain. I’ll retain some bits and pieces of what happened, but often only the bits that support my understanding of why something happened. And even then, what I remember could be a distorted version of what actually happened to suit my understanding.

I have no recollection of some of the things that I’ve witnessed in this life. The routine things especially. Did I lock the front door this morning when I left for work? What did I have for dinner last Sunday? But also, there are bigger things I’ve missed too…did the person that I love tell me about that important thing which I definitely would have remembered had they told me?

Not the only one

Such lapses are typical amongst us humans, and well documented too. I’ve read, researched, and written much about the psychological processes in humans. I’ve also applied insights to my life for the sake of finding greater happiness. It is not as difficult for me as it once was to hold up my hands and admit that I may have it wrong. Even with the really big things. And when I do it, I just hope that the person in front of me can meet me somewhere in the middle. Rather than see my strength to let go of being right as vindication that they were right all along, I hope they can also let go of their version of what happened being correct. Sadly, it doesn’t often happen like that and, although it can be painful, I have tried to remain curious about why they can’t.

Recently I had a long conversation with a friend whom I’ve known for over ten years. At the end of our call, we got to reminiscing to the time we first met and the serendipitous circumstances that brought it about. We had both been roaming about the land on bicycles, somewhere near Bristol we both fondly remembered, and our paths happened to cross. However, he was 100% sure it was in July that we met, whilst I was certain it was 2 months later. It was tense for a tiny bit and we both backed into our sureness of things as we recalled them. Yet, what did it matter? For our friendship the month we met was irrelevant. What mattered was our connection now and sustaining that. We both laughed a bit, recognising that maybe we were both wrong, or maybe even both right – because after all what is time anyway, when all we ever really have is now?

But sometimes it’s not so easy let go of disagreements in how we see things…why is that?

First, some tales of righteousness

I can recall a friend who years ago would get angry every time their parent, now no longer with us, but then suffering from Alzheimer’s, insisted on the presence of her long dead relatives. Arguments would ensue and everyone in the room (including the long dead relatives, I suppose) would get very tense. I would wonder why my friend couldn’t let go of insisting that their confused mum was wrong. Their mum was suffering from Alzheimer’s after all and to her these people were present.

My parents have had their share of I’m righter-than-thou moments, and growing up it was difficult to witness. I would watch my parents getting into big arguments over the most trivial lapses in memory. My dad forgot many of the things that my mum told him. This was a regular feature of their relationship. And my mum, who certainly had her own lapses but were less apparent, would rarely let it rest. Mum got angry; dad got defensive. Along the way tears would come and it could get messy. Things that had happened, such as bigger less forgivable memory slips from different times and places, got brought into the mix of what was being said.

I would wonder why Dad didn’t just hold his hands up, admit that it may have slipped his mind, and thanked Mum for the reminder? Why didn’t my Mum accept that Dad didn’t always remember things too well and just peacefully tell him again? There had to more to it than a simple memory slip. And there was, as I now understand it.

I’ve been there too. In relationships where I don’t recall what had happened in our shared life in the same way as the other person. We’ve gotten frustrated at one another. And then the attempt to understand the conflict that just took place has itself been shrouded in misremembering. I’ve often given up on being right to maintain connection. However, it’s not always been enough, and I’ve seen my mind go to some dark and scary places.

Why do we humans, me included, take what is a common mishap to a place that it doesn’t need to go? Very recently, amidst a memory mishap interaction, I understood something important about why we do this.

Why are you doing this to me?

It was a Saturday afternoon, and I was in a coffee shop with a new love. It was sunny outside, and I felt relaxed. I was retelling some personal news that I was certain I’d told them a few weeks earlier. The economic consultancy where I now work would be moving their offices to a new location. It was news that had some implications for our relationship. Since it would be a location in the city that they lived, it was likely to influence how much we saw each other and potentially bring forward the idea of us living together. However, they were certain I hadn’t told them about this news before. I was certain I had.

Rather than both of us recognising that regardless of whether it had been said and heard before and putting it down to a communication lapse, we got stuck on the issue for a lot longer than we should have. Some might say it ruined most of the afternoon. However, we maintained our connection and that was when an insight landed. Whilst I couldn’t remember the exact time and place that I’d told them, I thought it was something that I would have told them.

Things got tense between us, especially in the most heated moment when a past relationship experience came to my mind. It was just like my parents too, patterns repeating – I got anxious and could feel panic just around the corner.

And so, I held my hands up to say that although I’d be surprised if I hadn’t shared it, maybe I hadn’t shared it as I had thought. I didn’t need to be right. We just needed to communicate better. And I breathed. At this point, I was at least connected to myself.

However, my love couldn’t quite let it go. And she took my concede as vindication of her own rightness. I kept breathing, maintained the desire for connection, and recognised that this wasn’t probably about me. After some exploration I understood that there was a block to her viewing it as a simple memory mishap – in her eyes there was a sinister intent behind it. She thought I was lying about having told her. Intentionally so, with the aim of gaining some psychological advantage. After all, some people can and will do that.

The narrative that lies deeper that we can’t let go of

Now, I don’t lie. At least not consciously. As for my subconscious, well, I can get a bit tetchy on that subject because despite the work I’ve done on myself, I recognise that there are processes within me that I’m not fully cognizant of. In fact, the more work I’ve done on understanding myself, the more I’ve become aware of the power of things I’m not fully aware of to play into my life in weird and wonderful ways. What I’m saying is that it’s possible I unconsciously lie to myself and others, but unlikely. However, like I say, I’m open to that possibility.

And on a difficult and dark day, when I have someone that I love dearly projecting onto me for the nth time that week a perception that I am manipulating them, I start to doubt myself. What if I am somehow being manipulative, and I am not aware of it? I have lost myself in that idea because I can never really know for sure. Or can I?

The thing is, sub-conscious processes aside, if I stay grounded, connected to the present, which isn’t easy when I’m in front of someone going through something that they seem to be trying to pin on me, I can tune into truths. And one truth in the scenario with my love, was that I had no reason to lie. I knew it had implications for our relationship but that wasn’t a reason to lie about it. That doesn’t mean I don’t speak mistruths, because I’m human, but as soon as I see that lie and that it matters, as it often does, I’ll admit it. In fact, I think I can be too honest sometimes (look at this blog post for example). Authenticity, as anyone who follows my work will know, is fundamental value for me. And so yes, I think I told you, but maybe I didn’t. Here, there was no lie.

So, what blocks another from being similarly self-effacing? Is it because they have an unfavourable story about why the person doesn’t see things the same as them?

For my mum, she couldn’t believe that my dad didn’t remember. She thought it was either a reflection of his stupidity, that he didn’t care for her, that he did it to harm her intentionally, or a mix of all three. And maybe it was. As for the friend that chastised her mother with Alzheimer, she thought that her mum was doing it to spite her, just as she had done, she believed, all her life. And maybe she was. But I doubt it, not from my observations, and if these actions were intentional then that’s on the other person. It’s easy to trap others in a narrative about why they do things and see simple memory slips through that lens, especially when we feel under threat.

In a past relationship, I was accused of ‘gaslighting’. Now, if you understand what gaslighting is – intentionally manipulating the sense perceptions of another person to exert control over them – you’ll know it is a challenging accusation to hear from someone you love. She couldn’t accept that I wasn’t gaslighting, and over time despite my protestations and soul-searching, all my simple slips in memory came to be viewed by her through that lens. I wasn’t gaslighting her, but I tore myself up thinking that maybe unbeknownst to me I was. After a while and a lot of torment I came to wonder whether her accusation of gaslighting was one of several manifestations of her gaslighting me. I don’t think it was. What it was, I suspect, was that she’d experienced someone gaslighting her in the past, and to her, it was incontrovertible that I had to be doing it to her. We never found our way back to connection.

Choice between being right and connection.

The concern with common misremembering is when we believe that there is something else going on that is driving it. That there is intentional deceit and manipulation. Sometimes that may well be what is going on. It can be difficult to tell. Maybe the incapacity to let go of being right might be one indicator. That’s why I’m with my friend James on finding it difficult to have meaningful relationships with someone who isn’t prepared to let go of their most deeply held belief. If we aren’t prepared to let go of being right, then we’ll struggle to find connection. In fact, I’m for letting go of the concept of right and wrong altogether. We are just humans after all – slips and all. And there’s no need to give others a hard time about those slips, we all have them.

“Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”