Memory Problems After an Affair

Affairs change your life. With something like an affair, it disrupts things. Emotions, thoughts, and memories. This can happen to either or both spouses. My focus today is on dealing with the question “What can I do about the memory problems after the affair?”

This question came in, and it is one that quite a few people find themselves struggling with because affairs change your life. When something in your life happens, like an affair, it disrupts things. It disrupts your emotions, your thinking, and your memories. This disruption can happen to either spouse, both the cheater and the person who was cheated on.

The cheater’s memory

This memory loss can either be conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional. Sometimes it’s almost like they want to block it out, and other times they really can’t remember a lot of aspects of the affair.

That mainly concerns what they would call state-dependent memory. In some situations, the memory doesn't get loaded upright because of the emotional state, and the person doesn’t recall. But we’ll discuss that later.

First off, before I get into what can I do about the memory problems after the affair, we need to rule out the refusal to discuss. Because refusing to discuss the affair is not the same thing as a memory loss.

Refusing to discuss the affair is not the same thing as memory loss

Yes, there may be a lot of shame. There may be some difficulties in wanting to talk about the affair. You may even be struggling with finding ways of expressing what it is that you’re feeling. That’s not the same thing as memory loss. We’re going to be talking about genuine memory loss here.

The general solution to this is to allow the memory to return. That’s not something that you can force. You have to allow it to happen. I’m going to be talking about that, the three steps that you can take.

One, I call this avoiding the D’s. What I mean by avoiding the D’s, you want to avoid disputing what they recall, demanding instant recall, or dismissing what they tell you. That’s Disputing, Demanding, Dismissing.

These are things that, as the spouse who has been cheated on, if you are always arguing with them about what they do, or no it didn’t happen that way it happened another way, or demanding, almost like a computer, you want instant results. And with computers because they operate so fast it often feeds into this mindset of instant results.

Spouses aren’t that way. They can’t give you instant results. Demanding instantaneous memory recall is actually going to aggravate the situation.

Dismissing What You Are Told

1. When they tell you things, if you also dismiss what they tell you, oh you didn’t feel that or no it didn’t happen, that’s going to cause problems. It’s as if you’ve got to allow all the pieces to be put on the table. Like a jigsaw puzzle. Get all the pieces, then sort it out.

In working jigsaw puzzles many times, if you try to force pieces together, yeah piece A may fit piece B in terms of the shape, but it doesn’t make any sense. Get all the pieces out there and then try to see what fits together. Don’t try to force things there.

2. Hear them out without interrupting them. A way to understand this is to understand that the memories are coming out like little snapshots, and you’re going to want things to flow like a movie. You’ve got to get enough of the snapshots out to be able to put it together where it starts to flow like a movie. If you are interrupting them all the time they can’t get that flow going.

You want to hear them out without interrupting them. Because that is going to change the process.

3. You’ve got to accept that memories are not the same things as facts. When the cheater starts producing material, telling you what they recall, what they are recalling is their memory. That’s what they chose to recall about the situation. It is their view and their thoughts.

Their views and their thoughts may not line up with what factually happened. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It is what they remember. Many times with the affair you didn’t have an eyewitness news team there to record everything that occurred. When you are talking with them you are getting one person’s perspective on things.

A Matter of Perspective

I recall years ago that a speaker named Francis Schaeffer did a video series. One of the things that opened my eyes was how he showed an event from several different camera angles. It was a protest event, so it showed it from the police's viewpoint, the bystander's viewpoint, and the protestor's viewpoint. Things looked radically different. It didn’t change what happened; it just changed how you looked at it.

Likewise with affairs, when you are hearing it from the cheater’s perspective it’s going to look very different than from yours. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It’s just different. And you’re going to have to realize what they are presenting to you is their perspective.

To recap what I have gone over, the solution I presented, allow the memory to return. In allowing it to return it’s going to take three steps. One, avoid the D’s. That’s disputing what they recall, demanding the instant recall, dismissing what they tell you. Two, hear them out without interrupting them. Three, accept that memories are not facts.

As you do this, these are things you can start doing now. I encourage you to do so. Because in doing this it will take you a step closer through the affair process. Because the whole purpose of Affair Recovery Radio is to take you through the affair recovery one step at a time. These are things that you can start doing today.

If you discover that you or your spouse has memory problems related to the affair, you’ll want the Affair Recovery Workshop, which includes interventions that engage both your emotions and your brain in recovering from the damage of the affair.

Best Regards,

Jeff