Between Memory and Reality

Between memory and reality there are awkward discrepancies... (Eileen Chang)

Someone I know shares a reality with me from years ago. But our individual memories of that reality differ so greatly that it caused some rather awkward discrepancies between us when it came to a point of reconciling our shared reality.  It is fascinating what time, denial, and other life experiences do to alter memories of a reality.

So how does one know what the reality is?  It will be word against word, perspective against perspective, not to mention any blame shifting or denial due to guilt over behavior etc.  That can be frustrating and hurtful.  It seems to me that in relationships, whether that is mine or others I have witnessed, where this discrepancy between memory and reality has happened the people involved generally fall into denial or inability to completely walk away and truly move forward in life.  There is either lingering history or an intentional ignorance.  

My shared reality is with my first love. Damn those first loves, they break your heart every time. Oh sure, you may end up with your first love, I know some who do, but the heart is always broken by the first love regardless.  Some can recover, most don't.  The interesting thing about our memories is we can create them and over time convince ourselves that the created memory is truth.  Sometimes, maybe most of the time, there is no way to prove truth.

So what to do when your memories of a shared reality clash with the other person?  The struggle is real. In our human, flesh nature we have a need to be right, to be the victor in truth and when you know you possess more truth than the other person it is difficult to let that go, it is hard to let go of the need to be right.  But you have to weigh out the costs of being right, reconciling the relationship, and having the maturity to just be able to leave it behind and move forward. I find that unless the person in denial is willing to take their head out of the proverbial sand then the other person needs to decide what kind of compromise they will be comfortable with.  

I had to decide what I was comfortable with so that I would be able to move forward, not allow personal responsibility to be shirked, and reconciliation at some level could happen.  The one I shared reality with had been out of my life for 18 years, I had actually come to closure on my own without any sort of reconciliation.  Then there this person was, back in my life with no notice or premonition. Once I got over that shock I really struggled with the flood of the past washing over me, the memories and the reality that carried, in the end, more pain than anything else for me.  The created reality of my first love gave him mostly nothing but, according to him, good memories.  I wish that I could have found some way to forget or deny the bad stuff. But we ended bad and had been bad for quite some time prior to ending so in my heart all that bad buried the good that we had at the beginning.  So here I was, 18 years later, going through all those crappy emotions, grief, and regrets again.  REALLY? I was fed up and annoyed that I had to do this again and it seemed to affect nobody but me.  The hub didn't totally get it even though he knows and even lived part of the actual reality alongside of me. Every song and movie about heartbreak seemed to be about this first love I had...18 years later! Ridiculous. I had already done my closure, why did I have to do it again?  I was pissed off at him all over again, as if it had just happened yesterday.  I was mourning the loss of the friendship we had before dating all over again, as if it were just the other day.  I was regretting ever dating him and risking that much of myself all over again, as if we were still in the bad-at-the-end stage.  It sucked. It took me a good 2-3 months to work through all those emotions again and find closure again.  

In the middle of this time he and I found our mutual closure. Over email of all things.  We tried to do it in person but I ended up wimping out and lying to him. He knew I was lying but let me pretend anyway.  A month later I emailed him and confessed that I had lied to him when we tried to have a conversation in person.  He forgave me and we said what we both needed to say for mutual closure to happen and to move forward. 

I'm purposely choosing to replace the bad memories with good ones, most of them are in our friendship only days and the very early dating days. I get to a certain point in our love relationship and I have to block out everything from that point on, it is filled with too much pain and too many regrets. But at least we have some good memories to lean on and for a time those memories were our shared reality, and I'm grateful for at least those.  

Do you have a shared reality with someone but each of you have very different memories of that shared time? Have the discrepancies hindered your relationship with that person or with others? What choices do you have to purposely make so that your shared reality doesn't become an obstacle to you in the present?