recasting memory

About six months ago I started talking with people about their breakups. Going through my (first) own had me casting about for insight that others had into the process, both to quell my heartbreak and quiet my mind. I encountered a surprising recurring problem with the accounts my friends and family had of their previous relationships -- the tendancy to drastically oversimplify and 'nutshell'.

What is this? For me, it's when someone takes a complex, multifaceted extended relationship bewteen intelligent, subtle, nuanced people and says of it, "she had dependence issues," or "he was inflexible." I was not talking with stupid people yet I kept getting horrendously truncated accounts of why a relationship ends. I would ask probing questions, trying to get at the real issues involved, and would be met with a kind of bland rote response from nearly everyone.

What was going on? I hypothesized that people don't want to deal with emotional pain dredged up by recounting intimate personal moments with a loved one no longer in their life. The cookie-cutter one-sentence answers were a defense against admitting culpability. It was a shortcut method for closing the book on a chapter in a life, enabling that person to continue without having to think seriously about something anymore.

I was deathly afraid of succumbing to this trend. I would analyze my time with Laura and write down my thoughts. I didn't want to gloss over seven years, in essence losing them, so that I could have a momentary peace of mind. I mention this personal activity only because I hadn't ever heard an account of it before today. From Salon.com, Rebecca Traister writes about a self-help book helping people to do exactly what I've described:

My exchange with Anna Jane suggested that the book's philosophy had penetrated far enough into her psyche not only to make her reconsider her current dating life, but also to retroactively recast an old love affair. How could she reduce a relationship that involved so many heartbreaking complexities down to one simplistic evaluation? Does the book offer a one-line romantic litmus test that will free us all from regret and self-recrimination? Or is it just turning us in increasingly dizzying circles?

It made my stomach hurt. Were other people's deliciously painful memories of failed relationships being wiped clean, "Eternal Sunshine"-style, and replaced with this one-sentence mantra?

...

I have to ask: does leaching the complexity of life always bring relief?

A great article HERE.