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Thank you, 5Decades,

You sequentially have answered my question as to have I been guilty of relying on the deceit of emulsified facts. Knowing this to be true, what then? I guess, when possible, to give and receive grace and to not allow oneself to become stubborn about what they remember about things said and done. Sounds so dang easy and yet…..Sigh.

Asterisk

Asterisk,

You’re not "guilty" of anything. Our minds are.

When given false information, the mind has a very interesting way of dealing with it. I’ll explain in a moment.

First, you had "some" information. Some of that included your own experience at the time. Your wife withheld or obfuscated or lied at the time, and over the years provided different information (again, lies? Obfuscation? Her own faulty memory?) and there is no way to verify each piece.

Add to it that over the years our minds absolutely do make the errors I pointed out. Not a judgement, just facts about how our minds work. Knowing that helps us to review information we have, and discern whether or not we are making the errors, how that affects our actions or beliefs, and allows us the ability to correct it.

Now, back to what we do with unreliable information.

Any time new information is brought in, we analyze it and form a hypothesis about its reliability. Every. Time.

I will use an example to explain how this all works, because it is complex otherwise.

Imagine a baby in a crib. The baby is fascinated with the lights. When mom comes in, she turns on the lights, but the baby has no information regarding switches. So at first the baby forms the hypothesis that "mom’s presence causes lights to turn on".

That hypothesis is placed in an area of the brain that codes it as "hmmm, this is very interesting, but not reliable yet". And the hypothesis is stored as "let’s get more information to confirm".

So then the mom comes in and DOES NOT turn on the lights. That hypothesis loses ground, and the brain says, "UNRELIABLE, do not make any decisions based on this hypothesis".

Maybe the baby blinks his eyes, and simultaneously the light comes on. New hypothesis - eye blink makes light come on. That one is quickly tested by the baby, blinking eyes repeatedly, and the brain says "unreliable, trash this".

At some point, the baby observes the switch, and the connection to lights coming on. New hypothesis - switch makes light. And that hypothesis is ALSO stored as "maybe, but still untested".

Then the baby gets access to the switch. On-off, on-off, on-off, the baby switches the lights over and over again. In the brain, ALL other hypotheses are being discarded, because the brain now has absolutely reliable 100% information that every time switch moves, lights change. This is now stored as permanent information - AND the magic is that now, the information about swims also stored, and will become part of any and all future hypotheses regarding object functions, because our brains rapidly generalize this kind of information.

So, what happens when the information is unreliable initially, and when added information is given but does not logically fit? Basically the same process. It goes into a memory of "this is information that I have, I cannot rely on it, I believe some is true and some is not but I cannot do much with this until I can get more information that validates something in here". This is where you are.

The issue is that you have competing information, false information, true information, and the errors of memory added on top.

And the overriding issue at this point is that you would need to be able to have a complete, truthful, VERIFIABLE set of information in order to resolve this bad set of information that sits in the "hmm, interesting but unreliable" memory bank.

Not sure you will ever get that, though. Because at this point, your mind is saying "but I have been given so much bad information, how will I know this is true?" and even if given a verified fact, it is likely to say, "sure, Wife" and continue to code anything surrounding the affair as unreliable.

Just my opinion.

So, maybe the grace you need to give is to yourself first.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:51 PM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

5Decades,

Something you wrote here has really shaken me to my core. It caused me to review every word I have written in this thread, to no avail. But before I get to that, I wanted to say that your baby analogy is spot on. I would add that when the mom left the room the lights would go out, adding to the child’s misconception of the power of mom. Your explanation is very compelling.

Not sure you will ever get that, though. Because at this point, your mind is saying "but I have been given so much bad information, how will I know this is true?" and even if given a verified fact, it is likely to say, "sure, Wife" and continue to code anything surrounding the affair as unreliable.

Asterisk

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:52 PM, Tuesday, December 2nd]

In my field, we would task the person with writing down the facts they believe to be "verified".

Then, write down things that seem illogical, but not because a given piece of information "feels wrong", but because it doesn’t fit with verified facts in some way.

On a separate page, write down things you know to be false. Again, use facts to be sure you know something is false.

Now write down what you believe is "missing" information.

Do not write down any feelings. This exercise is to task the brain with sorting through the facts, and we don’t touch feelings in the exercise.

Often, by writing it out, your brain is able to make sense of things it hasn’t before. This is because writing, in and of itself, slows the brain processes such that things are processed differently than the rapid-fire switching that happens when we just think about stuff.

And when I say "write", I mean pen and paper. That process is important to this. Keyboarding isn’t the same.

By doing this, a person can often see things in a more structured, compartmented manner. Your brain will like it.