# Trickle truth on purpose or genuinely "remembering?"



## distraughtfromtexas (Apr 25, 2013)

I'll start this by saying my WH has always had a horrible memory. He calls me The Stenographer because I always remember specifics of conversations, etc and he doesn't. Anyway, I've had a bit of trickle truth lately that just keeps rebreaking my heart. These are all things that I really wouldn't have ever found out. Conversations with his buddy, songs he was listening to, his feelings at particular points in time. Nothing I could have "busted" him on. My problem is that while I want him to be honest and open with me, he will do that and say "there's nothing else, no more to tell." Then a few days later it's, "oh, there was one thing I just thought of/remembered that's eating away at me that I want to tell you." 

Does this happen a lot? Just remembering stuff later on? Is it part of the affair fog and that fog being lifted? I appreciate it and hate it at the same time.


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## mahike (Aug 16, 2011)

This is common How long was his A and was it someone you? Sit him down somewhere out of the house and away from the kids and tell him he needs to answer all your questions but you will need to do this over time because you will have more questions as you process this mess


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## doubletrouble (Apr 23, 2013)

In my LTRs, I have found that the women tend to recall more details of events than I do. I recall the events, and some in incerdible detail, but more often than not, I don't remember so much. I think maybe the female mind has structures in it that hang memories up better than men? I dunno... But they can pull facts out of their heads that I had long ago flushed from active memory.


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## Tall Average Guy (Jul 26, 2011)

distraughtfromtexas said:


> Does this happen a lot? Just remembering stuff later on? Is it part of the affair fog and that fog being lifted? I appreciate it and hate it at the same time.


It could be either or both. The only way you can find out is to keep asking, and him keep telling. That he has always been this is somewhat comforting, but not everything. Other things to look at are whether he is volunteering information that you can't otherwise confirm and whether that info makes him look bad. Both are good signs. Is he otherwise open and transparent? Is he answering questions, even if repetitive?

There is no easy answer, but rather looking at everything as a whole.


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## Calibre12 (Nov 27, 2012)

If he is volunteering it... That's a fabulous sign...
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## PamJ (Mar 22, 2013)

If it were my H I would think he probably didn't forget it, he just waited until it was a less volatile situation to tell me about it. So, it's on purpose but it's more like instinct than plotting not to tell. 

Trickle truth is to protect them from the BS getting overloaded with info and just calling it quits. They admit to or tell you what they think you will handle without going straight to D.

After a while if it seems like he is reminiscing rather than telling me something important I will tell him I have everything I need to know as I am a little spooked of him thinking about the warm fuzzy parts of his EA since he still thinks the OW is just a nice friendly person who got caught up in it with him innocently.

Sometimes I think the emotions are so high was you first uncover an affair , and the WS is trying so hard to prove they love only you, if they are, that after all is said and done they kind of miss that high that is bringing you together talking so much more. 

That kind of worries me too, I am hoping we are not emotional adrenaline junkies now.

Life will never be quite the same.


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## Acabado (May 13, 2012)

distraughtfromtexas said:


> He calls me The Stenographer because I always remember specifics of conversations, etc and he doesn't.


Had to laught at this. Sorry.
I'm with Calibre12. It's both a good sign (as it doesn't seem he does it deliberately, as a way to control or manage the R) and obviously a bad sign becasue it put's him in the clueless, unempathetic category.
I'm sorry friend. I have no idea how are you going to endure the endless turture.
For sure give up in trying to change him. He was like this before this, it's how he is.


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## HarryDoyle (Jan 19, 2013)

It's both usually depending on if the person really wants to be honest. I've had some classes on interrogation techniques and it's human nature to both only reveal what you have to and to remember new things every time you go back over something. This is why investigators will repeatedly go back over the samething time and again. It's also taught in evasion classes that if you are ever interrogated to only reveal what you have to to convince the interrogators your telling the truth. (Or to keep from getting tortured).
My WW really does try to be perfectly honest with me, but stuff still comes out six months later. Most of this is not on purpose, some of the things are just embarrassing to her so she's reluctant to mention them. Some of them, or most of them, she feels will hurt me. But that's my choice and I think I've gotten just about the whole truth by now, our at least as much as I want.


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## Will_Kane (Feb 26, 2012)

*Conversations with his buddy, songs he was listening to, his feelings at particular points in time.*

These are not the types of things that stick in my memory. I probably wouldn't remember a song that was playing on the radio or one of many conversations I had with a friend. If you asked me for ALL of the details, I would give you the dates, times, places we met and the type of sex we had. None of that other stuff would seem important enough for me to tell you about, even if I could remember it.

There was a study done I think, where they put men and women alone all by themselves in a room for 10 minutes and told them to wait there for a job interview, then removed them from the room and asked them to name and describe the objects in the room. Women were able to name and describe in detail about 10 times more objects than men were, tell what pictures were on the wall, where on the desk the stapler was located, what color it was, etc., while men could come up with, well, there was a desk and a chair.

So I guess it depends on what details you expect that he will remember.


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## hambone (Mar 30, 2013)

distraughtfromtexas said:


> I'll start this by saying my WH has always had a horrible memory. He calls me The Stenographer because I always remember specifics of conversations, etc and he doesn't. Anyway, I've had a bit of trickle truth lately that just keeps rebreaking my heart. These are all things that I really wouldn't have ever found out. Conversations with his buddy, songs he was listening to, his feelings at particular points in time. Nothing I could have "busted" him on. My problem is that while I want him to be honest and open with me, he will do that and say "there's nothing else, no more to tell." Then a few days later it's, "oh, there was one thing I just thought of/remembered that's eating away at me that I want to tell you."
> 
> Does this happen a lot? Just remembering stuff later on? Is it part of the affair fog and that fog being lifted? I appreciate it and hate it at the same time.



Given what you've said... my memory is like your husbands.

I'd be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt that items do come trickling in... I have problems remember things... and then I have trouble remembering the order of things.

I do not lie. Why? Because I can't remember the truth... let a lone a lie. I don't have any choice but to tell the truth. 

and still, I will mis-remember things. Anytime I got see a doctor, lawyer, cpa... etc. My wife HAS to go with me..


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## distraughtfromtexas (Apr 25, 2013)

Will_Kane said:


> *Conversations with his buddy, songs he was listening to, his feelings at particular points in time.*
> 
> These are not the types of things that stick in my memory. I probably wouldn't remember a song that was playing on the radio or one of many conversations I had with a friend. If you asked me for ALL of the details, I would give you the dates, times, places we met and the type of sex we had. None of that other stuff would seem important enough for me to tell you about, even if I could remember it.
> 
> ...


I wish it was just a song on the radio. It was a song he pulled up on his phone and played to himself in his car because it was a song that had significance to the two of them.


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## distraughtfromtexas (Apr 25, 2013)

mahike said:


> This is common How long was his A and was it someone you? Sit him down somewhere out of the house and away from the kids and tell him he needs to answer all your questions but you will need to do this over time because you will have more questions as you process this mess


It was almost 3 months. A co-worker I had never met.


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## thatbpguy (Dec 24, 2012)

distraughtfromtexas said:


> I'll start this by saying my WH has always had a horrible memory. He calls me The Stenographer because I always remember specifics of conversations, etc and he doesn't. Anyway, I've had a bit of trickle truth lately that just keeps rebreaking my heart. These are all things that I really wouldn't have ever found out. Conversations with his buddy, songs he was listening to, his feelings at particular points in time. Nothing I could have "busted" him on. My problem is that while I want him to be honest and open with me, he will do that and say "there's nothing else, no more to tell." _Then a few days later it's, "oh, there was one thing I just thought of/*remembered that's eating away at me that I want to tell you."*_
> 
> Does this happen a lot? Just remembering stuff later on? Is it part of the affair fog and that fog being lifted? I appreciate it and hate it at the same time.


If it's been eating away at him then his memory is fine. He just didn't have the guts to tell you and waited until it was getting the better of him and he needed to ease his conscious. [note the "he, him, his"]

It's like you're being punished again and again for his betrayal.

I find it all very sad.


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## Cabsy (Mar 25, 2013)

It could go either way. I can sympathize with the feelings trickle truth brings and dealing with a partner with poor memory. I had to ask a lot of very specific questions at first and have not had much voluntary information given after the fact, so I would have welcomed the occasional "oh yeah and this happened" disclosure. It's not the best feeling to be reminded of everything that happened between them, but if you're like me, you'd rather know. My mind is going to wonder at all of the possibilities anyway.

The way you frame it - his bad memory combined with him offering up details voluntarily - it sounds like it could be genuine. Is he remorseful? Do you get the sense he's just trying to add to your understanding of what happened and why/how? As long as he's offering up smaller details and not larger things that he could not have honestly overlooked, maybe he's just trying to come clean. Maybe he does tell you "everything," and then something else pops into his head soon afterwards, eats away at him, and so he tells you that as well. Appreciate it and hate it, but at least he's talking. At least he's trying to understand what caused him to act the way he did and giving you new information that you couldn't have found on your own.

If his narrative is intensifying and adding new details that anyone would have remembered, that's a different story.


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## hopefulgirl (Feb 12, 2013)

I WISH my WS would even once say "I just remembered something..." - I can see how it stings each time you hear it, and you can't be 100% sure he "JUST" remembered it (sadly, we'll never again be 100% sure of anything they say!). But if he truly "just" remembered even half of these memories, volunteering this info without being asked is REALLY showing remorse, IMO.


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## SomedayDig (Jul 17, 2012)

hopefulgirl said:


> I WISH my WS would even once say *"I just remembered something..."* - I can see how it stings each time you hear it, and you can't be 100% sure he "JUST" remembered it (sadly, we'll never again be 100% sure of anything they say!). But if he truly "just" remembered even half of these memories, volunteering this info without being asked is REALLY showing remorse, IMO.


For all of the good work Regret has done during our reconciliation, I honestly wish that those bolded words had come out just one time. Now, her affair lasted 5 years. Did I expect her to remember every single detail? Well, honestly - yes. Mostly because I can recall them about the simplest and smallest details...so, why the hell can't she?!

Well...as my IC and our MC both said, some people just do NOT have the ability for recall like I do.

Okay...but ~ we're not talking about what color was the car parked next to you at the grocery store (yesterday it was a blue one though...). We're talking about something totally HUGE in your life. Something that was ~ I gag to say it ~ something "special" and totally outside of the norm in your life. How in the f-ck do you NOT recall all of the details?!

Simple. Self awareness. They had none. If they did, they might not have continued with an affair. Truth is, in my opinion, it was like a dream. A dream that you remember, but you really don't. If someone keeps asking you for details about the dream, you can't give them everything because it's a little foggy. You recall some of the details. Just not all of them. Oddly enough, if someone presses you hard enough, your mind will re-create the dream. We don't want that. We don't need that.

However, those simple words that HG wrote ring in my head. I just wanted her to come to me one time during those 6 months of initial questioning...just ONE time say, "Honey, I need to tell you something".


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## Harden1313 (May 28, 2013)

distraughtfromtexas said:


> I'll start this by saying my WH has always had a horrible memory. He calls me The Stenographer because I always remember specifics of conversations, etc and he doesn't. Anyway, I've had a bit of trickle truth lately that just keeps rebreaking my heart. These are all things that I really wouldn't have ever found out. Conversations with his buddy, songs he was listening to, his feelings at particular points in time. Nothing I could have "busted" him on. My problem is that while I want him to be honest and open with me, he will do that and say "there's nothing else, no more to tell." Then a few days later it's, "oh, there was one thing I just thought of/remembered that's eating away at me that I want to tell you."
> 
> Does this happen a lot? Just remembering stuff later on? Is it part of the affair fog and that fog being lifted? I appreciate it and hate it at the same time.


It is the same thing in my situation and now I know it was the truth. My wife would admit certain things and then claim amnesia about particulars. Now she can remember the exact amount of frown lines in my brow from a dirty look I gave a year ago....but not what the text "glad I'm better than porn" meant. Looking back now, every time I heard "I don't remember" what she was really saying is, can't this all just go away?


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## NextTimeAround (Dec 15, 2011)

I found it interesting how much more info that my fiance would give or sometimes outed himself with certain sentiments.

For example, he always maintains that he and his ex gf were "just friends." So just friends taking a weekend trip somewhere, but then he went on to say that her boyfriend picked both of them up at the airport and admitted that "he couldn't understand how she could have a boyfriend and still take a trip with another man."

Well, if he HAD truly bought into the "Friend" thing, then he would not have asked (even himself) that question.

When they were FB friends, I noticed that every time he went to a concert without me, she would "like" it. So I told him that I had some idea that he had gone to a few concerts with her. He then mentions exactly a concert that he never mentioned on his FB wall and so, got no thumbs up from her.


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## Calibre12 (Nov 27, 2012)

distraughtfromtexas said:


> I wish it was just a song on the radio. It was a song he pulled up on his phone and played to himself in his car because it was a song that had significance to the two of them.


And the moment that he told you, he let you "in". Everytime he hears that song it will kill any associated sentiment of just-the- two-of-them. He is de-sacred-itizing "them" by letting you in. It's now in the open between him and who really matters most...you. Both of you should look for a new song to build sentiment for you two.


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## doubletrouble (Apr 23, 2013)

Oh boy, while my wife was in her affair she played songs while we were in her bedroom that were "their" songs. Remembering that is wayyyy too easy for my brain. Apparently they had a lot of them.


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## MattMatt (May 19, 2012)

thatbpguy said:


> If it's been eating away at him then his memory is fine. He just didn't have the guts to tell you and waited until it was getting the better of him and he needed to ease his conscious. [note the "he, him, his"]
> 
> It's like you're being punished again and again for his betrayal.
> 
> I find it all very sad.


I think OP meant it was eating away at him since he remembered it?
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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