Page 11 - Hawaii Island MidWeek - Dec 15, 2021

DECEMBER 15, 2021
HAWAI‘I ISLAND MIDWEEK 11
A t a dinner, a wom- an asked how my husband and I met. He says he spotted me in the campus dining hall, deliber- ately bumped me and spilled my drink on my tray, and used getting me a refill to ask me out. This never happened. (We met in class, and he asked me out.) What does it mean that he has such faulty recall about the entire origin of our marriage? – Disturbed
Memory-challenged Hubby
date with you. Not exactly the stuff Sir Lancelot was made of, but modern men must make do with the heroics available to them: “I won her love — after a bloody battle with a cafeteria tray and a glass of 2% milk!”
I hang with friends about twice weekly and also like my alone time. The guy I’m seeing not only wants to be together constantly but seems to need that. He now complains I’ m “dependent on” my friends, meaning unhealthily. I don’t want to hurt him, but I won’t give up
my friends or myself for a re- lationship, and I don’t know how to tell him. – Conflicted
note, it often leads to prioritiz- ing these lovely behaviors over one’s own needs.
Dating sites work very hard to be inclusive in the type-of- partner options they list, yet they omit a checkbox for “man seeking hostage.”
A personality trait is not a behavioral mandate. You can shift out of auto-“pleaser” mode by pre-planning to as- sert yourself — “Here’s what I need!” — and then doing it, no matter how uncomfortable it feels at first.
There is such a thing as “total recall,” and it’s what automakers rush to do after they sell a car that is not only self-driving but also self-de- structing: dropping parts like breadcrumbs as it tools down the highway.
As a woman, you’re likely on the high end of the spectrum of a personality trait called “agreeableness.” On a posi- tive note, this plays out in be- ing “kind, considerate, likable, cooperative, (and) helpful,” reports psychologist William Graziano. On a less positive
Guesstimate how much weekly togetherness and apart- ness works for you, and make it clear to men you date, starting by informing your current guy that your social world will con- tinue to extend beyond being his human binky. In short, the sort of relationship that works for you is one in which you’re bonded but not zip-tied.
What total recall is not is a feature of the human mind, despite the widely believed myth that memory is a form of mental videotape: faithfully preserving our experiences for playback. Ideal as this would be for spouses with prosecuto- rial tendencies, our minds are, in fact, hotbeds of fragmented, distorted, partial recall.
Happy Holidays!
“Using one’s memory shapes one’s memory,” ex- plains psychologist Robert Bjork. Basically, the more we tell a story, the more we believe it — along with all the embel- lishments we added to funny it up and otherwise impress (so social situations feel less like reenactments of being picked last for dodgeball).
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Consider that your hus- band’s memory might not be the only one that’s been, um, redecorated. Also consider that we tend to “remember” events in self-serving ways. Any guy can ask a girl out after class, but in your husband’s version, he goes on a mini-quest to get a