Our minds aren’t perfect at remembering special details and specific facts. Far from it.

Our brains work selectively; they store and recall certain bits of information while forgetting others.

For example, you might remember, for whatever reason, a phone number that has little or no importance to you, but forget the birthday of someone you really should buy a present for.

For the most part, this selective/subjective memory trait creates no real problems in our day to day lives. We can look up a number if we forget it, or ask a friend of a friend for the day of the month on which someone’s birthday falls.

When Selective Memory Is A Problem

However, sometimes it can make things slightly trickier. One such time is when we suspect our partner may be cheating on us. Imagine you walk into the room just as your partner is putting down the phone and they seem a little on edge or tense as they turn around and see you.

The incident may stick out in your mind for weeks, niggling at you, making you wonder: did it mean something, was it a sign? Fast forward to a different occasion, when your partner returns home from a business meeting or other engagement late and immediately jumps in the shower, even before properly saying ‘hi’ to you.

You might rationalize their behavior by thinking: “Well, they were probably tired or something. They surely just felt like refreshing themselves with a shower,” then forget all about it.

You might be 100% right, but that’s not really the point. The strange phone incident and the unusual dash to the bathroom on returning home could both have happened because your partner is cheating on you, and conversely they both could be wholly innocent and not caused by infidelity.

The point here is, remembering one incident over the other and thus giving it more weight or meaning than the other in your mind could potentially make it much more difficult to ascertain what is or isn’t going on, whether they’re trustworthy or not.

So, to combat the human tendency to selectively remember and therefore consider some incidents more than others, and therefore improve your chances of revealing the truth, you should keep an objective, non-selective record of everything that happens. Here’s how it works:

Keep A Journal

Use a journal or diary, not a digital method of recording events, changes in behavior/habits/moods, etc. Noting things in your own handwriting allows each piece of information recorded to be absorbed more deeply and permanently by your mind than if you type them out quickly on a computer.

Also, paper records (a diary, journal, etc.) are usually more portable than laptops, PC’s, etc., which could come in handy if/when you spot a potential sign of infidelity away from home.

Be Objective

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