Why do humans do this? After one has been in a marriage or part of a religion or team or religion or something

Question

or like an ex smoker or Christian or plygamist - criticizes it so harshly like as if they suffered every single day of it - when clearly it just ended badly and effected their ability to view the past in a balanced way. Why does the human mind need to invalidate the past to bolster their present situation. It seems suspect and automatic behavior to me.

A woman or man who was happily married then says "Oh I always hated you" etc. Your thoughts?

Answer 1

They should say, I am glad you do this now.

Saying I hated you, or I hated this is detrimental to the marriage.  It is better to accentuate the positive and forget the past.

Answer 2

They say hind sight is 20/20.  Sometimes it's easier to see the truth in retrospect but sometimes people also are bitter, it depends on what happened.   No two situations are alike and no two people are the same.

Answer 3

probably some sort of coping mechanism.  Feelings of guilt, nostalgia, etc can suck when trying to walk away from a former love so if you demonize it, it makes it easier to deal with the fact that its no longer a part of your life and I'm guessing would eliminate longing

Answer 4

People tend to be very bitter, if after a long time they realise they have wasted their time on something that isn't what they thought it was. And they tend to get clouded and think that ALL women, christians, careers are all the same.

Answer 5

Can be cognitive dissonance - you prefer to believe you were never taken in so become more vehement in you denial of it. Can just be an emotional response to the ending colouring your emotional memories (i.e. when you are upset, you are more likely to remember a negetive event and find it hard to remember positive memories). Most behavoirs are automatic and would benefit from introspection, and it is one reason it's always worth considering the source when reading sources.

Answer 6

Most people are simple and feeble minded. In order to reinforce there current rational they need to demonize the past.

        I suspect it is a fail safe to keep most people's mind's from melting down. It doesn't seem to be cultural,ethnic or gender base so yeah I am sticking to a subconscious program type thingy the brain runs to make it easier to adapt to change.

Answer 7

Call my answer off the wall. Perhaps, by chance; they have done what they have done; to please people; forgetting about themselves.

Answer 8

That is a great question. Thank you for asking that. I guess, denial of the past happiness justifies the correctness of the break up to them in some way. It is one of the cruelest method to hurt one person you loved above all once. Achievement of a peace of mind should never be based on other people's pain, and decent people of the world do not act that way.