Was It Really That Bad?

Why We Question Our Own Pain in Relationships

My memory plays tricks on me.

I’m sitting across from one of my clients and we’re in that familiar, dangerous loop: “Maybe it wasn’t that bad.”

She’s thinking about going back to her ex.

This is the ex who once disappeared for days and came back as if nothing had happened. No explanation, no apology—just a casual, “Hey” as if she hadn’t spent the last 72 hours unraveling.

As if she hadn’t checked her phone every five minutes, stomach twisting with every hour of silence. As if she hadn’t gone nights without sleep, staring at the ceiling, replaying their last conversation, searching for the moment she had done something wrong.

This is the ex who swore, “It’s not what you think,” when she found a questionable text from a coworker. And yet, his phone was suddenly always face-down, his notifications always cleared.

This is the ex who made her question herself—was she too much? Too emotional, too needy, asking for more than she deserved?

Maybe you’ve been there too. Maybe you’ve convinced yourself it wasn’t that bad either. Maybe you’ve rewritten the story just enough to make staying seem better than leaving.

Photo by Gerry Juwono on Unsplash

I nod.

And because I can’t tell her exactly what I’m thinking (Nooooooo!!!), I tell her:

"You don’t remember. You don’t remember the pain from a couple of weeks ago. You don’t remember the pain from that summer. You don’t remember her."

As I say it, I realize—I don’t remember her either. But her isn’t my client. It’s me.

There are pains, and then there is THE pain. And I don’t know if anything compares to the pain of betrayal and heartbreak. I know that when my now ex-husband cheated on me, and I was left trying to figure out what next, I was in the most debilitating pain I had ever known.

On any given day, I would find myself sitting on the floor of the shower, naked, hunched over, arms wrapped around my body. Looking for respite, any way to soothe and comfort what felt unsoothable. The tears and sobs muddled with the drops of wetness and sound of water all around me. Everything hurt. And all I could see, hear, and feel was that pain. The one that doesn’t leave you, the ache that you carry because life feels like it will never be as sweet again. Because life will never go back to the before. The before everything changed.

The pain also made its way into my journal.

Every morning at 4 AM—like clockwork—my body would flood with cortisol, shaking me awake before the sun rose. At first, I wrestled with myself. I prayed. I begged sleep to take me back. But it never did. So I started getting out of bed and making use of the pain I could not escape.

In the quiet darkness of my home, I made tea and found a nook to squeeze myself into. Covered in blankets, I started to write about the pain and a version of myself that I didn’t recognize.

Sadness poured out. Then despair. Then anguish. Then the deepest depths of the bottom of me—raw and unfiltered.

And as I sit here today, looking back at that moment in my life, almost four years later, there’s so much I don’t remember. Sometimes, I even lie to myself: “It wasn’t that bad.”

It’s easier to remember the good parts, isn’t it? The warmth, the laughter, the way it felt when things were just right. But the pain? It tends to slip away.

Our brains are funny like that. In their attempt to protect us, they wrap pain in cotton, tuck it away into a little corner, and soften the edges just enough to make us forget.

We therapists call this the fading affect bias—the tendency for the emotions tied to painful events to fade faster than those tied to happy ones. This is exactly why my client (and I) kept second-guessing, kept considering going back—to a place, to a person, to the very thing that caused us so much harm.

It’s a survival mechanism, a way to keep us moving forward rather than drowning in old wounds. But it’s also not the truth.

Sometimes, I have to go back and read over my own words. The ones I wrote in the dark, when there was no escaping the truth. The ones I poured onto the page because maybe, deep down, I knew one day I’d need proof.

Because the pain was real. Because it was that bad.

Back in my therapy room, I know I can’t tell my client what to do. I can’t tell her what the “right” thing is—whether going back is a second chance or another mistake.

So I say the one thing that feels honest and true:

"Remember her and her pain, the one who came before you. The one who is still there, nestled within you. The one who said never again. Don’t forget her."

And as I say it, I know they’re the words I also need to be saying to myself. Because memory fades. Because pain softens. Because one day I’ll be wondering again—was it really that bad?