
The Voyage Cast: Real Talk on Relationships and Mental Wellness
Relationships are complicated—especially when conflict, disconnection, or old patterns get in the way. The Voyage Cast is a podcast about emotional health, marriage repair, communication tools, and real stories of transformation. Hosted by Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Eddie Eccker, each episode brings therapy-informed insights to the messy, meaningful work of connection. You’ll hear practical advice, honest conversations, and occasional interviews with people who’ve faced the hard stuff—and found their way forward. Whether you’re navigating a rough season or just want a better map for love and growth, this show helps you stay the course.
The Voyage Cast: Real Talk on Relationships and Mental Wellness
Your Relational Memory Sucks! The Peak end Rule & Love
Your Relational Memory Sucks! The Peak-End Rule & Love
Are you remembering your relationship accurately, or just holding onto the emotional high and the painful goodbye?
In this episode of The Voyage Cast, host Eddie Eccker unpacks how our brains actually remember love, heartbreak, and everything in between. Drawing on powerful research from Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman and memory expert Elizabeth Loftus, Eddie explores the Peak-End Rule—the idea that we remember only the most emotionally intense moments and how things ended, not the full story.
You’ll learn:
- Why one fight or a painful ending can distort an entire relationship
- How memory is shaped more by emotion than fact
- Four actionable steps to create new emotional “peaks,” repair ruptures, and end well—whether it’s a conversation or a connection
If you’ve ever wondered why you keep replaying one argument, clinging to a perfect beginning, or struggling to move forward after a breakup, this episode is for you.
🎧 Listen in to learn how to rewrite the story—truthfully, compassionately, and with intention.
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The Peak and the Goodbye - Why We Misremember Love
Welcome back to The Voyage Cast— I’m your host, Eddie, and today, we’re tackling an idea that will hopefully make you think about love in a whole new way.
But as we go through this, I want you to consider the following question, and kind of hold it in your mind as we go through this:
Are you really remembering your relationships accurately, or are you just holding on to the emotional high and the painful goodbye?
Because here’s the thing about memory. We like to believe that it’s fair and reliable—that our brains are like perfectly organized scrapbooks, capturing all the good, the bad, and the in-between moments equally. But the truth is, that’s not how memory works.
Psychologists have uncovered something fascinating called the Peak-End Rule, a concept studied in depth by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman. Here’s the idea in simple terms. Out of all the moments that make up an event or experience, what we remember most vividly are two things:
- The peak, or the most emotionally intense moment.
- The end, or how it wrapped up.
And that’s it. Our memories don’t care much about the steady moments, the long stretches of calm, or even the full duration of a relationship. We zero in on the highs, the lows, and the final note, and that shapes the story we carry forward.
If you’ve ever found yourself replaying one passionate night, one crushing argument, or one disconnected goodbye over and over, while forgetting years' worth of kindness, compromise, or even simple joy—that’s the Peak-End Rule at work. And today, we’re going to explore why it happens, how it distorts the way we see love, and most importantly, what we can do about it.
[Music fades out as Eddie continues.]
PART 1 - The Strange Nature of Memory
Back in the 1990s, Daniel Kahneman and his research team conducted a groundbreaking study on how people remember pain. They looked at patients undergoing uncomfortable medical procedures and asked them to rate their pain in real time. Then, they followed up by asking those same patients to evaluate the memory of their experience later on.
Here’s what they found. It wasn’t the total amount of pain that shaped how people remembered the experience. It was determined almost entirely by two moments:
- The worst moment, or the peak of the pain.
- The final moments.
Here’s a wild example. One patient went through a short, excruciating procedure that ended at the height of the pain. Another endured a similar procedure, but it lasted much longer—even three times as long—but ended with a period of low discomfort.
Which experience do you think was remembered as worse?
The shorter one.
Why? Because our brains don’t measure length. They measure impact. The intense peak and the unresolved ending overshadowed everything else.
Now, if this is true for medical procedures, imagine how it plays out in the story of love.
Think about a marriage that lasted ten, even twenty years. Maybe most of those years were marked by stability, shared meals, raising kids together, and quiet, ordinary love. But one explosive fight, one moment of betrayal, or a distant breakup can suddenly recast the whole relationship in the harshest light.
“Never really good,” we’ll tell ourselves.
“Never meant to last.”
Or, on the flip side, we do this with the highs. A few perfect weeks at the start, the rush of infatuation, and we cling to that memory at the expense of truth. We romanticize the relationship long after it’s turned toxic because we’re chasing the memory of that peak moment.
Memory, my friends, is tricky. And love? Love makes it even trickier.
PART 2 - How Memory Distorts Love
Here’s something even more mind-blowing. Memory isn’t just selective; it’s incredibly malleable.
Psychologist Elizabeth Loftus conducted a study where participants watched the same video of a car crash. When the word “smashed” was used in follow-up questions, participants remembered the cars as traveling faster and even described broken glass that wasn’t there. Simply put, a single word reshaped their entire memory of the event.
Now, think about how this applies to relationships. When we replay a relationship in our heads, we don’t just relive moments—we filter them through emotion. Anger, regret, heartbreak, nostalgia… these emotions distort the lens, sometimes completely reshaping how we remember.
Take that one bad breakup. If someone says, “It was never good,” you have to ask yourself, Is that the truth?
Or is it trauma holding the microphone, rewriting every moment that came before as insignificant?
Here’s the real danger with distorted memory. When we misremember love, we don’t just hold onto the wrong version of the past. We also make it harder to heal.
Maybe you’ve blamed yourself entirely for a failed relationship. Maybe you’ve written someone off as a villain without considering the possibility of nuance. Or maybe you’ve stayed stuck in a cycle of longing for the past because you’ve romanticized the good and ignored the bad.
When we get the story wrong, we don’t move forward. We just replay the loop.
PART 3 - How We Heal Memory and Love
The good news? We’re not powerless to our memory biases. We can reshape the peaks and the endings over time.
Here are four ways to start.
1. Be intentional about creating positive peaks.
Love is made in small moments. A compliment. A shared laugh. A simple acknowledgment of, “I see you.” These moments may feel small now, but they’re the ones people carry forward. Don’t underestimate their power.
2. Don’t leave conflict unresolved.
It’s not the fight that ends a relationship. It’s the silence that follows. Say, “I’m hurt, but I’m still here.” Say, “We’ll get through this.” End the argument with repair, not in stone-cold silence.
3. Rewrite harmful peaks.
If you know you’ve hurt someone in a moment they still carry, name it. Acknowledge it. And take ownership. Memory holds onto pain until it gets a clear message that healing is possible. Give yourself and others permission to rewrite that moment.
4. End well, no matter the ending.
Maybe it’s the end of a relationship, or just the end of a hard day. Either way, remember this. Endings matter. Say what needs to be said. Create warmth, kindness, or closure.
Closing Thoughts
Here’s the takeaway, my friends.
We don’t remember life the way it happens. We remember the way it felt. And often, that’s shaped by emotional highs and the way it all ended.
But this is where the power lies. If we can reshape those moments—even just a little—we can rewrite the story we carry forward. Not by erasing the pain, but by adding threads of truth, repair, and captured beauty.
Today, I want to leave you with two questions.
- How might your memories of love need rewriting?
- What can you do today to make someone’s memory of you better?
Thanks for being here with me on this episode of The Voyage Cast. If this resonated with you, share it with someone who might need help rewriting their own story. And if you’re ready to start working on those stories with the support of a guide, reach out to me or our team at Voyages Counseling. We’re here to help.
Until next time, I’m Eddie Eccker. And this has been The Voyage Cast.