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My FWH keeps swearing he cannot remember most of the A and what happened. I mentioned hypnosis about 9 months ago and he blew it off, saying it would not work on him.

Well, now that I've been doing the 180 for a couple of weeks, he is willing to try hypnosis and has been trying to remember things and writing (however, since he's been out of town & i'm not questioning him, I don't know & bet that he hasn't remembered much).

I looked on the WS forum and found someone talking about trying and being unable to remember any details of his A. Dates were similar & sounded just like my FWH, so I checked profile and it was not him. But made me see that there are others (and others with no memory also replied) like mine.

Just wondering if anyone has tried this or known anyone else who tried to bring back memories from an A.

My husband's affair happened 9 years ago and I only found out in August last year. Because of the time lapse and because he has spent the last 9 years trying to put the A and all the details out of his mind, he doesn't remember quite a lot of the details that I really want to know about. We have tried everything, including hypnosis, but nothing has been completely successful I'm afraid. I know the big stuff and I am having to accept that some of the small stuff I will simply never know! It drives me crazy as I am very detail oriented.. I want to know all of it, down to the smallest detail! Just not going to happen for me!

About the hypnosis - fWH spoke to his IC (a clinical psychologist) about hypnosis, she doesn't do it, but she recommended another clinical psychologist who does hypnosis. Off fWH went, armed with a list of questions that I had given him. She had an initial consultation with him, to talk to him and establish that he was stable enough for hypnosis, and to get the back-ground of our story, she also took the list of questions. He then went back a week later for the actual hypnosis. Honestly, it was so disappointing! I got literally nothing new out of it! At the follow up appointment all she said is that he seems truly remorseful. WTF? What about my questions??? She then told fWH that there was no way she would ever have been able to get that kind of detail out of him. I was furious! Why didn't she tell him that when she first saw the questions, before she even did the hypnosis?! A total waste of time and money in our case!

I would suggest you consider some caveats with this.

Hypnosis can work to recover memories. It can also allow a person to reveal things they would otherwise try to conceal through deception or shame, assisting them in becoming more forthcoming.

*** WARNING *** CAUTION ***

It can also lead to the creation of false memories, and these false memories can be very convincing. This can be done accidentally or maliciously. Great care must be taken during the hypnosis not to in any way suggest something suspected may have happened, or it can be remembered as such. It is also possible (due to the way memories are stored out of sequence) that trying to force recovery of something truly forgotten can lead to a person making what seems like logical deductions of what likely happened and remembering these as assumptions as actual memories.

Hypnosis can be very problematic if used incorrectly, and one should exercise great care and not expect too much when attempting it.