One of my earlier works gets referenced quite a bit on TRP: The Light Switch Effect. I've decided to rework it a little bit for readability. Here is The Light Switch Effect Revisited:

I was recently reading somebody's account of how women tend to re-write history towards the end of a relationship:

Re-writing of history - It doesn't matter that she was sending you love notes and texts a month ago. She has been unhappy for a long time now.

I call this the light-switch effect- it happens when a woman loses attraction and moves on, whether or not she cheated.

It’s not that she’s discrediting the good times; she actually believes they never existed. This ties into Briffault’s Law, which states:

The female, not the male, determines all conditions of the animal family. Where the female derives no benefit, no association occurs.

How Emotional Reality Works

Men and women process emotions differently. When a man feels something, he questions it: What caused this? Is it rational? He then adjusts his reaction based on reality.

Women, however, experience emotions as reality. If she feels sad, someone must have made her sad. If she feels betrayed, someone must have betrayed her. Her emotions don’t describe reality; they define it. This is why a man’s attempt to reason: "I didn’t mean it that way" falls on deaf ears. She wouldn’t feel this way unless there was a real reason, therefore, in her mind, she’s objectively right. If a woman tells you that "you made me sad." She didn't decide her emotional state, you did. Changing her own emotional state is outside the purview of her control.

This is where many arguments start, because the man tries to explain, "That's not what I meant, you misunderstood." But to her, reason doesn’t matter. She’s sad, and she wouldn’t feel that way without a cause. Her sadness is reality. If she feels hurt, then you must have done something to justify that feeling.

The Light-Switch Effect in Action

After years in a relationship, when things go south, you may begin to experience the revisionist history. She will claim: I never loved you. I was never attracted to you. You were always an asshole. You were always abusive. These always/never statements don’t reflect reality but her new emotional truth. Her new "objective" reality.

Her logic:

  • True love is permanent.
  • I don’t love him now, only feel anger and disgust.
  • I wouldn’t feel this way unless he was truly bad.
  • If he’s bad now, he must have always been bad (and I missed it / he hid it).
  • If I never loved someone bad, then I never really loved him at all.

Just like that, everything you built together is erased. It’s not that she’s denying the past- it no longer exists in her reality. Like a light switch turning off.

This is why men at this stage fail when they try to bargain: "How can you throw this away? We can fix this!"

From her perspective, there’s nothing to throw away. If the relationship had value, she wouldn’t feel this way. Since she does feel this way, the relationship must have never had value. Her mind has rewritten everything about your relationship to rationalize her new reality.

Briffault’s Law & Relationship Contracts

Briffault’s Law, particularly its first corollary, explains this perfectly:

Past benefit provided by the male does not guarantee future association.

Men think relationships operate on implicit contracts:

  • We’ll love each other forever.
  • I’ll provide for you, and you’ll remember my sacrifices.
  • We’ll stick together when things get tough.

But when things actually get tough, her emotional state rewrites reality. If she truly loved you, she wouldn’t feel this way- so she must have never really loved you. If she once valued what you provided, she wouldn’t feel betrayed or disgusted... so those things must never have mattered. Since she does feel unattracted to you now, the idea that you ever had value in her life must be false.

The light-switch flips off, and in her mind, everything you built together was never real. There was no love, no sacrifices, no good times... Just a lie she now sees clearly.

And make no mistake, even in a good relationship, with a good woman, when the chips are down, the switch always turns off.