Yes, TimeHeals, I totally agree that you can re-write things for the better, in a deliberate attempt to change your own past, so that you can move on from it.
However, with divorce stuff, it isn't wise to do that. You do it for a while so you can get through your horrible days. But eventually...it really serves you best to see things as close to reality as they were.
I am now 7 years past my divorce. At first, I spent all my energy in my head going over how "wrong" my ex-h was about everything, from the moment we met. I blamed him for this and for that and for everything else. Finally...things started to shift as I truly started to move on. I started to remember the things that *I* did wrong that caused some of our original problems. I read books that helped me understand how some of my own original mistakes snowballed then into big problems that in the end, I had "blamed" on him...but upon a real reflection, years later, I saw how things had actually been both of our faults.
I was here when SP first started posting, and at first he was trying very hard to DB his STBX. At first, he talked about the fact that she had asked him to go to MC, and he talked about his violent outburst and realized it was a sign that he needed to take a good look at himself. He started IC and got on meds after that, if I remember correctly. But for him now to "remember" it as if his STBX "didn't say anything about wanting to put things back together", I think that asking him to to go to MC was actually asking him to help her.
She has completely unraveled since then, and I'm in pain just reading what poor SP has/is going through (sounds so horrid). But...having been fully through the whole process of divorce, moving on, and then true reflection and making my own efforts to never make the same mistakes again...I am just commenting to him, that this particular "bite" of his own marital history, should be remembered by him, not changed. In the future, it will always be important to know where we ourselves missed opportunities, so that we won't miss them a second time.
