It might be showing us the couples' happier past.
At times it resembles a marriage of nostalgia, surviving on memories of a happier past.
Veronica is further enticed to relive the happier past when an old friend comes calling.
"Conways" — which has three acts, set in the happy past and the unhappy future (before returning to the happy past) — allows its central character, a hopeful (then failed) writer, a youthful prevision of the grim, middle-aged life to come.
It was clear that among the celebrations of meeting old friends and happy past times there was still some anger.
I know, from happy past experience, that I can with any luck look forward to a glass of champagne when the interview ends.
Charlie Ballantine, bored with his wife, and office routine, finds that, when he thinks about his happier past, he becomes dimmer physically.
Harold Pinter, in "Betrayal," his 1978 play about a love affair gone sour, ran time backward, from the bitter present to the happy past.
The distant future and recollections of a happier past are forever tugging them away from thoughts of the present, lending the characters an almost ethereal quality.
The narrative flits cleverly back and forth in time to contrast the gradual breakdown of their relationship with their happier past.
