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Why is it so hard to quit a bad relationship? It's probably because we're incapable of admitting failed relationships, according to a new study.

While successful couples who have moved toward marriage over the course of their relationship have accurate memories of experiences at each stage of their relationship, those whose commitment declined are significantly less accurate in their memories of their relationships.

"People like to feel that they're making progress as a couple. If they're not--if, in fact, the relationship is in trouble--they may have distorted recollections that help them feel like they're moving forward because they need a psychological justification to stay in the relationship," study author Professor Brian G. Ogolsky of University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, said in a news release.

Ogolsky and his team said the expected to find some inaccuracies in the memories of romantic partners.

"One theory was that recollections might be higher across the board because people like to remember the best possible course of their relationships. But, as we looked at couples' actual experiences and compared relationships that were developing in a positive direction with those that were not, we saw that the accuracy of their memories diverged rather sharply. It's fascinating how memory works in couples," said Ogolsky.

Resaerchers said that the study revealed two important findings: that highly committed people remember their relationship history accurately while their less committed counterparts don't.

"When a couple is considering making a lifelong commitment, they have a lot at stake. It's important that they have accurate recollections of how their relationship evolved," Ogolsky said. However, those in failing relationships have no benefit in remembering their relationships accurately. Researchers noted that these people might misremember events to avoid feeling constant disappointment.

The latest study involved 232 never-married heterosexual couples in long-term relationships with an average duration of a little more than two years. Participants were asked to estimate their chances of marrying from 0 to 100 percent for nine months. Participants were then asked to reflect on their entire relationship at the end of the study. Researchers noted that the point of this was to see how participants' memories matched up with reality.

"Couples who had deepened their commitment remembered their relationship history almost perfectly. The graphs for this group were really interesting because the plot of the end-of-study recollection could be placed right on top of the one we had graphed from the monthly check-ins," Ogolsky said.

"They had given themselves some room to grow and remembered the recent past as better than they had reported it being. If they saw maintenance as stagnation, that's a way of addressing that cognitive gap. It helps them feel that their relationship is developing in some way--that they're making progress," he added.

Researchers noted that the most surprising findings came from those in failing relationships.

"If we looked at their history as they reported it to us over the nine-month period, we could see that their chances of marriage were plummeting. Yet their recollection was that things had been going okay. Of course, they hadn't seen the graph so they didn't know their trajectory looks this dire, but it's fair to say they were in denial about the state of their relationship," Ogolsky concluded.

The findings are published in the journal Personal Relationships.