Is it "normal" to not remember much about your life?

Apologies if the initial question doesn’t make too much sense. Here come the details:

My husband remembers very little that has happened to him in life. I’ve asked him about school, his grandparents, even our first date 12 years ago. There isn’t much that he can recall. He knows things that he has been told, like taking juice boxes from a couple of kids in kindergarten. He actually remembers a very few select things – most of them neutral or negative experiences. Positive things seem to not exist in his memory. He doesn’t remember the names of any teachers with the exception of two college professors that were not very good and one junior high teacher who was excellent.

In terms of relationships, he has only had two that were really serious, and I’m one of them. (Not that he didn’t date, just that the dates never progressed into anything else.) The other one, well, what little he has talked about has been negative. And with us, he’s far more likely to remember problems, if anything at all.

However, he does remember almost every formula from the math and science classes he took. (He graduated from college in 1992.) He remembers other things from school as well.

It seems like he remember facts and figures (many that he doesn’t use very often) but positive emotional experiences or those involving people seem to be lost or hazy. Anyone know what might cause this? I’m pretty sure he wasn’t physically or emotionally abused by his parents or anyone else. He had a grandfather who was an alcoholic and his mom is a bit of a control freak. Not with us, but with herself.

Besides what may have caused this, I’m wondering if anyone else out there has experienced this? If so, has it caused you any problems and how have you worked through them? I have to say, as someone who can list all of her elementary school teachers and many things that happened while growing up, this is a bit of a mystery to me!

I’m putting this in “Social” because I want people to be able to tell stories and express their opinions.