By Ox Drover
“The Road Not Taken” is always out there beckoning to us. I should, I could ”¦ Why did I do that? Why didn’t I do that? Regrets!
Having been involved with a psychopath, and reeling from the devastation in the wake of the relationship, leads us to ask ourselves what might have happened if we had made other choices.
I question myself—if I had chosen differently, would the relationship have been a success? If I had dated John or Frank instead of the psychopath, would I now be happily married in a solid relationship? If I had just done things differently, like I started to, would it have been better? If I had just gotten out of the relationship sooner, or later, would I now be better off?
With our regrets, we beat ourselves up for being so stupid to put up with the abuse. We saw the red flags of suspicion early on, felt the sting and pain of his words, his disrespect, yet, now we regret not paying attention to ourselves back then. How much better our lives would have been if we had only listened to our own intuition, to the things we really knew, really saw, but brushed aside, thought we could fix.
We searched for the words, the perfect words, to explain to him how he was hurting us. Why couldn’t we find those perfect words, the ones we were so sure would make him treat us better?
Regret is normal
Regret in the past choices we have made in life: Go to work and get married, or go to college and get an education. Have children, or wait. According to those who study regrets, having regrets as we mature is a normal, natural and a universal human emotion. Neal Roese, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Illinois says, “Regret is a very complicated emotion that involves all these things (pain and fear) coming together—it’s raw feeling plus all the complicated imaginings of future possibility.”
Another psychology professor, Carsten Wrosch, Ph. D., at Concordia University in Montreal, has linked regrets to many physical and social problems, which include sleeping problems, headaches, migraines, panic disorder and even skin conditions.
Henry David Thoreau said, “To regret deeply is to live afresh.”
Letting go
If we continually dwell on our past mistakes and missed opportunities, this consumes our ability to live and enjoy the present. Letting go of regrets though, is not a one-time event; it is a process of disentangling ourselves from them.
One of the ways suggested to start to let go of our regrets over past decisions is to consider it final. I find that when I have a decision to make, once I finally decide that decision is final, anxiety about making that decision seems to go away. Looking at that decision later, whether it turned out to be good or bad, I am more able to accept it.
People who study regrets and decision making also note that if we can “fix” a past mistake or correct it, our regrets tend to hang on longer and be stronger, but if we accept the fact that we made a bad decision that can’t be fixed, we tend to let go of it more easily.
Having regrets for past decisions, and especially regrets related to our relationship with the psychopath(s) in our lives, is normal and natural. As long as we hang on to those regrets and try to second guess ourselves, though, it impedes our healing and moving on.
Letting go of those regrets, the self-recrimination for our part in the relationship, for not finding the perfect solution, for not leaving sooner, or any of a thousand other choices we made, will be an ongoing process. But it will lead us, if we let it, to using those choices to make a better life for ourselves now and in the future.
I think mine ran its course.. My thinking back is my awareness to see what really and actually occurred .. and why I got caught up in his spin. I don’t have regrets in the things that I did or didn’t do. Nothing about me caused him to be so delusional. I tried to talk to him about reality and that is when it began to fall apart. And this was good for me not bad. Regrets… umm.. I am just stunned about how I got so in his web… when there were so many signs that he was not what I wanted.. why I overlooked the obvious.
Great post Oxy. You wrote “Having regrets for past decisions, and especially regrets related to our relationship with the psychopath(s) in our lives, is normal and natural.”
Well, two of the people I know who have told me they have NO regrets are both pretty far gone on the psychopath scale of traits.
I regret that he didn’t or couldn’t see my side to things. But that should be his regret not mine.
I regret falling for his spin.. that is what I did… I for a time, believed him… reality and signs to the contrast. I regret believing him and not myself, pulling back more in the beginning. Had I, it would’ve been exposed and fallen apart faster. I regret giving him the benefit of the doubt when he gave me little to none.. if I did something that he didn’t like or that didn’t fit into his agenda. I regret that I wasn’t as sophisticated and aware as I thought that I was.
Dear Oxy, thank you so much for yet another great post! It was very comforting, specially the following:
“People who study regrets and decision making also note that if we can “fix” a past mistake or correct it, our regrets tend to hang on longer and be stronger, but if we accept the fact that we made a bad decision that can’t be fixed, we tend to let go of it more easily”.
I am full of “To do lists” of self imposed “past mistakes”, some dating back from my childhood, some fairly fresh, to “fix” them. I will have to weed these lists out. Do some “deep-soul-cleansing”. Thanks for the reminder! I regret of having “wept over spilled milk” for so long! ((((Hugs))))
I’ve always said that I don’t have regrets. That everything happens for a reason and I should learn from it. Well, in this situatuon, I regret not standing up for myself sooner. I regret ignoring the signs that were there slapping me in the face every day! About 2 months into the relationship, I found out he was married with kids by reading an article about him. I remember that first time feeling the burning in the pit of my stomach, completely turned me inside out..it was going to be a reoccurring feeling for the next 4 years. But I went out to dinner with him that night and asked politely for him to explain. I regret going to that dinner and allowing him to lie to me. Maybe if I would have never answered his phone call after I read that article, I wouldn’t have wasted 4 years of my life with him. But I’m learning that from this day on red flags will not be ignored, and the second you lie…Don’t expect for me to hang around long enough for you lie to me again.
Yeah Amber!
Thank you for your kind words.
Letting go of the regrets for “the roads not taken” has been a difficult process for me, but I am slowly getting there. My head is pretty flat from all the BOINKS I have laid upon it with my BIG cast iron skillet!@....... I have beaten my skull into fragments more than once pounding on myself with the regrets, but now that I am letting go of those past choices it is much easier to make progress in the healing. As long as I hung on to those regrets, those self recriminations, I didn’t make much progress toward doing better.
The positive choice to let go of the regrets, to forgive myself for my past choices, made today’s choices easier!
I see you point Oxy, the regrets do hold us back if we dwell on them and punish ourselves with them.
On the other hand, they can be lessons that propel us to make different choices. Sometimes the hardest lessons have the most profound effects. We don’t want to be like the P’s who cannot learn from their mistakes because they won’t even acknowledge them. They are like children who are perpetually held back in the first grade. They like playing the same games over and over because that is what they know. This way they can always be the smartest in the class – of first graders. LOL.
A great post,,Oxy. and very timely for me! I still tend as we all seem to, to “beat myself up” over mistakes, and i have to learn to forgive myself and move on. I know now it was stupid for looking at my daughters pics on facebook,it was NOT a good idea, as its like picking a scab thats not healed over. Also, I was even more upset, as she now has my other daughter on facebook, and there wasa picture of her. As I havent seen her or even a pic ture of her in nearly 17 years, I cant tell you how upset this made me. She still looks beautiful,{she is the one living with the rich Jewish boy, with his 3 kids by her}. But her eyes look so sad.and she looks mentally disturbed to me. Obviously all that money isnt making her happy. I still dont know why she cut me off, but I guess if she is also a S. this is what they do.
All I can do is pray for her, and remember what a sweet cuddly {but even then manipulative!} child she was. Time to close that door, and move on. My Iranian kids are coming over for lunch tomorrow, -I confided in Roya today on th ephone re my P daughter,and they are coming over to hug and comfort me. Im learning to ask for help now, I cant do it alone! And my husband is sick of hearing about the whole thing. Onwards and upwards! Its all part of “accepting the things we cannot change”.Thanks again Oxy, and all of you!! and {{HUGS!!}}} gem.XX
Dear Gem,
I know it hurts, and to wonder “why” makes it hurt more as well, but ACCEPTING it as FINAL, and to quit beating yourself up over the past is a step forward.
Accepting the things we cannot change, that we do NOT have control over is a big part of the healing process. When we feell that we “should’a” or “could’a” done something different to have a different outcome, we stay stuck in that past decision. We stand there beating ourselves over the head about something we can not go back and change now.
I can say “I should have done X” but you know, in the end, we really don’t KNOW that doing X would have made things better or worse—I can also look back and say that if my P son had come home (after his first term in prison) that I might very well be dead, and have been dead for a LONG time now. So we can’t second guess the past. We CAN accept the present and make the very best of it that we can.
Lily is still not answering her phone, so I don’t know how she is doing. I keep praying for her that whatever her physical situation is that she is at PEACE. Even if that peace means she thinks her children care for her. She is so physically ill now that whatever peace she can get I think is so important.
I think it is so important that we can heal emotionally while we are physcally in pretty good shape, so that we don’t let our emotional pain drag us down physically and vice versa.
I iimagine it is hard for David to understand the full level of pain you have had from your daughters, no matter how much he loves you, but I think you know that the people here on LF have a pretty good idea of what you have gone through. My hugs and prayers for you sweet, Gem!