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.
Dear heavenbound, thank you darling for your sweet words. of course we are all in the same family of LF, and it is a very special family, even though we may never meet, but NEVER SAY NEVER!! God DOES hear our cries and our prayers.
I wish you a very happy day, dear!! All will be well!
I love you too, and {{HUGS}} to all of you,
Mama gem.XX
This is probably off topic but check out latest Mac ads – are they using the ‘sociopath as PC’ approach? Especially in the one with big guy “call me when you’re willing to compromise’ and the repeated ‘trust me’ one. For some reason I decided to watch them other night and that ‘trust me’ one
really hit home… just that phrase gave me the creeps!
Persephone,
Amen. And I saw a Pepsi (?) app for I phones that has pick up lines for guys to use, depending on the type of woman they think you are. Our culture, or many parts of it, is leaning way over on the Narcissist and P scale.
I am making huge progress. Not sure when it happened, but I’ve totally lost my appetite (even in the abstract) for “strong” men, “leaders”….fine for getting a job done, but not fine for a mate. Likewise, a guy who is “coming on” to me is a turn off….and I think that would be true if I were single. I’m so over flirting, love songs, all that. I feel like I finally get what real love is about and it takes a long time for that trust to be earned and established. I’m so out of sync with the current culture that if anything happens to my husband….I’ll never find another. I am no longer hungry for validation by a man. Not sure how it all came about but just really got clear about that very recently. Feels GREAT.
PS It became apparent to me when a guy that I know was “interested” popped back in via fb (ugh), and the thought of him is now disgusting, where as five years ago I thought he was so hot. VICTORY!
I agree persephone and justabouthealed….that our society is learning over on the N/S/P scale. Now I see things on tv, or talking to people in public and under my breath, I catch myself saying, “sociopath.” I hope that my experience only makes me aware and not paranoid to get to know new people. I find that I question EVERYTHING out of people’s mouths now. I guess in the long run it will be to my benefit to question everything because if I don’t and I let my guard down, I don’t want another S sneakin in because I was nice enough to just believe everything he said.
Persephone,
It is funny isn’t it, about how “older women” are “invisible” in some areas of our culture? You see beautiful young women on the media and front pages, but most ads are geared toward young men and women, unless it is for incontinence pads or false teeth powder. LOL
Of if you see an ad for an ED pill for men, he is always dancing with or holding hands with a woman who looks 15-20 years younger than him.
Age and wisdom are no longer the same thing, and I see so many older women who go to great lengths to “dress young” and try to appear “younger” than their ages –and men too with the hair dyed jet black with white roots and the “comb overs” to hide baldness. I can “sense” sometimes the “invisible” changes in the way (mostly) middle aged people interact with me, but I am not going to let them make me FEEL invisible.
And it used to be in cultures (and still is in some) that the elders are revered, etc. Not in the USA!
Amber, whhhoooo hoooo for you.
I do the same thing. My P-dar is soooo finely tuned, the slightest passive-aggressive nuance registers a beeeeeeep!
It’s not that I expect everyone to be perfect, because we all have an inner P, but when you get loud beeeeep or several small beeps grouped together, you have a red flag.
I think I figured out the difference between a narcissist and a sociopath. They are similar but a narcissist is really self centered and will attack if it gets a narcissistic injury (real or imagined). It needs constant reassurance or it will turn into the devil. The sociopath is similar except it’s already one big oozing, festering, pus-filled narcissistic injury and that’s why it’s always on the prowl for someone to take revenge on. The sociopath will stalk it’s prey by mirroring and will even try to seem meek and humble. That’s because it is basically a wounded predator, ready to strike as soon as it’s got the victim within it’s reach. Other sociopaths, like mine, prefer to destroy their victim slowly. They realize that they are decaying and they want someone else to decay too. They will smear their oozing infection all over their victim subtly. They don’t want the victim to know it’s coming from them. They want the victim to think they have an infection or disease. The victim then slowly comes to believe in their own defectiveness. But in truth the defect was just a projection of the P.
Oxy and jah:
You both make a good point, and I know I get the word ‘attractive’ more than ‘pretty’ now – I know I still look good ‘for my age’…so what! But even my lover who was younger would harp on that to the point I felt like,is that what I’m mainly about, lookin’ good? He’d say how intelligent I am but there was this other fear that would creep in that I better stay fit and as young-looking as I could, ok if he started to go a bit though! I plan to take care of
myself but only because I do have some vanity and feel better when I stay fit.
The ‘invisibility’ I was speaking of is this feeling of finding myself at work and not always
being introduced by bosses to new people, even when I’m right there. Or having them
say things about my talent with art and it can seem a bit patronising – and I know it brings
up something in me that why am I allowing myself to be invisible, and why am I not putting
myself in a leadership role, why always an assistant or subordinate to someone who I may
respect, but who just has different strengths than I? Don’t know if I’m expressing this right –
I just know lately I’ve felt more like I want to break away and really use MY strengths more
and is that arrogant? Once again, whether we’re old or young, whether we think we’ve been
victimized or victims or not, we can still reclaim who we really are and do what we’re best at, that’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Like you said, Oxy I’ve become more aware of ‘older’ people now just being like me, just
further down the road, with hopefully more perspective and appreciation of life than a younger
person can really grasp when they think they’ll be around ‘forever.’
skylar..thanks for that!! And you couldn’t be more right. I beleive my ex was both a N and S because he was insanely self centered and knew it. He had no qualms admitting he was selfish or wanted everything to be about him. ME ME ME all the time! But I think he was more of a S because of his destructive behavior, inability to tell the truth, complete lack of remorse etc etc. He knew he was wounded and decaying. He would often say to me that he didn’t want to take me down with him, which was a LIE! He could say that till he was blue in the face, and all I asked was he tell me the truth so I could make educated decsions for myself as to whether I wanted to stay or leave. And he STILL would lie, to keep my around. So he knew he was taking me down with him, but wanted to pretend that he cared enough to keep me around. I know he got off on me telling him that I wanted to make it better and I would never leave him. He set his trap and he knew he had his grip on me. As long as he had that, he wasn’t alone. In the end, I felt like a nuttcase!! Ewww…he makes my skin crawl now. I keep replaying the last conversation I had with him over and over again in my head disecting every single little statement. How he tried to make himself the victim, telling you, “YOU’RE the one that has changed.” WTF?!?!? That shocked me. But I know now it was him just trying to portray his negativity and guilt onto me, to take the attention off him. And I called him out on it. No way was I going to let him play reverse pyschology on ME anymore. I wish someone would stick him in a white room and study him. The world would be a much more ENLIGHTENED place!