What is your biggest regret in life?

[Teadrinker11]

At 26, I know I'm still at an age where I'm somewhat young enough to make good decisions to prevent more regret in the future, but I still do regret a lot. I've wasted so much money on things I didn't need, I neglected my health for so long, it's taken me to 26 to somewhat have my life together. I'm studying law and love it, but hate how I spent so much time after school messing around wasting my life. I didn't go to college straight after school like so many of my classmates did and I still pine over the years I lost, when people in their early 20s are having the time of their lives. What is your biggest regret?

Not buying that one-bed flat near the station in St John's Wood in 1999 for £160,000.

Not buying the house my dh was renting before we got together. The landlord offered it to us at a ridiculously low price.

Listening to other people.
Not listening to other people.

Meh. Half the stuff we get wrong is what makes it life frankly.

Not cutting my family completely out of my life when I left home at age 18 is my biggest regret. I should have taken the counselling I was offered at age 20 (after being very low contact for 2 years) and never looked back, let alone keep going back home continuously to visit!

I gave them the opportunity to hurt me more than I ever thought was possible, and my children too. They never should have even had the chance to know them.

The only thing I regret is not finding a way to believe in myself and start believing I was ok while I was still young.

I regret not moving to London the day I turned 18, loaded up on as much debt as possible (my lovely parents would have co signed my loans) and bought as many flats and houses as I could, leveraging one off the other. With hindsight I would be very wealthy now. Instead, I did the uni/professional job route, and have realized too late that this is not the route to financial freedom.

@Blossomtoes that's so sad, I'm sorry.

yes i got there eventually, but wish i had studied sooner than i did and got to uni faster, then when i was 16 birthday at a hotel in Cornwall or Devon i think it was, i wish i made the most of an opportunity that would of altered the course of my path in life.

I regret always putting others need above mine. I feel sad thinking about how much of my life I've been walked all over. I regret moving to the UK sometimes. Being so far away from people and a culture that is important to me. The price I've paid for what I have is too high. Its come with such enormous sacrifice that others appear to take for granted. I regret moving country and leaving my dad behind to live with my narcisistic mother. It pains me that he is trapped with her. I feel grief that he hasnt been able to see his granchildren much.
I know me moving away all those years ago must have caused him so much pain. He is the only person besides my two children who has loved me unconditionally. I would not have made those choices had I had my time again. I regret the compromises I made and the sacrifices I made early on in my relationship. I was too naive and too desperate to find stability that I compromised on things I shouldn't have. I am sad I've not stood up for myself the way I stand up for others. No one has my back. Its just me.

Not pushing the GP to investigate DH's symptoms more thoroughly - what they diagnosed as acid reflux and then asthma turned out to be heart failure, and he died. That will always be the biggest, along with not checking on him sooner when he went up for a nap - he had a cardiac arrest and I'll never know if I could have saved him if I'd got there earlier.

I also regret leaving London, although I'm glad for DH's sake that we spent his last years nearer his family and by the sea.

The situation was out of my control so not exactly a ‘regret’, but I often feel sad that my teenage years were ruined.

When I was 13 my Dad buggered off, my Mum had a mental breakdown and got really abusive. Social services wouldn’t get involved because my house was clean and well decorated, I had no behavioural issues and got top grades at school. She kicked me out by age 14 but lied to the police and social services and said that I still lived there and was just making up stories, so they wouldn’t help me with housing or put me in foster care. Spent a few months sofa surfing/on the streets and often missed school. Moved in with a really violent, abusive boyfriend who wouldn’t let me out of his sight (so no school, college or friends) because I had nowhere else to go. Was trapped in that situation for 4 years until I could legally private rent. Spent the next two years dealing with severe PTSD so was an absolute trainwreck, tried college and working a bunch of times but couldn’t stick to any of it. Met a lovely guy on my 21st birthday, fell pregnant by age 22. Spent the last few years struggling to raise a baby isolated with no family, no qualifications, hardly any money and suffering from depression and anxiety and deep feelings of shame that I haven’t gotten anywhere in life.

Buut I’m okay now. I love being a Mum. I have a nice house and a nice fiancé. I’m hopefully going to University in September. I’ve learnt how to enjoy hobbies and be happy again.

I’m sad that I missed out on a lot, but this thread has made me realise that I still have years ahead of me😊 And I feel really lucky to have broken the cycle of abuse at such a young age, as I know a LOT of women never make it out.

Worrying what people thought of me.
I'm 53 now. It really doesn't matter.

I don't think I have any. If I were to regret anything it would be my ex husband, but I don't because I wouldn't have my children. I've done loads of silly stuff, but thinking of regrets is just pointless. We can't turn back time, that's why Aqua wrote a song about it.

My first career. After graduating I joined the management training programme for a multinational hospitality business. The next four years of my life were spent working horrendous hours under intolerable pressure. 65 hour weeks were normal. Busy weeks, eg the Christmas party season, were 80+ hours. I had no life whatsoever and to add insult to injury the salary was a joke. The job cost me what had been a fantastic relationship and it cost me four irreplaceable years of my 20s when my friends were enjoying their lives. Eventually I couldn’t take any more and I walked out on the job and the industry without another job to go to and ended up taking a job in a call centre.

I bitterly regret those lost years and I’m still angry with myself for not getting out sooner.

So sorry @Lemonata

I had a similar past and understand.

So pleased you broke the cycle.

@WomblingWilma

Not cutting my family completely out of my life when I left home at age 18 is my biggest regret. I should have taken the counselling I was offered at age 20 (after being very low contact for 2 years) and never looked back, let alone keep going back home continuously to visit!

I gave them the opportunity to hurt me more than I ever thought was possible, and my children too. They never should have even had the chance to know them.

Im from the other side of the coin and I did it. I left at 15 and went no contact. I'm 33 now and still no contact and my children don't know them and never will unless they seek them out as adults. What I will say is, it's been a hard and lonely journey, and I can understand why you didn't do it. Well, as much as an internet stranger can. Being a parent without any support network has been tough and I grieved what could have been (well, if I had a normal family) when I became a mum. I hope life is better now.

Not being a better mum.

Only discovered could sing
In my mid-late 30s
That I sung in the wrong octave my whole life
That am a contralto which is actually special & my voice didn't actually suck
That have wasted a perfectly good talent due to insecurity & stage fright

Right now, practically everything. Not in a good place just this mo, hope it improves.

Interesting question which I've pondered but actually "Je ne regrette rien".

In my late teens I had some quite negative experiences but they honestly "grew" me as a person, and it's something I've talked about a lot with my teenage DCs.

They weren't trauma level things but more disappointments, but I definitely came out stronger than I was before.

Giving so much to my job. There is so much pressure on women to have a career these days and at 55 I regret not having had children, or had the time to invest in my family or people around me as I was always too busy working.

Then at 52 I had another change of boss, a passive aggressive type who sidelined me, undermined me and basically stripped all my responsibility because she was best friends with my colleague who wanted to pick and choose what she wanted to do, including parts of my job. Then she restructured & binned me, 3 years later.

I was earning very good money at the time but I was a shopaholic which now I realise was my way of coping at the time. I was buying stuff ever day. While being made redundant I was diagnosed with severe depression and spent almost a year being treated for it (CBT & anti-depressants) while trying to pick up the pieces. I am now unemployed and can hardly face working for someone again. Luckily I have some savings to tied me over for a while.

If I had the time again, I would invest so much time on work but more on the people around me.

That I am a lost cause and lacking in almost every way I can think of.

I always wanted to join the police force from quite a young age. When I was about 16 my dad said he would disown me if I did.
Many years later he asked me why I never went into the police force and I said because you said you would disown me.
He looked at me and said I was only joking I thought you realised that.
I was heartbroken and totally gutted.
By that time I had a child and was single so it was no longer an option.
Biggest regret of my life

When I was 20 I thought it would be a laugh to appear in a lads mag in underwear for a specific feature they did. My family didn’t speak to me for months afterwards. I still feel so ashamed even though I’m a lot older and a feminist. I have a really good professional job now and I’d be mortified if anyone knew. I do feel I was taken advantage of a bit but it was mostly my fault. There is a reason the brain is not fully developed until 25! The only upside is the internet wasn’t too much of a thing so never ended up being online forever more. Live and learn.

I’m 40, single and still don’t have a proper career, but there’s no point regretting anything. For example, I’d like to have had children younger, but if I had, I wouldn’t have my DD and that is unthinkable now.

I had serious MH issues in my 20s and that couldn’t be helped. However, I did manage to go travelling and have some great experiences. I don’t know anyone whose life has gone exactly to plan.

One of my friends followed his vocation (teaching) and had to quit the profession due to the stress making him ill.

Another friend married young, but put off having children until her thirties and it just hasn’t happened.

Another friend has a good career, but she and her husband sleep in separate beds and seem to live separate lives under the same roof.

Life isn’t perfect. Some people might feel that they’ve achieved their happy ever after, but life has a tendency to keep on happening.