To ask you your biggest regrets in life

[ThefloorisLav]

Just that really, do you have any major regrets from decisions you have made in the past?

Any words of Wisdom?

Not standing up to my bullies and punching them in the face.

Starting a pension even if I just put £2 a week into it.

Maybe also working for a small company. It has left me in my 40s a jack of all trades master of none. My job doesn’t exist elsewhere and the company I work for can’t afford to pay me much plus I have lots of flexibility so it’s tricky to work out what I’ll do in future.

That opting every time for the so called "easy option" actually comes at a price.

I didnt realise how badly my was suffering with my mental health as a teen and young adult and was frankly, fucking horrible to my friends and pushed most of them away. I now find it difficult to forge any kind of new friendships without coming off desperate. Eventhough I'm married with a child I'm lonely.

Other than that..

• Not binning off my ex-boyfriend sooner
• Going to uni - it wasn't for me but went anyway as felt pressured by family

An abortion when I was 20 yo. I regret it so much.

I sort of spiralled after that and drank too much, smoked and took drugs. I was an awful person.

I'm 40 now and have a nice life but will regret these things all my life. You would never think it if you met me!

Avoiding going to dr for acne until age 27 because I was embarrassed. Get on accutane as soon as you can.

You are my absolute twin.

Not saving and paying into a pension when I was younger.
Also not having a career or ambition.

Not taking better care of my teeth. Everything else (that was within my control) I can just about live with.

I’m lucky in that I’m not of a temperament to focus too much in what could have been different. I see why I did most things in my life and think I made the best choices I could have with the information I had at the time, given the person I was, and that’s all we really can ask of ourselves.

I hope any of you who are really tortured with regret find peace. We do well when we can.

Having a child. He’s absolutely amazing and I love him to pieces, but if I could go back I would have remained childless. Parenting is not for me (which I found out too late!).

Spot on. I spent the first 15 years of my adult life wasting so much time worrying about what various no mark men thought of me.

There’s so much I could have achieved in my life if I had focused on my career and my interests and generally being my best self instead of making myself pleasing to men who at best didn’t really care and at worst wanted to derail me.

I don’t regret having my daughter but I regret every single man I have ever been involved with bar the current one and I didn’t meet him until my late 40s.

Men just drain women’s batteries. If someone had told me this at 20 I probably wouldn’t have listened but at some level I knew this and wish I’d listened harder to my instincts.

• My top one is I wish I’d sought help for my mental health when young. I’m fine now but I was a hypochondriac and thought I’d die young so never bothered about a career, pension and stayed in deadend relationship during this time in my twenties as I thought there was no point to any of it.

That sounds really depressing but I’m in a much better position now. Married to great guy with 2 kids and a career that on paper is boring but I quite like. I’m also not anxious and depressed like I once was.

Hope you find your person soon 💛

Cliche but - wish I’d taken a gap year and travelled the world. I couldn’t deal with staying in hostels now 😂

I think this is one of the most insightful Mumsnet threads I've read!

Me too @LK2610 .
Mainly wish I hadn't bought a coffee at work most days in my 20s-40s and instead had put that money into my pension, I'd be comfortably retired by now (53).

Oh and my new year's resolution has been to stop saying sorry. I wish I had done it years ago, the difference in how I'm viewing situations and being treated now i'm not such an inveterate people pleaser is incredible.

Being too scared to come out due to my upbringing so forced myself to be with men. This went on to my late 20s.

First marriage , having children.
Not going to university at 18.
Not living abroad.

Have done those things later in life.

Me too, except late thirties.

Not being more open to relationships, in my twenties. I met some really good guys, handsome, intelligent and fancied the pants off them, but some blocker in me was always waiting for that 'Mr Right'; that Disney moment. It never happened, and I let the good guys get away.

I'd never advocate settling or making do - but wish I'd been a bit more open-minded. Therapy has taught me there was more to my decision making than simply wanting better - but I still regret not giving more of me, taking a chance and seeing how it panned out.

Wish we had started our family sooner - our friends had their children when they were in their mid 20's so their children are 11/9 year olds now. We have a 2 year old and I am 38 this year, expecting our 2nd - worried that I will be too old and knackered to enjoy parenthood when they are 11/9 years plus. I was late going to Uni as didn't know what I wanted to do - I was 27 when I qualified as a nurse so wanted a couple of years experience under my belt before trying for a baby - then it took us forever to get pregnant anyway.
I try not to think of the what if's but we had a gorgeous dog who our son would have grown up with but he died of old age when our son was 6 weeks old. I sometimes wonder how they would have got on - If the dog would have slept on the floor in my son's bedroom like he used to do with us.
My dad died when I was 24 and I wonder what sort of grandparent he would have been.

words of wisdom?

You can't start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading the last one.

Too many, could start and never stop listing a seemingly endless string of life regrets, but the biggest one is turning down a job offer abroad, knowing t was an extremely rare opportunity that I have never had again and probably won’t. I had valid reasons at the time, which relate to previous wrong/late decisions I also regret, but I still kick myself for it.

I know this will not be popular. But I never told the man that I have I ever really loved 20 years ago that I loved him and wanted to be with him. I was “having an affair” with a married man. I and a child, he had 2 children. It was complicated but it happened. The affair was exposed and he came to my house to ask me whether we had a future. I said no. You should be with your wife and children. I don’t love you. He moved away to the Isle of Wight few months later. This was the biggest regret of my life. I loved him very deeply and not felt that way again. I still think about him now and what could have been 20 years later. I have had a lovely life since but wonder what if … does he still think about me…