Regret is ruining me

[ThatNimblePeer]

This isn’t really an AIBU, posting for traffic. I think more than anything I’m just looking for people who have experienced the same thing, and can understand what I feel.

A few years ago I had to make a big choice that would really affect my life (think between 2 houses/2 job offers etc) in a short time. It was incredibly stressful. I did my best to consider carefully and weigh pros and cons, but ultimately I made the wrong decision. I knew pretty much as soon as I’d made it that it was wrong, but it couldn’t be reversed. As time has gone on it’s become clearer and clearer that it was wrong and why, but I can’t change it now. I just have to get up every day and live with the consequences, knowing the other choice would have been so much better.

I don’t want to go to therapy. I don’t want to be told I can’t know for sure the other choice would have been better - I’m as sure as I can be. I don’t want to ‘make the decision right’ (I’m doing my best, but there’s just no way round the fact that it’s a huge, huge cycle uphill). I cannot console myself with the fact that I did my best to make the right decision at the time - if anything, that makes it worse, knowing I tried so hard, went through so much stress, and still got it so badly wrong.

All I want, the only thing I want, is to be able to go back in time and change the decision. I know I can’t do that. It’s the only thing I want. I know I am BU.

I’m not looking for suggestions for how to make it better. I don’t think I can. I just want to know there are other people out there who know how this feels.

OP, unless the choice you made meant somebody died you have to find a way to forgive yourself. That past decision is ruining your present life.

You say you don’t want consoling, but you tried really hard to make the right decision based on what you knew at the time. You gave it thought. You did your best. If there were 100 people faced with the same decision with access to the same information you had, I bet a huge number of them would have made the same choice. You did nothing wrong.

You can change things, whether it takes a month or ten years. The first step is getting some help to process this and move forward, because you’re still stuck there.

Be kind to yourself, don’t waste your life on regret.

You just can’t know what the full consequences of the other decision may have been, you only think you do. There might have been a bus with your name on it. I second counselling, no good counsellor will tell you you should have made a different decision but will help you to find a way to move past this which ultimately you are going to have to find a way to do. Maybe you just need an appropriate period of greiving before you move on though

I think I also have the type of personality to ruminate on the past and stew over a regret. It’s a horrible state to get into, but it’s a waste of time.
We have to make an effort to move on, live in the day and get on with living our best life. No point in making yourself suffer.

You can only play the hand you have.
It might not have been the hand you were dealt but it's the only one you've got now.
So play it as best you can.

You can’t change the past but you do get to change the future. Where would you like to be in 5 years time? How can you start taking steps to get there?

Feel for you OP. It’s dark and morbid but I was genuinely helped by realising I could’ve chosen the other path…then been in the path of a bus in that place at that time. Or something similar. I might not have just been ‘me’ as I am now, just in the different place or job role. Maybe I saved myself from something worse.

I come back to these words regularly. More regularly than I should probably have to. I get it. But there is still a life to live

This is from The Midnight Library. At some point when there is a glimmer or seeing a different perspective I've recommend it

There is an amazing episode of Bluey based on this parable! It's called The Sign.

OP without knowing what has happened I'd like to say I think I am in a similar position - and certainly many similarities to @MoominMai and others regarding housing - I'm in my 60s and have the choice tomorrow of taking a lovely new shared ownership housing which will likely leave me with very little money and no where to live in 5 years OR rent, and try to find a do-er upper despite having health issues which mean I can't do anything up and have very little cash for rennovations.

I've been agonising over it for months, ever since I realised that I might lose a LOT of money on the shared ownership. I've canvassed every opinion from friends, most of whom have no idea of what it's like to have a set budget and not much pension, or who don't understand the legalities of shared ownership. I've been told to move to Birmingham or Portsmouth, go back to my ex-husband, ask my ex what to do and to get more money (I kid you not). I have been told by my counsellor that whatever I decide this week I will regret it at least initially and that I should accept that feeling and sit with it. As I think you are doing.

I definitely think intelligent and informed counselling is the way forward to help you find a way to live with it. So for example, and I hate to suggest it, but if we are talking abortion, then a specific abortion counsellor, or if we are talking marriage then a Relate counsellor and so on. Find someone who says "you know what @ThatNimblePeer ? This is shit, it's more shit than you have ever dealt with, but now you live with it." And then offers unconditional support.

I have to make my decision tomorrow, there are so many people involved and all vying for money or position, it's awful. I feel worse doing this than I did when leaving my ex of 35 years. I know. I get you.

Please be kind to yourself @MoominMai, it sounds like you have been through a lot without much support and you’ve been incredibly strong. I don’t think anyone could conceivably make a ‘perfect’ decision under those circumstances. I’m very glad that the house got you away from DV - that in itself makes it the right decision IMO x

I know what you mean, OP. In 1999 I had one of those massive life-upending events when my then-partner of some years was killed in an accident. I was in my 30s, he was my future. I lost all interest in life, all confidence, as a result of which I turned down two dream jobs, both of which would have required me to be on the top of my game. I couldn't face the pressure. One was a start-up business in Oxford, just at a time when friends of mine who lived there were selling their nice house at a price I could afford. The other was with an insurance start-up in Cardiff, where I could have afforded a very nice home outright.

I turned everything down to hide away and stay in the doer-upper house DP and I had bought together, in an up-and-coming area of London. Except that it failed to come up and instead went down and became a very unpleasant place to live.

I've done okay, but not as well as I'd hoped. I feel as if I squandered all the opportunities I was offered. If I'd moved to Oxford for the job and the house, I'd be very wealthy. The house is now worth £2.5+ million and the start-up (in which I would have been given shares) was bought up by a big company and my shares in it (management were all given shares) would have been worth £1million+. Same in Cardiff, where staff were given shares and many became millionaires when it was floated on the Stock Market five years later.

I'm now in the run-up to retirement. I have nothing to complain about: I've had consistent, interesting work and I'll have a fairly comfy lifestyle in retirement. But although I married in my late 40s and my DH is a decent man, he doesn't set me alight. I try not to think about the 'what-ifs': I'm not usually one for looking back and I don't want to be one of those miserable 'If only' people who make their own and others lives a nightmare. But occasionally I go there, and it's very painful. More so now I'm older and the options and opportunities are drying up. Courage to you.

@EauCaledonia I think the decision you made was so natural, having lost your partner and grieving him of course you wanted to stay in what had been your home together. Please don’t blame yourself for that, it’s what a loving person would feel x

Wishing you well for tomorrow @IWillAlwaysBeinaClubWithYouin1973 x

I think it these situations it is a case of 'be here now'. You can get caught up in your thoughts and going over and over what you have described - or you can refocus on today and live it the best way you can. And then the next day do the same, and so on. Acknowledge the thought or the emotions, but then move on. Otherwise regret will bleed all of your energy.

Wishing you the best @IWillAlwaysBeinaClubWithYouin1973 I know so many women in your position. I'm so glad you realise the perils of shared ownership and haven't walked into it blindly.

Sorry ,posted on the wrong board. Have deleted post and reposted in the right place.

Forgive yourself for making a mistake and look for your best route foward now

@ThatNimblePeer you show great compassion for others on this thread, I hope you are equally self compassionate?

@MoominMai I like that parable. It's like the Greek paradox "Call no man happy until he's dead"- basically, as long as you're still alive, there's always scope for things to get worse/better as the unforseeable consequences of actions and/or accidents play out.

OP, it's probably not too late to salvage something from the bad decision you made (which might still turn out to be a good decision, see the zen parable!)

Can I ask what the 'perils of shared ownership' are? I've thought about possibly buying a shared ownership property in the future.

Maybe post the question on property so as not to take up the OP's thread. My circumstances are very specific due to my age so might not apply to you in same way.

People in shared ownership properties often find that all maintenance and repair costs fall to them, which tends to mean that shared ownership (where you pay a mortgage on half of the property and rent on the rest) is actually more expensive than renting (where the landlord has to pay for maintenance and repairs) or owning outright — where you get all the profit from improvement and maintenance when you sell. When you sell a shared ownership property (which can be really difficult, a lot of people won't touch them) you only get a proportion of the profit. If you own 50% of the property, you only get 50% of any profit. Some schemes involve the buyer paying all the service charges (in the case of a flat) even though they only half the flat. And there are extra layers of complication and bureaucracy that can add to the cost of buying and selling.

Some people look forward constantly - I'm one of those. It has taken me 30 years to work through my strange childhood as a result - and God knows it took a lot of thought - but ultimately I don't like thinking backwards. Some live in the moment - that's my DH. That comes with its own set of isssues on a bad day... Everyone else looks backwards. They look at everything, including choices they made, and balance what they have today with everything that went before. So I can't tell you exactly how many people are like you, but it isn't a tiny majority - it is a sizeable chunk.

Put another way, as a coach I'm not surprised or alarmed or befuddled when I come across people like you. But you sound like someone who perhaps has a very high belief in their agency. It is the opposite of people who blame everyone but themselves. It obviously sounds a lot healthier than the blamers, but it is nearly all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum. (I'm speaking directly as you seemingly asked for direct.) Very few choices we make are influenced, coloured, shaped by ourselves alone. So that does make you less usual, taking so much agency over those choices. Still by no means a one-off, but just a little less usual.

I'd love to say how your thinking can be made more productive, but I will stop there, given your instructions!

Just popped back tell @ThatNimblePeer I made my choice today and I hate what I've done, I'm sat here thinking of what I lost with that decision, but I am so thankful I had my counsellor to talk it through with last week as she said whatever I decided I'd find it hard - what seemed like a very sensible and carefully thought out decision 12 hours ago now seems like I've ruined everything.

I don't know if this feeling is more common than we might realise? Or is it more prevalent in a particular type of person?

Completely this. It's ok to wallow or grieve for a bit, but after that you absolutely have to pick yourself up and either begin repairing what you can, strike out with a new purpose or make the best of what's left (or all 3). By refusing yourself that act of kindness, you are now knowingly self-sabotaging. From your description, the first mistake was made in good faith with the information available at the time, but you are now in territory of conscious self-harm.
We've all made mistakes, and for some these will be very big, awful, and unfixable, but the bigger mistake would be using the remaining years as a punishment.
You've listed lots of things you don't want to hear/be suggested, so I think you do know the solutions, you just need to give yourself permission to try them. It is possible to both have regrets and forgiven yourself for them.