Need Advice: How to live without regret/remorse

[alphatarget1]

Learn from the past and don't make the same mistakes you did. Dwelling on the past does not help things.

 

[kalrith]

OK. I took an hour-long walk during lunch, looked like a crazy person talking to himself, and had the opportunity to analyze some issues. I documented them in my journal and now I'll put the brief version on here.

Basically I'm a horribly miserable person. I'm not willing to wait until I go see a counselor and get to the root of all my problems before I become a happy (or at least not miserable) person, so the focus of my walk was to decide how to make changes to my life today. I dealt with two main problems: buyer's remorse and having too many responsibilities/too little fun time.

I labeled it buyer's remorse, but it's really decision remorse. One resolution is to treat purchases like buying/selling stocks. I have to thank Alienwho for this idea. I can't go back in time and tell myself that a certain TV, monitor, stock, etc. is going to plummet in price a month after I make my purchase, so I shouldn't be remorseful at all when that happens. Another resolution is to be happy with good decisions, even if they're not the best decisions. Just because I realize that another decision might have been better doesn't make the decision I made into a bad or even mediocre decision, and I should still be happy with the good decision I made. Another, as already stated, is to learn from bad decisions. The example right now is fixing up and selling my old house after buying a new one. That's something I'll never do again, but I certainly can't change it in this instance, so I might as well make the best of it.

I leave for work at 7:15 AM, go work on my old house right after work, and get home around 9:00 PM, and the weekends aren't much different. My resolution for this is to be deliberate with both work time and fun time. I think I could be more efficient with working on the other house if I'm more deliberate about how I spend my time, and that will either allow me to come home earlier every night or will allow me to complete the project sooner. I think I could make better use of my free time as well. Sometimes I'll just sit around and "relax," or in other words waste time doing nothing while dreading the work that has to be done. If I decide that I'm going to take 30 minutes to play a video game, read a book, focus on playing with my son, etc. instead of just "resting" for 30 minutes, then I think my life will be a lot fuller.

The things I haven't dealt with yet are my wife, God, and work. The only thing I'll mention on here is I don't know how much to tell my wife. I want to tell her the last part about trying to be more deliberate with work time and fun time, or else she'll think I'm just playing video games when I should be working. I'm just concerned that she'll see my new-found free time as a way to pile more things on me. I guess I'll just have to prepare my response for that, because I've got make some changes to make me not absolutely miserable before I do something crazy stupid that I'll regret for a long time. What I don't want to tell her is that I'm questioning our marriage and my beliefs about God, because I don't have any answers right now about those issues and I don't think anything positive will come from telling her.

Sorry for the long post, but remember this is the "brief" version .

 

[Modelworks]

Regret and remorse are totally different things.

For regret:

Realize that you made the choices you made at the time with the information you had at the time. You are not a fortune teller. There is not a single person who does not wish they could go back and change something they did. It isn't that you were stupid or an idiot or being a bad person, you just didn't have all the facts, so you made a choice based on what you knew.

One thing that can help is using the phrase " Had I known that" + whatever you learned after you made the decision, before you start regretting something. It may seem small but the brain is very good at learning things that we might consider insignificant .If you constantly put yourself down then you WILL start to become depressed and you WILL make yourself miserable regardless of what anyone else tells you. The old story of the little engine that could is very very true. Positive reinforcement of how you think is what you need to focus on.

For remorse:

You did something that you knew you shouldn't have done when you were doing it and now that you have seen the results are sorry to have done it. You made a bad choice and have to live with that. Try to learn from the experience and not do it again. Everyone has remorse about something, the only people that don't are usually psychotic or serial killers.

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: inspire
Damn - yeah we're probably more alike than I initially thought. I too kept thinking that everything would get better once I got out of school. I was just so freaking busy during all that that I never really took time to think about it all. Going to grad school during and after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans didn't exactly help give me time, either.

The crap part was that I was earning about $25k a year, but borrowing another $18k a year while in grad school. I finished and got a job making $80k, but I now have $65k in student loans that I took out so that she could stay home. I'd get greif for having a friend over, not watching TV with her, wanting to buy a video game every few months, playing 'M' rated games, etc. It was ridiculous. I remember that it was a big deal that I got to buy and play halo 3 - that was after I had graduated and got a job.

And I wasn't a prick, either - I bathed the kids every night, read them stories, played with them, on the weekends, I'd wake up with them. I'd often cook dinner more than her, I'd clean up around the house, do handy work and spend a fair bit of time hanging out with her and talking to her. Sex was about once or twice a month for me, and I can now say that it was pretty lame when it happened.

I'm sure a good bit of it was my fault, but I'll be damned if I didn't try. I poured everything I had out for her so that she could have the life she wanted, but she never approached doing anything like that for me. I was a meal ticket. A nice, respectable meal ticket. She quite simply never fought for me - at all.

It hit her like a ton of bricks when i tried to talk to her about it. I tried for 2-3 months before she finally got it. She moved back to her paren's, took the kids, and told me to see a shrink and get some anti-depressants. That was her solution.

When I later told her I was serious about divorcing her, she wanted to keep trying - to go to counseling. For probably the first time in my life, I said to myself 'Fuck this, and fuck what other people think is 'right' - I'm tired of going through all this bullshit so I can look like a model fucking person.' and I called a lawyer rather than a counselor.

There were just too many issues. We'd grown apart, and the only reason she wanted to work on it was not because she wanted to be closer to me, but because she didn't want it to fuck with the continuity of her life.

A word of advice though, even though this is weird because I'm younger, but w/e - don't wait until you're done discovering yourself to do stuff. Self-discovery is a constant, ongoing process. If you do decide to get divorced, and end up looking for a long term relationship with someone else, make sure that it's someone you can grow with - someone who will explore new places, new hobbies, and make new friends with you.

People change, and so you need someone who can change with you and who you can enjoy. That's not to say that things won't be tough from time to time. I hate to sound like a broken record, but seeing a professional helped me through all that.

Thanks for the open exchange - keep me posted!

Woah! The similarities keep getting deeper and deeper. I too made little money during grad school and wound up living largely off student loans with the result being $65k in student loans for me and about $25k for her. Unfortunately I don't make $80k right now . I'd get the same grief for doing anything that resembled a life and was expected to either be doing stuff around the house or spending time with her. Heck, I still get grief for wanting to game at a friend's house once every month or two, but her response is that I should be spending time with my son. Heck, just because I'm a dad doesn't mean I have to cease and desist the rest of my life!

Every time I bring something up, my wife either (a) thinks things aren't too bad and wonders why I'm making a big deal out of nothing, (b) cries and nothing productive comes from our interaction, or (c) both. Once I figure a few things out, I guess I'll have to be more persistent in presenting my case to her.

And as far as self-discovery goes, I don't mean that I want to find all the answers to life and the universe before making a decision. I just want to do a bit of soul searching before making decisions that I wouldn't have made if I had waited a few months.

 

[evident]

can you just honestly talk to your wife about how you feel about her and and see if she can empathize with you?

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: evident
can you just honestly talk to your wife about how you feel about her and and see if she can empathize with you?

The short answer is no. The long answer is below.

Any time in the past that I've discussed things like this with her, she's just thrown a pity party for herself, and said something to the effect of "I know I'm the scum of the earth. I know I don't make you happy. I know you'd be better off without me. *sob* *sob* *sob*"

Now that I think about it, it's pretty selfish actually. Here her husband is trying to pour out his heart and soul to her, and all she can do is think about how this reflects poorly on her. I try to reach out for her sympathy, and she just turns it around as if I'm the bad guy and she needs my sympathy.

 

[imported_inspire]

Originally posted by: kalrith
OK. I took an hour-long walk during lunch, looked like a crazy person talking to himself, and had the opportunity to analyze some issues. I documented them in my journal and now I'll put the brief version on here.

Basically I'm a horribly miserable person. I'm not willing to wait until I go see a counselor and get to the root of all my problems before I become a happy (or at least not miserable) person, so the focus of my walk was to decide how to make changes to my life today. I dealt with two main problems: buyer's remorse and having too many responsibilities/too little fun time.

I labeled it buyer's remorse, but it's really decision remorse. One resolution is to treat purchases like buying/selling stocks. I have to thank Alienwho for this idea. I can't go back in time and tell myself that a certain TV, monitor, stock, etc. is going to plummet in price a month after I make my purchase, so I shouldn't be remorseful at all when that happens. Another resolution is to be happy with good decisions, even if they're not the best decisions. Just because I realize that another decision might have been better doesn't make the decision I made into a bad or even mediocre decision, and I should still be happy with the good decision I made. Another, as already stated, is to learn from bad decisions. The example right now is fixing up and selling my old house after buying a new one. That's something I'll never do again, but I certainly can't change it in this instance, so I might as well make the best of it.

I leave for work at 7:15 AM, go work on my old house right after work, and get home around 9:00 PM, and the weekends aren't much different. My resolution for this is to be deliberate with both work time and fun time. I think I could be more efficient with working on the other house if I'm more deliberate about how I spend my time, and that will either allow me to come home earlier every night or will allow me to complete the project sooner. I think I could make better use of my free time as well. Sometimes I'll just sit around and "relax," or in other words waste time doing nothing while dreading the work that has to be done. If I decide that I'm going to take 30 minutes to play a video game, read a book, focus on playing with my son, etc. instead of just "resting" for 30 minutes, then I think my life will be a lot fuller.

The things I haven't dealt with yet are my wife, God, and work. The only thing I'll mention on here is I don't know how much to tell my wife. I want to tell her the last part about trying to be more deliberate with work time and fun time, or else she'll think I'm just playing video games when I should be working. I'm just concerned that she'll see my new-found free time as a way to pile more things on me. I guess I'll just have to prepare my response for that, because I've got make some changes to make me not absolutely miserable before I do something crazy stupid that I'll regret for a long time. What I don't want to tell her is that I'm questioning our marriage and my beliefs about God, because I don't have any answers right now about those issues and I don't think anything positive will come from telling her.

Sorry for the long post, but remember this is the "brief" version .

Does your wife work? I mean, if you're making all the money and busting your ass - you deserve nice stuff too. Regretting your purchase only devalues it further. Enjoy it; you earned it. You need to be able to get nice stuff every now & then.

If your wife's response to you taking more time to enjoy life is to keep you from doing it, it's time for a serious talk. That said, I'd pre-empt it by telling her you're not happy and you want to do something about it, and then lay out your ideas - be prepared to compromise a bit, but take a stand for yourself.

And be honest, but compassionate. Quite frankly, though, if you're wife isn't willing to face the reality that you're unhappy in the relationship, and that she needs to help you work on it, then I don't see any hope for you, man. The fact that you're afraid to talk to her about your marriage and God tells me you're likely going to continue to be miserable.

It's not your responsibility to find the answers before you talk to her about a problem. The relationship breakdown is as much her fault as yours. You're not going to make yourself happy out of some sheer force of will - you need to talk to her about it. And if she doesn't want to accept responsibility, work on the relationship, or try to find a compromise, and that attitude persists for more than a few months without any signs of getting better, then you should really consider call a lawyer - you are not going to become happy through sheer force of will.

 

[evident]

Originally posted by: kalrith

Originally posted by: evident
can you just honestly talk to your wife about how you feel about her and and see if she can empathize with you?

The short answer is no. The long answer is below.

Any time in the past that I've discussed things like this with her, she's just thrown a pity party for herself, and said something to the effect of "I know I'm the scum of the earth. I know I don't make you happy. I know you'd be better off without me. *sob* *sob* *sob*"

Now that I think about it, it's pretty selfish actually. Here her husband is trying to pour out his heart and soul to her, and all she can do is think about how this reflects poorly on her. I try to reach out for her sympathy, and she just turns it around as if I'm the bad guy and she needs my sympathy.

dang. well for one you said tht you don't find her attractive anymore, maybe for weight issues, maybe you can have her help you w/ some of the physical stuff around the house, or could go for walks together and stuff? that way you guys can have something you can both do together... ?

 

[imported_inspire]

Originally posted by: kalrith

Originally posted by: evident
can you just honestly talk to your wife about how you feel about her and and see if she can empathize with you?

The short answer is no. The long answer is below.

Any time in the past that I've discussed things like this with her, she's just thrown a pity party for herself, and said something to the effect of "I know I'm the scum of the earth. I know I don't make you happy. I know you'd be better off without me. *sob* *sob* *sob*"

Now that I think about it, it's pretty selfish actually. Here her husband is trying to pour out his heart and soul to her, and all she can do is think about how this reflects poorly on her. I try to reach out for her sympathy, and she just turns it around as if I'm the bad guy and she needs my sympathy.

She needs to grow up.

 

[amicold]

Well, see a therapist you have issues, divorce your wife, and buy some cocaine.

 

[nerp]

Everyone opened up! Excellent.

 

[AlienCraft]

Originally posted by: nerp


I thought you were going to tell stories about hurting loved ones -- slamming doors in their faces, lying, cheating, stealing. I thought you were going to recount missed opportunities in which you could have taken a bold step towards your dreams but faltered and continue to fall short your true potential. I expected you to recount moments in which you've talked through your ass, swaggered, been rude or condescending or presumptious about people or issues, only to realize later you were wrong or in error, looking like the fool in retrospect. The same regret a man feels for his behavior as a teenager, writing on walls, cursing out old ladies, taunting the elderly on the road, making children cry.

Instead, you regret a fucking MONITOR PURCHASE? Fucking pathetic. Your lamentations are limp, materialistic and not sympathy-worthy.

Thank you! Agreed 100%
To the OP: the only way to avoid any type of remorse is to have no moral position, or ethical point of reference.
A sociopath has no remorse. Not the best of life strategies. Could work for you, if you channel that into a Ponzi scheme.

 

[HardcoreRobot]

waiting a long time to buy something i really want helps with buyers remorse. the longer you build up the anticipation, the more you will appreciate it when you do get it.

as for real regret and remorse... make amends if you can, forgive other people for the things they have done to you, for mistakes you have made think of the unintended positive things that came out of it. realize whats done is done, and focus on the positives.

 

[irishScott]

As for the updated OP, you have to acknowledge that there are some things you can't change. What's done is done. IMExperience a lot of remorse/regret is not so much based on the bad choice related to it, but by an underlying expectation that the next similar decision will produce a similar results. In lamenting the past, you simultaneously set the bar low for the future, and that's a self-fulfilling feedback loop of a prophecy. The answer to this is change. Be bold, and get comfortable with the knowledge that you will not be the next best thing just out of the starting gate. You will fuck up. Laugh at it and learn from your mistakes.

ie: You say you feel bad about your relationship with your brother, then go apologize and mend some fences. It's not as hard as you think. Just do it. Apply the last two sentences to the rest of your problems while you're at it.

 

[meltdown75]

Originally posted by: amicold
Well, see a therapist you have issues, divorce your wife, and buy some cocaine.

LMFAO!!!!!! :laugh: :beer: