Need Advice: How to live without regret/remorse

[dirtboy]

Journaling has helped me.

Live Journal

You can flag all your entries as private, so nobody else can see it. It's a good way for me to review decisions and events of the day.

 

[JEDI]

Originally posted by: kalrith

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: kalrith
Cliffs: I live with remorse and regret over many of the decisions I make.
Tell me how to not do that, or share some of your own experiences either with remorse/regret or the lack thereof.

For as long as I can remember (I'm 28), I've had a problem with regret and remorse. Not just a little bit, but a pretty major problem. I can think of things that I've done years ago and feel that I wish I had said something or done something different, and often these are very minor things for which I'll have a lot of guilt over.

Lately it's been remorse over some major decisions and some major purchases. For example, I bought a Dell 2408 monitor a few months ago. I got a great deal, and it's an incredible monitor. However, part of me wishes I had bought a 32" 1080P TV instead and the other part wishes I had waited to either get one of two other monitors that are superior and have either recently come out or recently come down into the same price range as my Dell.
Anyways, I'm just wondering how other people deal with this crap. Any tips you have would be great, but I'm really just looking for others' experiences in how they've combatted (or, like me, have failed to combat) living with regret and remorse over past decisions.

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 sympothy-worthy.

That was one example, and I was trying to not get too personal, but why the hell not:

• I regret how I treated my mom before she died 13 years ago (I was 15 at the time)
  
  I have zero relationship with my brother (my wife of 7 years hasn't even met him), and I often thought it was all his fault when I was younger, but now I realize that I did many, many things to hurt him.
  
  I'm 28, married, and have a 6mo son, but I often feel like I shouldn't have gotten married in the first place because (1) I'm no longer attracted to my wife (both physically and otherwise) and (2) I feel like I never experienced my 20s like I should have because I went to a strict Bible college and then went straight into marriage at the too-young age of 21. But there's no way in hell that I'm going to have my son grow up in a split home.
  
  I regret the poor decision of buying a new house and remodeling my old one. I bought the new house in March '08 and have spent countless hours remodeling it instead of spending the time with my son. We're also in a big financial bind paying two house payments. I'm probably 60-80 hours of work from completing it.

I guess I'm just in a rethinking-through-life phase right now, questioning past decisions, questioning my faith, questioning my role in this world.

ah... MUCH better. edit your OP with this.

anyway, drop religion. you'll feel ALOT less restricted, and less guilt.

then divorce your wife. screw split home. your son will notice that you and his mom are not happy, and that will affect him too.

why live the next 18yrs of his life in misery? he'll grow up a better person if he sees happiness.

as for money, hire a fee only financial planner. one that only dispences advice, and does push any stocks/bonds that he'll get a kickback from.

after you deal with the above 3, then deal with your brother

 

[sixone]

Originally posted by: kalrith
That's a very interesting and enlightening study. It describes my buyer's remorse to a tee. I'll try to actually look at purchases like that from now on. Thanks for the help.

As far as my remorse about life, I had some time to think and reflect on things this evening. I think I just need to grow up and be a man who takes responsibility for his choices instead of a boy who feels like he got jipped out of partying in his 20s and not having so many responsibilities. It's not like anyone forced me to make the choices I did. I chose the life I have now, and I need to make the best of it not only for my sake but also for the sake of my wife and son.

Unfortunately realizing what I need to do and doing it are two different things. Hopefully I can follow through on things, and hopefully I feel the same way come tomorrow.

The important question is "would you make the same choices now, if you had it to do over again?"

Of course you wouldn't. You learned from your mistakes, and now you know better. Give yourself a break - no one is perfect.

Make a habit of turning those thoughts of regret into thoughts of how to make things better now. Do a random act of kindness for someone - family, coworker, total stranger.

 

[skace]

I regret all the things I didn't do. However the only thing you can do is improve from where you currently stand.

 

[Arcadio]

Two words: "Fuck it"

I use them all the time to avoid remorse or regret. It works surprisingly well.

 

[Aztech]

Originally posted by: SandEagle
i used to be like this. but then i figured, you live once. you want something, get it and get over it. can't put a price on happiness

Yeah, I tried that. Now I have $35K in CC debt and I regret it!

 

[kalrith]

Quintox, thanks for the offer. I'll probably take you up on that once I process through some things and figure out what the serious issues are.

dirtboy, thanks for the link to Live Journal. I've thought about journaling in the past, but I've always been concerned about someone else (mainly my wife) finding it and reading some things in there that I wouldn't want her to. Live Journal looks like a good solution to that.

JEDI, while I'm not so close-minded and set in my ways to not ever consider dropping religion or divorcing my wife, I'm not leaving them as options at this time. I don't want to make major decisions that I can't take back. I'm going to do some soul searching for now and try to figure out who I really am and what's really important to me. If I go through that and religion and my wife don't fit with that, then I might consider leaving them behind. However, I'd hate to give up on them and then do my soul searching only to find out that my religion and wife are important to me.

I think part of my problems with decision-making is that my dad made it really difficult for me to make decisions, even with something simple like "Where do you want to go to eat?" He would ask me that, I would tell him, and then he would be in a bad mood because I didn't choose the place he wanted to eat. I eventually (like from ages 13-18) just said, "I don't care; you decide," to every question he asked. That made me very indecisive, and when I do make decisions, I mull over the decision I made and the ones I didn't make and usually lament over not making one of those other decisions.

I appreciate all the good feedback (and even the bad feedback). I know I need to see my choices (both good and bad) as opportunities to grow and learn; however, I don't do that.

And everyone's right who said there are a lot of issues beyond just regret and remorse. A lot of my issues go back to being mistreated (verbally and emotionally, not physically) by my dad and my mom having cancer through much of my childhood and then dying when I was 15. My mom was awesome, and my dad was horrible, so I often felt jipped that she died instead of him. I've patched some things up with my dad, but it's mostly on the surface. Deep in my heart I still hate him.

My church group is encouraging everyone to do a 24-hour fast this week, and I think I'm going to participate for at least that long. While I'm not really approaching it as a biblical fast (since I'm somewhat uncertain as to where I stand right now), I think it will be a good opportunity for me to process through some things and clear my head a bit.

Any other feedback is certainly welcome!

 

[spaceman]

Originally posted by: Arcadio
Two words: "Fuck it"

I use them all the time to avoid remorse or regret. It works surprisingly well.

agreed playball like kirby fuckit.

 

[rudder]

Go run over some kids dog. That way worrying about a TV buying decision will seem stupid compared to the guilt of running over a little kids dog.

 

[Aztech]

Happiness is a decision, make it.







I love these little nuggets of wisdom, even if they never help anyone...

 

[dullard]

I've known several people that live their lives with regret. Sure, all people have some regret, but only some people seem to be very inflicted with it. Of the people I know, all have one trait in common: poor timing of their effort.

Let me give you an example. I'm getting married in three days. One of my soon to be sister-in-laws tends to have poor timing when it comes to making decisions. She'll spend virutally no effort at all before the decision is made, but after the decision is made she'll spend countless hours/days/weeks researching it and regretting the decision. If she had simply spent a few hours BEFORE making the decisions, she'll probably be far happier and have far less regret.

Her most recent regret just appeared yesterday. I've been engaged for 18 months. She's had 18 months to choose a dress for the wedding (we aren't doing forced bridesmaid's dresses). Just yesterday she decided to start searching for a dress. My fiancee and her looked everywhere and they aren't selling summer dresses right now (hint: it is fall not summer or spring when they sell summer dresses). Now, she is feeling regret. Soon she'll be in lots of photos hanging on people's walls for a lifetime while she is in an outfit she doesn't like. Poor timing.

People with poor timing don't have to do any more work. They don't have to make any major change. They don't have to really do much to get over the regret. They just have to move their analysis to BEFORE the decision instead of after the decision.

You mention that other monitors have now come down into the same price range as your monitor. Why the @#$& are you looking at prices now? Really, if you think about it, looking at prices now can ONLY lead to regret. Looking at prices is only a good idea BEFORE you make the purchase. Afterwards, never, EVER look at prices. Bingo, much less regret in your life.

Don't come here in 10 years telling us when you look back you regret not spending time with your son. Look forward instead. What can you do with your son in the next 10 years? Try to move your thoughts from the past to the future. It is the same number of thoughts, the same effort, the same everything, the thoughts are just timed better.

 

[kalrith]

Originally posted by: dullard
I've known several people that live their lives with regret. Sure, all people have some regret, but only some people seem to be very inflicted with it. Of the people I know, all have one trait in common: poor timing of their effort.

Well, I do boatloads of research before making any purchase, so this part really doesn't apply to me.

You mention that other monitors have now come down into the same price range as your monitor. Why the @#$& are you looking at prices now? Really, if you think about it, looking at prices now can ONLY lead to regret. Looking at prices is only a good idea BEFORE you make the purchase. Afterwards, never, EVER look at prices. Bingo, much less regret in your life.

Yeah, I need to stay away from the hot deals forums altogether; however, I try to research deals before making any purchase. For example, I recently found a really good deal on diapers on the deals forums. The problem is that in searching for that deal I found an HP monitor that's better than mine that recently dropped $100, and I saw that the new Dell 24" was released and is already close to the same price as mine.

I know that in the grand scheme of things little things like this don't matter, but I'm just responding to your post. It's not like my monitor all of a sudden becomes a POS because something better comes out. For some reason I'm really good about still liking certain purchases (like my 2yo TV), but then other purchases (like my monitor) I lament over.

Don't come here in 10 years telling us when you look back you regret not spending time with your son. Look forward instead. What can you do with your son in the next 10 years? Try to move your thoughts from the past to the future. It is the same number of thoughts, the same effort, the same everything, the thoughts are just timed better.

This is something I really need to work on. I can't change the past, but I can change the future. Unfortunately my track record with this isn't too good, so I hope to do better with my efforts this time around.

 

[FeuerFrei]

Maybe you are too materialistic. 'Godliness with contentment is great gain'. Don't mope and dwell on what might have been.

Relationships can be mended and restored. Attractions can be rekindled. Financial burdens can be lifted. Your son won't remember the time you spent away remodeling when he was under 6 months old.

Regret is healthy. So is guilt. Keeps you from repeating mistakes. Some mistakes you have to live with the rest of your life. You can't go back; you can only go on. Suck it up.
Tired of making lousy decisions? Seek wisdom from above. Let the Lord guide you.

 

[meltdown75]

Regret is time wasted x2.

You wasted it the first time when you made your regrettable decision, and you're wasting it again when you spend time lamenting on it.

Learn from your mistakes and move on... don't spend time thinking about them / beating yourself up.

It's time wasted - squared. IMHO

 

[AstroManLuca]

Become a calvinist.

 

[Doboji]

Holy crap reading your post just made me depressed... you sound like a pretty miserable person.

 

[Doboji]

Seriously though... nothing will every be perfect in your life, you will always make mistakes, you will always have regrets... concentrate on doing the right thing right now, keep your eyes forward looking for opportunity to make the right choices right now. You can do NOTHING about the past concentrate on putting all that energy spent regretting on planning the future.

 

[69Mach1]

Just remember that you don't know the consequences of the choices you didn't take. It's easy to make a choice and then convince yourself you should have done something else. The problem is that you can't know what would have followed if you had. You make the best decision you can with the information you have and then only look back if a similar situation comes up again.

 

[BoomerD]

Sounds like the OP has no backbone...learn to make decisions based on as much solid information as you can. Then, learn to live with those decisions. No guilt, no remorse, no regrets.

 

[Miramonti]

I live with a lot of regret, but am fairly private about it.


Oh well, I knew I shouldn't have posted that.

 

[Red Irish]

Originally posted by: kalrith
Cliffs: I live with remorse and regret over many of the decisions I make.
Tell me how to not do that, or share some of your own experiences either with remorse/regret or the lack thereof.

Divorce your wife, phone your brother, sell the monitor, buy the tv and remember that only sociopaths feel neither regret nor remorse.

You say you treated your mother badly when you were 15, but who didn't? Most boys are assholes at 15, indeed, some people never grow out of it.

Lighten up a bit, I reckon the power to change most of the things you dislike about your life is entirely in your own hands.

 

[imported_inspire]

It's called a quarter-life crisis. Your monitor dilemma isn't a problem - it's a symptom. If you didn't have all this other stuff going on, then it likely wouldn't be a big deal. I can offer tons of advice, because I feel like a lot of my life was somewhat similar to how yours is now, but I think you should proobably consider seeing a professional.

Simply put, I think you're frustrated by the lack of power you've had over the course of your life. You need re-think your life and whether or not you actually want to continue to live by the 'rules' or framework you've locked yourself into.

I got married at 19, had a daughter at 20, and another at 23. All the while I was in college & grad school and working 2-3 jobs. Wife didn't work. We were die-hard catholics (as you could likely surmise), and most of my life was spent trying to live up to those ivory tower rules which had little place in reality. It took a couple years to realize that I didn't love my wife anymore. She contributed hardly anything to our relationship. She did plenty for the kids, but even in that she demanded a lot of me and gave little in return.

Growing up in a split house, I told myself I'd never repeat those mistakes. But, after five years of marriage, I did. Let me tell you that it changed my life. I felt more like myself than ever. Had I not been going to grad school and working 2-3 jobs, I'd have probably done it much sooner. My ex and kids live 1K miles away now, but I think we're all better for it. I can't imagine them growing up in a household where their dad was a miserable bastard all the time and their mom ... well, w/e.

Point is not that you need to leave your wife, but that you need to take charge and actually define yourself. Like I said, a professional can help you with that. Good luck!

 

[kalrith]

inspire, thanks for your post. That does sound a lot like my life. I was married at 21 with 5 years left of college (undergrad and grad) and I worked 40 hours per week plus part-to-full-time school during that entire time. My first few years of marriage were absolutely horrible! I felt like my wife contributed nothing to the workload at home and very little to our relationship (i.e. she watched 20 hours of TV per week while I watched none and could hardly get 6 hours of sleep per night, and we had sex once per month while she expected me to be cuddly affectionate all the time). I would've gotten a divorce during that time had it not been for being so busy and for my beliefs. I kept thinking that as soon as the stress of school was over and we made more money (we had boatloads of financial problems then) that things would get better, but that didn't happen. Once school was over, it became much, much worse because we actually had time to spend together. We both decided that it was either time for counseling or divorce. We went through counseling, and it definitely helped; however, things slowly slipped back into crap, and I still felt as though she was a leech who took about 3 times as much as she gave.

What's really bad is since things were so incredibly horrible in our past, she doesn't think things are that bad right now. The difference between then and now is that we're civil with each other. There's practically no relationship between us (physically, mentally, or emotionally). I'll stop right here and say that it's certainly not all her fault. Heck, it might be more my fault than hers. However, like I said before, I want to discover who I am and what I really want before making life-changing decisions that can't be undone.

I had some time to reflect on different things during lunch. I'm posting my thoughts to my journal right now and will post some things on here after a while.

 

[imported_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!

 

[oiprocs]

Originally posted by: DesiPower
grow up, take some real responsibilities, maybe get married...

Read the OP you idiot.