Dating : Stop Regretting Your Relationship Decisions

Ahh… regret, how did I end up in your grips again? I promised myself it would never happen again, but here we are, regrettably regretting something.

You might find yourself thinking this very thing at some points in your life. That’s because regret isn’t something you can plan on avoiding. It just shows up all of sudden, screaming in your head, like some nagging relative that won’t go away.

Regret is a strange emotion, and a particularly human one. It takes the capacity to understand that the past was changeable if you had made different decisions, and allows you to comprehend how you wished you had actually done that one thing that you didn’t do.

And Regret comes on a spectrum. Some people regret things that they weren’t in control of, making it more of a generalized regret of “wish it didn’t happen that way.”

Other people regret their specific decisions. They look back at their past selves and go “damn, why didn’t I realize that I liked them back then,” or “I should have taken that job opportunity when it came up.”

The thing is, in the end, you didn’t do those things. And the regret you’re left with isn’t going to change that.

Now, it is my belief that regret can play an integral part in helping us understand our past decisions and grow because of them. If we regretted our last relationship decision, and then in a future relationship a similar situation occurs, we’ll be better prepared to make the right choice.

Of course, this isn’t how some people see it. Regret, in this case, might be something that you habitually do no matter what the decision was.

For example, what if you had made that other choice that you’re now regretting not having made? Maybe you would be sitting there just like today, regretting you didn’t do the thing that, in this timeline, you did do?

So does this mean that we shouldn’t regret. Well, in some ways, yes. We can never really know what would have happened in the other decision timeline, and because of that don’t know if it would have turned out beneficial or not.

In this other timeline you may have gotten hurt more, or hit by a bus, or trapped in some dead-end job you hate.

We can’t know where the decisions we didn’t make would have led, and no amount of regretting will ever grant us this knowledge.

So what do we do when regret pops up? I imagine the next move as a two-step process:

1. Understand the reasons and emotions behind the regret and how we can integrate that understanding into our future decisions
2. Let. It. Go.

Yep, it’s that simple.

And to illustrate it, here’s an equally simple situation. You’re walking down main street in your cute little town, and you decide you want a drink, so you pop into the local cafe you happen to be walking by.

You look at the menu, and can’t decide between a chai or a latte. Eventually you grab a latte and walk outside to continue your jaunt down main street.

Except the latte is… underwhelming. You now remember you don’t even like coffee that much, but you’ve heard good things about the chai. You regret your stupid choice of ordering the latte.

So, now you follow the easy two-step process: 1. Understand that you should have gotten the chai and make that choice next time. And 2. Let. It. Go.

It’s that easy.

Yes, your drink decision at the local cafe is not your last failed relationship, but it’s a fair analogy. When the stakes are higher, it’s harder to let go of, and takes time:

But you have to remember, in time you’ll be able to stop regretting your decision, and even integrate your understanding of it to improve your future life.

That’s our power as living, breathing, reflecting, mistake-making human beings.