Photo Credit: Brent Stoller
To send in a question, please complete this short Google form. All submissions are anonymous, even to the author.
*****
Should I have broken up with my long-term boyfriend?
--Mcneal52; Portland, OR
I don't ask for much. For anyone sending in a question, the short Google form that's linked that the top of every column consists of three fields, two of which only require that you remember your name and where you're from.
It's that third field that demands a little more -- your question, and any context that will help me give an appropriate answer.
Mcneal52, where's the context?
Outside of living in Portland, I don't know anything about you or your former boyfriend. I don't know how long you were together, what type of relationship you had or what brought it to an end. This makes things a little more difficult.
That said, based on the fact that you sent in this submission, I can deduce that you are dealing with regret -- either the reality of it now, or the possibility of it later.
Regret is actually something I've been thinking about. When I was younger, contemplating my future was like playing the school bus game MASH. Where was I going to live? What's my job going to be? Who would I marry? Would I drive a Porsche, or would my nine kids grow up in a shack? My life was a de facto math equation, and I was intrigued/curious/terrified to learn the value(s) of "X."
Well, I'm 38 now, and a lot more of those values have been determined. My wife, for instance, is exactly who I'd always hoped she'd be -- and so much more in other ways I never could have imagined.
But in other facets of my life, be it my personal growth or my professional progression, my path is littered with regrets. This isn't a woe-is-me grievance -- I lead about as blessed an existence as possible -- just an honest self-evaluation.
There are things I wish I had done differently. There are risks I wish I'd taken, decisions I wish I could have back, do-overs I wish would be granted.
These realities are a tough pill to swallow, and I'm not sure how to live with them without feeling that, to some degree, I'm living a second-place life, a life that's less than the one I was supposed to have. And I don't know how to change that.
I've never understood how there are people who have no regrets, just like I've never understood how there are people who have no fear. Aren't these inevitabilities of being human, like breathing or being critical/secretly jealous of the Kardashians?
The more I've thought about it, though, the more I've realized there's a difference between having regret and living with it.
We all have regrets. We all have regretted that we turned left instead of right, or that we ordered salad instead of steak, or that we couldn't come up with that perfect comeback before our adversary went to work for Firestone. These disappointments are unavoidable.
But when we can't shake them, when we can't let them go, that's when we end up living with them. And that's when we run into problems.
That's been my issue. I live with my regrets. They're this baggage I carry around, a referendum on all I've done wrong, a reminder that I'm not everything I could or should be.
I try countering with cliches -- you can't change the past; what doesn't kill you makes you stronger; everything happens for a reason; you're exactly where you're supposed to be; you did the best you could -- but they ring hollow, unable to overcome the alternative tales that I've convinced myself are the truth.
The only way to avoid living with regret, I'm convinced, is to fully process the situation that inspired it. You have to sort through it and learn from it, so you can ultimately be at peace with it.
How do you do that? Good question. Clearly I haven't figured it out for myself. But I think the process is similar to cleaning out your closet, where you evaluate each item to decide if it should stay or go.
Do I want to hold onto this? Is it worth making room for in my life? Is there more it can give me, or have I gotten everything out of it that I could? Will I regret giving this up, or is it time to move on?
So Mcneal52 of Portland, I'm going to turn the tables on you...
When you consider your conundrum within the above context, what do you think? Should you have broken up with your long-term boyfriend, or should you try to get him back?
COMING WEDNESDAY: Friends With Benefits
Need more ADVICE? Check out the most recent installments:
To send in a question, please complete this short Google form. All submissions are anonymous, even to the author.