Q: My wife had an affair, which was really bad. I was caught up in all of the bad feelings highlighted during the divorce, and that destroyed my good judgment.
Rather than negotiate with her in good faith so that both of our kids could see their way through this, I let my anger at her deter the discussions.
In the end she got to be the primary parent and at the moment I am left with every second weekend to be with my children.
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I could have had more but I did not co-operate. I did not sign the papers and now I am reeking with depression and guilt.
I don’t know what to do with that mountain of regret that burdens me.
A: Boy, are you ever hard on yourself. I can understand that you are disappointed in yourself for choosing to ignore the process when you and your former wife were working through to finalize your separation, but regretting what you did to this extent is not healthy.
All of us have moments of regret. You are not alone. However, not all of us shred our personal well-beings to pieces just because we made mistakes.
I hope that you will find a counsellor whom you trust and with whom you can work through some of the emotions burying you in your backyard.
The question for you is what do you do now?
You might begin by understanding a little more about what regret is all about. I found something in the literature I study that might help you.
Did you know that regret is mostly the result of inactivity?
We tend to regret that which we did not do.
Of course, there are times when we were distressed over some social faux pax we made when we were in public, but those are rare.
What we regret mostly are the classes for which we did not sign up at university, the backpacking trips to Europe we missed out on, the opportunities to take over Grandpa’s farm when he started downsizing, the chance to take those really interesting young ladies out for supper, and whatever other opportunities that we turned away.
Even though you are sitting with the short end of the stick for responsibilities for your children, the truth is that you are going to have many opportunities throughout the next many years to have special times with each of the kids.
You can choose to turn down those special moments, to continue to be inactive, and bury yourself even further in your mound of regret, or you can grab every chance you get for extra moments and special events and have those times with each of your children. That puts you back into the win column in their books.
If you do all of that, go for counselling and capitalize on what you can with your children, those moments of regret will dissipate. And so will any further inroads into personal depression.
You have something else going for you. You are getting older. Some of our more recent studies on regret have noticed that as people get older, they tend to have fewer regrets. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor from Saskatchewan. Contact: jandrews@producer.com.
