What is yours? |
Marrying my husband. |
Why? |
Not having a second child. Now it’s getting to be too late and I have spent years grieving this. |
I would not say I regret it but the least smart decision I made was to leave my amazing private school to go to a meh public with my friends my junior year in hs. |
Being way more social than I was comfortable with. If I could redo things, I'd keep to myself more, focus only on my family...
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Not being more confident in college and grad school to make more friends there. I made friends but it was a tight knit group/clique. I think I felt I had to portray a certain persona and then got stuck within it…feigning confidence when I was probably just too shy to branch out. Same goes for romance. Life is about connections and I regret passing up those opportunities. |
Opposite. I should've been more social. I had some traumatic things happen to me in my teen years (lots of social bullying), and it made me become a hermit. I also dated very little. Very low self esteem. |
Law school.
Choosing to settle in an area with high costs of living instead of moving to a mid-size city earlier in life before having kids. Now moving is so much harder but the challenges of living in an expensive place have multiplied. |
He started off with the "quiet nerd" vibe, which I appreciated. And then over many years, and while researching my child's symptoms and realizing he had autism, I realized my husband had high-functioning autism as well, and it explained his emotional distance from his child and his social difficulties with everyone. I thought these problems would get better, not worse, with self-awareness and social practice. No. He's getting angrier, more paranoid and irrational, and more reclusive with age. So given that I've got a kid with autism (who has a sweet nature and whom I hope will never end up like his father), and an angry spouse who is now reflexively argumentative and disrespectful... I feel my life could have been better without that marriage. Of course I love my child to bits. But I sacrificed my career to stay home and look after him so that he could grow up to be as independent as possible. My husband just couldn't share the special parenting work it takes to continually engage with an autistic child. |
Law school |
I left a very special job in my 20s because a coworker (who ended up having a mental breakdown and leaving abruptly) told me I was horrible at it and should quit. I lasted a year after that but lost all confidence. Now as an older woman I look back on it and it sort of ruined my life. I was not bad at that job, and I should have stayed. |
that affair. |
I was at a crossroads with a few friends and I chose the wrong ones (the party type, bad influence). Now we're not even friends and I missed out on a lifetime of a friendship with the "good ones". |
Nothing, actually! |