The dilemma I am a 70-year-old woman and am consumed by regret and disappointment. Outwardly, I am happy, calm and outgoing, with friends and interests, but this facade hides my inner feelings, which I share with no one.
I married too young and chose the wrong man. I said yes when he asked me to marry him, and I felt unable to go back on my word. Throughout our marriage I have not been in love with him. In fact, I am massively ashamed to say that, at times over the decades, I have wished him dead – yet he has never done me harm, which makes it even more shameful. In contrast, he has always been steadfast in his love for me, and this continued even though five years into our marriage I had an affair. I went back to him after three months apart, mainly because I was lonely, and we have been together ever since.
We had our golden wedding anniversary two years ago. We have three children and five precious grandchildren, who bring us an enormous amount of joy. I tell myself on a daily basis that I have much to be thankful for, and I am, but I still regret not having chosen a life partner with whom I could feel better suited and more attracted to.
I feel similarly about my career. On the outside it looks award-winning and successful, but it never really satisfied me. How can I banish invasive thoughts of regret and disappointment, so I can enjoy my life?
Philippa’s answer When someone wishes their benign long-term partner dead, I see it as a manifestation for a desire for change. I think the reality of having your husband die would be that you’d feel lonely once more, but this invasive thought is a symbol of how despairing you feel. However, you are not impossibly stuck. You need to, and you can, find a different route through life by renegotiating your relationship to your reality. You need a different story to make sense of your feelings.
I think whoever you chose to marry, you would regret it. In other words, I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn’t that you made a wrong choice, more that your pattern is that whatever choices you make, you assume they are the wrong ones. My suspicion is compounded as you feel the same way about your work. You rightly identify your problem as invasive thoughts, so you know deep down that it isn’t your choices are wrong, but that the thoughts around them are spoiling things.
It also may help you to think about this: your description of the unwavering love and support of your husband makes me think of a beautiful view out of a window that over time you take for granted, even though its presence continues to be positive for you. If the blind permanently closes on that view from the window, I think you would miss it. Had you married the wrong man I doubt you would have chosen him for a second time when you felt lonely after the affair.
There are no perfect choices. Studies have shown that people can be roughly divided into two camps: people who settle for something in the ballpark and say, “That’ll do,” and perfectionists. Guess who turns out happiest? It’s not the perfectionists. The right choice is the choice we commit to. It’s the commitment that makes it right, not the object itself.
To gain control of those invasive thoughts about your choice of partner and career, start by observing them. Accept you cannot stop them. As you observe the thoughts, you will separate from them, which will make them easier to let go of. It takes daily practice. You will begin to control the thoughts rather than have them controlling you. When you are practised, you will have more clarity when it comes to how you experience the feeling behind the thoughts. When in childhood did you first start to play this “regret game”? You can then come up with another story for that feeling, maybe dating back to when you first felt it. We continually generate stories to make sense of how we feel. But it does not follow that the stories are true.
In the short term it is more satisfying and easier to blame another person for how we habitually feel, rather than to unpack our lives and examine our earliest memories and feelings, to find out what we’ve come to believe about the world from those experiences, and how they gave us our default way of feeling and being.
When we are faced with an immovable object, we are left with no choice but to change our relationship to it to survive and the thing that seems to be a block to our happiness and progress may be the key to it.
A therapist can guide you through the work you may need to do. Speak to at least three and choose the one you feel most able to open up to. One of the three will probably do. There are no perfect ones (psychotherapy.org.uk).
Recommended reading: The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz.
If you have a question, send a brief email to askphilippa@observer.co.uk
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The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz (HarperCollins Publishers Inc, £11.99). To support The Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
