The thing about regret...: Simran Mangharam writes on sacrifice and love

In love, one loses and gains, at the very least, a different version of oneself. How does one navigate the regret that is inevitable.

Accept life, and one must accept regret, a wise person once told me.

I would add: Accept love, and one must accept regret.

Any great love really does demand sacrifice. Some loves get by on small ones: routine annoyances, concessions made and taken for granted; fidelity itself.

Some great loves demand a lot more. They demand one change one’s chosen path, and give up one dream for another. These can be among the hardest decisions to make.

Choose the love, and one loses a version of oneself. The version that could have had that career, or that family, or that freedom. Usually, the love is worth it in the end.

But what is one to do with the feelings of true loss one is left holding?

Asma, a 41-year-old client of mine, moved to Australia after marrying 45-year-old Richard. She was an independent management consultant with an enviable client list here at home. In their year-long courtship, Asma felt confident about her decision to give it all up and start over. She visited Richard three times, in what would be her new home, and loved the country.

She made an assessment of the people and culture, and believed she could rebuild, to a reasonable degree, the social and professional networks she was set to lose.

Six months in, she has yet to secure a single consultancy assignment. She is also lonely. Where she had expected to form at least a small circle of friends by now, she says she has been unable to make one friend whose support or even time she can take for granted.

Richard is an extremely supportive partner, but her angst has been directed at him over months, and is now acting as a strain on their relationship too.

Asma admits that she begrudges him his well-settled life in his home country. She can’t help but feel that he gained everything and lost nothing in this bargain, she says.

She admits that the term doing the most damage — “I left it all behind for your sake” — is both unhelpful and unfair.

Her logical brain occasionally tries to interrupt. “Perhaps what I misjudged,” she tells me, “is how hard it would be, and how long it would take. But it could still happen.”

She can make peace with the wait. She has time, and hope, she tells me.

But that is her rational mind. As we know, our most extreme feelings can often come not from recognising a rational danger, but from those deep, unconscious places that hold our earliest fears, rejections and sorrows.

It helps to dethrone the panic and put logic in charge (easier said than done, of course; yet, possible to do). Asma recognises this too.

She is now working to embrace the idea that she misjudged this. We are working together to help her accept her feelings of loss, and accept that it may take years to piece her new life together.

She has begun talking to Richard, honestly but non-accusingly, about how she feels.

I believe they can emerge from this stronger, with a deeper understanding of what they can weather, and a better understanding of how.

It helps immensely that he is empathetic, and can talk about her regrets without seeing them as an indictment of the relationship. The two are now working together to expand her social circle. They plan to strategise on how to get Asma’s career back on track next.

My advice for anyone currently tussling with regret would be the three vital steps Asma has taken: Acknowledge the feelings with honesty. Admit the error. And give it time.

These are the only ways to take the reins, and keep the regret from eating away at one’s peace of mind, and at other things in one’s life (hope, motivation, the very road head). Because left untethered, regret will walk you backwards through your life, and that view is never pretty.

(Simran Mangharam is a dating and relationship coach and can be reached on simran@floh.in)