Gifts of Remorse

I met my husband while I was married to my wife. It is easy to say that I am a horrible person for deciding that I could not stay in the marriage I had ruined with poor mental health, and likely started for the same reasons. It would also be incorrect. I am not horrible. I am human and humans do sometimes incredibly selfish things. We also redeem ourselves through the process of remorse. This was something that the journey of those relationships have taught me.

My wife was incapable of remorse. She never felt bad about anything she did. She was unable to regret her actions. She was never sorry and she never apologized for anything. My husband was largely the same way in the end. Obviously, I am attracted to people with their own emotional deficits. However, I will say that my husband, while ten times more damaging financially and emotionally was also more rewarding and fulfilling during the time before he developed addiction, primarily because he was capable of regret. He was able to say he was sorry.

Even those who are incapable of showing remorse themselves, appreciate it. My wife often told me she was able to endure my passionate nature and emotional outbursts during PTSD immersion therapy primarily because I did realize that my behavior was intolerable and I apologized. It was a very rough time for both of us. I left her because we could not effectively communicate and this was terrible for both of us. I saw both of us destroying each other sometimes by accident. We traumatized each other in this way. I could not bear to partake in or endure it any longer. With the last of my love, I left her. And then I patiently waited for three years until she realized it was the right thing to do. In all that three years, she spoke to me once directly. My leaving her was so painful she put it in a box and never opened that box again. We had waited too long to end the relationship that could not work. There were double casualties. Both of us were emotionally annihilated.

At that time, I married my husband. He was at first everything opposite of my wife. He was emotionally healthy, approachable and capable of admitting when he was wrong. He had degrees in communication and women’s studies. I was impressed that a man could be so humble. It was only after that changed that I simply lost all affection and care I had for him. This loss did not happen overnight. It happened over time, however as it happened, his ability to express remorse in a healthy and loving way died completely. It made me wonder if it was ever real to begin with or if he had played me for a fool. He began to develop narcissistic tendencies through his addiction and changed into a man I no longer recognized. Because I am a woman who has been galvanized by trauma in the past, I readily though unhappily blamed myself. This meant that I believed I could and should fix it. I could not have been more wrong.

One of the greatest things about remorse is that it shows the roadmap toward resolution. If I regret this or that, it is possible that those things are a good place to start pulling at the knots that bind until they cripple. Regret shows us if not what to change, what sorts of things to change. If I regret that I had not opened my adoption papers and found that I am autistic earlier, perhaps I can work on being more responsible with correspondence of all kinds. Perhaps I can acknowledge that my fear created more problems than my courage when I finally faced what the papers had to say.

We do terrible damage to each other in these times. Our corporate culture and our pop and political cultures show us loud messages of bawdy certitude. We are told it is good to show bravado while quiet courage is seen as a sign of dementia. These are dark times indeed.

Let us take a moment to be grateful for all those who have remembered us in the past and been courageous enough to apologize, or even better -make a full amends. Realize that the vast majority of humanity is no longer concerned with itself in this way. So many of us choose instead to play a game of emotional bumper cars where we run around in circles ramming our will into each other with very little regard for the consequences in our families, our communities and our world.

In today’s world, loud and brash dishonesty, accusations of medical diagnosis and wild jousting devoid of ethics in the political arena are leading to a place where we no longer value anything if it is quiet, well though out or kind. Please, let us stop this. Please I beg of you to consider the high cost of low living. If we keep ourselves in the gutter with our anger and bravado and cheap emotionality we do nothing but destroy and contribute negativity to a world that is only going to become more difficult as time goes on. The planet is not expanding while population and scarcity is. Even a child can point out the obvious issues of carrying spears in a crowded elevator.

Nobody it seems is willing to be the one who is labeled as incorrect. Nobody is wrong. Nobody is allowed to be. Litigation alone is an enormous burden on those who have erred. There are real threats and consequences for those who have simply made a mistake. Being wrong is no longer alright anywhere we turn. It ends careers. It destroys marriages. It ruins relationships. This false construct of fear and inadequacy is so thoroughly masculine and aggressive, so thoroughly hierarchical and so thoroughly painful that I am going to ask the world to discard it for it’s own sake so it can begin to heal.

My marriage cannot be saved. It is so important for a man who is wrong to imagine himself right and to defend his belief in rightness that love has no room whatsoever to grow. I see that. I see all the reasons why and I see how it got that way. i also see there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. We used to say as a society that ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’. Today, everywhere I look it seems we believe that they do. Belief does not make a thing so. I’m not sure who started that sort of rediculous thinking, but it has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Fact is, if no one is ever wrong, nothing can ever go right. Negotiation and compromise cannot occur in a hostile, dishonest and aggressive environment.

The way forward must be through remorse. The way forward has regret. However unpleasant that may be, without it we don’t know where to turn, which direction to go in or why. Remorse is like a prize we could have won that gives up a map to a second try. It is the earmark of a thoughtful human. It is essential for progress. I am grateful I am not so damaged by my life thus far, that I have ceased to feel it, notice it, or use it.