Why We Regret Our Decisions

If only you had chosen differently. The job you didn't take. The relationship you ended or didn't end. The opportunity you passed up or jumped at too quickly. These alternative paths haunt the present, making the actual path seem like the wrong one, the lesser one.

Regret is one of the most painful human emotions. It combines loss, self-blame, and the torture of imagining better alternatives that never actually happened. We can't change the past, but we keep rehearsing it, wishing we'd done something else, imagining how different life could have been.

Some regret serves a function. It teaches us to make better decisions in the future, to learn from experience. But much regret is unproductive, a loop of self-torture about choices that made sense at the time and can't be undone regardless of how much we suffer over them.

Understanding why we regret helps distinguish useful regret from useless suffering. The ache of wishing things were different is often based on distorted thinking that, once recognized, loses some of its power over us.

The Pattern We Don't Notice

We judge past decisions with information we didn't have then. Hindsight creates the illusion that we should have known what we couldn't have known. The decision that seems obviously wrong now wasn't obvious then.

We imagine alternative paths as better than they would have been. The job not taken becomes the perfect job. The person not chosen becomes the perfect partner. These fantasies ignore that every path has problems we can't foresee.

We focus on what we lost and ignore what we gained. Every choice closes doors but also opens them. Regret fixates on the closed doors while taking for granted what the open doors provided.

We assume we would have been happier with different choices. This assumption is usually untestable. Research on adaptation suggests we'd probably have reached similar levels of satisfaction regardless of which path we took.

The Psychology Behind It

Counterfactual thinking generates regret automatically. The brain naturally simulates alternatives. "If only" scenarios create themselves without invitation. This capacity for imagining different outcomes is useful for planning but painful when applied backward.

We regret actions and inactions differently over time. In the short term, we regret actions more, the things we did wrong. Over time, we regret inactions more, the things we didn't do. Both types of regret follow predictable patterns.

Regret involves self-blame beyond the decision itself. We don't just wish the outcome were different; we wish we were different, smarter, braver, more careful. Regret attacks identity as well as choices.

The negativity bias makes negative outcomes more salient. Bad decisions stick in memory more than good ones. We remember the regretted choice while forgetting the many choices we made that worked out fine.

Why It Keeps Repeating

The past is always available for review. Unlike present problems that demand attention, past problems can be revisited anytime. The accessibility of memory makes repeated visits easy.

Rumination feels like problem-solving. Reviewing the past feels productive, like we're learning something. But after a certain point, we're just rehearsing pain without generating insight.

We haven't forgiven ourselves for being human. Making mistakes is inevitable. Having incomplete information is unavoidable. The harsh standards we apply to past selves don't account for normal human limitation.

Others may reinforce our regret. Family members who remind us of past mistakes, friends who asked if we'd considered the alternative we didn't choose. Social reinforcement keeps regret active.

What Actually Helps

Evaluating past decisions based on information available at the time creates fairness toward yourself. You didn't have hindsight then. Judge the decision by what was knowable, not by what became known later. This often reveals the decision was reasonable given what you knew, even if it looks wrong now.

Examining the full picture of each path acknowledges trade-offs honestly. What did the chosen path provide that you're taking for granted? What would the alternative have cost? The comparison becomes less lopsided when both paths are considered completely, not just their highlights and lowlights.

Accepting that some regret is inevitable reduces its weight considerably. With any significant choice, some regret is possible, maybe even likely. The existence of regret doesn't mean you chose wrong. It means you're human and made a choice in an uncertain world.

Using regret for future decisions extracts value from the suffering. If regret is teaching something applicable to future choices, learn it and move forward. If it's not, if it's just rehearsing pain without generating insight, the regret is just suffering without purpose.

Practicing self-compassion for your past self treats that person fairly. You were doing the best you could with what you had and knew at the time. Treating your past self with the kindness you'd offer a friend changes the emotional tone of remembering and allows healing.

Some decisions will always carry some regret. This is part of being a person who makes choices in an uncertain world. But the size of regret, the time spent dwelling in it, the cruelty toward yourself, these are not fixed or inevitable. Regret can be a brief acknowledgment that things might have been different, not a permanent residence in the land of what might have been.