On Radical Acceptance

So I was having a chat with a friend yesterday, and we were talking about this idea of "having done things differently in a relationship."

Now while I don't refute the idea that, ok, it would certainly have been true that had you done something different in a relationship that you were in, you would have gotten a different result now.

The "different result" may not have been the result you wanted or it may have, it may have been that that person decided they wanted to stay with you. It might be that if you did something different, they would have stayed with you for another six months before bailing, or you would have prolonged the relationship by another two years. If you didn't have that argument that you had that day that precipitated the breakup, that argument may have happened a week later. You, it would have changed something, but assuming it would have changed it to the result you want is not necessarily true, highly unlikely, so that's the first thing. But yes, changes in behavior might have changed the outcome, but not necessarily.

But yeah, the idea that "if only I'd have done something different" is where the kind of ridiculous notion, that is, we're torturing ourselves over science fiction. You did what you did because that's who you were then like.

I do believe in a kind of determinism that you were always going to do what you did. Then you, you wishing you'd done something different is you wanting to be another human being. It's, it's your desire to be living in some parallel universe because in this universe that's not what was gonna happen.

You did what you did that based on your brain chemistry, based on your experience, based on your upbringing, based on your inputs in life—societal, environmental, cultural—based on your insecurities, based on your strengths. You did what you did. It's also, by the way, based on your strengths that you were even in that relationship in the first place, right? Not just your weaknesses but your strengths is what meant you were even in that relationship.

So firstly, you can't undo something you wish you'd done differently without also unraveling all of the, the good things about you that have brought you the good things in your life. You don't get to, we don't get, to do a la carte in our wanting to strip away one piece of our DNA that says "I no longer do that thing" without changing the whole system. Wishing that we did something different is wishing to be a different person. We don't get to do that.

But that experience, having that experience, having losing someone, going through something, becomes a new input in the system that changes us in some way, and that change is what's given us the insight now that makes us say I would do something different next time, but you don't have that insight without having done certain things.

You know the "things" that would involve a fundamental change in your being which you wouldn't be willing or able to do. We have to accept that I'm only having this feeling of, of guilt or self-loathing or, you know, wishing I could change something, I'm only having that now, because it happened. I wouldn't have this insight now that makes me want to change and be able to do something different and go back. I'm only having that insight now because that thing happened. I don't get the insight without the "heartbreak."

Now you might say, "Oh I'm gonna lose this person. I knew that then. This isn't new information. I knew it then and I still did it." Yeah bitch, you didn't know it enough. You knew then logically, you even knew emotionally, but not enough, not enough to make you go, "I'm never doing this again because I can't bear to be this way anymore." There's a certain point in life where we personally get to a point of saying "I can't bear to be a certain way anymore."

There's truth to that idea that people change when they're ready, not when they think it's a good idea. And ready doesn't mean saying "Ok, I'm ready to change now." ready too.

When people say that if we do things different, differently, we will get a different result, and I love the empowerment that comes from that. However, in this case, me believing that equates to me hating myself because what it means is I could have done something different and therefore I am at fault for that loss in my life. So believing what you say, that we have agency, is the same thing as hating myself for not being proactive with that agency and not doing what I could have. And what I am saying is that you have agency, the heightened level of agency you now have could only, for you in your life, have come from this situation that has arisen, and you wishing that you could have done something different is you wishing for a different universe.

So yeah, I choose not to believe in these imagined ideas of a fantasy version of ourselves that would have had done things better, but maybe what you were doing it, even if it wasn't objectively the best you could do, maybe it was the best you could do at the time with your resources, with your current wounds, with the things that you're dealing with internally, with the knowledge that you had in the moment. Maybe that was your best at the time. Maybe it's not your best a year from now or five years from now, ten years from now, but maybe it really was you doing your best even though you feel your best fell short. That's normal, so remember:

Whatever happened was meant to happen.