Connection regrets are the largest category in the deep structure of human regret. They arise from relationships that have come undone or that remain incomplete. The types of relationships that produce these regrets vary. Spouses. Partners. Parents. Children. Siblings. Friends. Colleagues. The nature of the rupture also varies. Some relationships fray. Others rip. A few were inadequately stitched from the beginning.
But in every case, these regrets share a common plotline. A relationship that was once intact, or that ought to have been intact, no longer is. Sometimes, often because of a death, there is nothing more that we can do. However, many times, in many roles—daughter, uncle, sorority sister—we yearn to close the circle. But doing so requires effort, brings emotional uncertainty, and risks rejection. So we confront a choice: Try to make the relationship whole—or let it remain unresolved?
Connection regrets sound like this: If only I’d reached out.
CLOSED DOORS AND OPEN DOORS
The third woman in the story is Amy Knobler. Amy, who lives in Pasadena, California, grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In middle school, she met a girl whom I’ll call Deepa.
Deepa was a latchkey kid whose parents worked demanding jobs and whose house stood just blocks from the school they attended. Amy and Deepa would head there after classes, forging a friendship in the freedom of an empty house. Amy remembers those afternoons as some of the happiest times in her life. “It was everything you think about connecting with a close friend,” she told me.
Amy and Deepa stayed friendly in high school, and stayed in touch after graduation as they moved on with college, careers, and families. Deepa came to Amy’s wedding in 1998. Their families were so close that even Amy’s parents attended Deepa’s wedding in 2000. For a wedding gift, Amy gave Deepa an elaborate handmade cookbook of her favorite recipes. “There’s no other connection like the kind you make in childhood, you know?” Amy said.
In 2005, Deepa’s husband sent a note to all the people in his wife’s life informing them that Deepa had been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. As with many illnesses, the news that followed caromed between scary and reassuring. Deepa went into remission. She had a baby. But in the summer of 2008, the cancer returned and her prospects appeared grim. Deepa’s quality of life was fine for the moment, the Facebook update notified friends and family, but she likely had only a year to live.
Amy wanted to call her old friend.
Amy put off calling her old friend.
Late one night in December of 2008, Amy received a message from a mutual friend that Deepa’s health had taken a serious downward turn.
The following day, Amy called Deepa’s home in New Jersey to speak with her. The person who answered the phone explained that Deepa had died earlier that morning.
“I will never forget how much I realized in that moment the opportunity that had been lost to me,” Amy said. “My thought always was, ‘Did she die wondering why I never called?’ I will always wonder, and I just swore I was never going to behave that way again.”
People often talk about regrets in terms of doors. Amy has a “closed door” regret. As she told me, the opportunity to restore her connection with Deepa is gone. Cheryl has an “open door” regret. The opportunity to reconnect with her college friend remains.
Both types of regrets nag at us, but for different reasons. Closed door regrets distress us because we can’t do anything about them. Open door regrets bother us because we can, though it requires effort.
In the World Regret Survey, many participants reported the sense of loss that accompanies a door that has closed.
A fifty-one-year-old California man became disconnected from his father at age seven, when his parents divorced. He visited his father every other weekend, but “the relationship was shallow . . . no deep conversations, nor getting to really know each other.” By middle school, the visits stopped. The man reconnected somewhat with his father in his late teens and early twenties, but:
Still, during all that time we didn’t get to build any sort of bond. . . . He passed away seventeen years ago, and I often regret not having a beer with him as adult men.
A fifty-four-year-old woman shared this:
I regret not being nicer to my mom. I took her for granted when I was younger, thinking that I was so much smarter than she was (typical teenager). When I grew up, we argued over politics, both of us passionate about our viewpoints. Now that she is gone, I miss her desperately, so much that it takes my breath away sometimes. I did the daughter thing all wrong. I look at my daughters and pray that they are kinder to me than I was to my own mom, even though I’m not sure I deserve it.
For many people, including a forty-five-year-old woman from the District of Columbia, the door closed with words left unspoken:
My brother died suddenly at forty-one. I regret not saying “I love you” more.
And several regrets resembled this one from a forty-four-year-old Iowa woman:
I regret not attending the funeral of my college coach and mentor. My baby was only a couple of weeks old, it was wintertime with a chance of bad weather, and it was over a three-hour drive. I type these excuses just as I told them to myself again and again in my decision-making process. I tried to convince myself I made the right decision. . . . Reason, regret, reason, regret, reason, regret play ping-pong in my brain whenever I think about that event from fifteen years ago.
A 2012 study by Mike Morrison, Kai Epstude, and Neal Roese concluded that regrets about social relationships are felt more deeply than other types of regrets because they threaten our sense of belonging. When our connections to others tatter or disintegrate, we suffer. And when it’s our fault, we suffer even more. “The need to belong,” they wrote, “is not just a fundamental human motive but a fundamental component of regret.”[2]
Closed door regrets vex us, because we can’t fix them. It’s over. But doors that cannot budge hide behind them a benefit: they offer another example of how regret can make us better.
A few years after Deepa died, Amy learned that another childhood friend had been diagnosed with cancer. “I kept revisiting my previous experience [with Deepa],” Amy said. “I really needed to get myself on board for however difficult this would be.”
Amy called this friend frequently. She visited her. They exchanged emails and texts. “I did as much as I was able to make sure she knew that she was always in my thoughts. I made a much more concerted effort to be present with her and acknowledge the reality of her situation.”
The friend passed away in 2015. “We maintained a connection up until she died,” Amy told me. “It didn’t make it easier. But I don’t have regrets.”
RIFTS AND DRIFTS
Cheryl and Jen never argued—not even a small squabble. They never discussed the dissolution of their friendship. It simply faded.