#178: Marriage gossip (and other concerns)
Good morning!
It’s time for Dear Baby April. This week I’m answering four questions about: 1) whether I have any regrets and why, 2) the infamous when-will-you-get-married pestering, 3) the off-putting nature of mass fandom, and 4) the unfortunate accident of a self-proclaimed super-mom. Your standard modern-life fare!
This week on the Dear Danny pod, we’ll be discussing small-town yoga drama, a pathologically lying mother, a dab of age-gap discourse (brave), whether you should care how your partner dresses, a dramatic friend breakup, and (no spoilers) public urination. That drops Wednesday at 9am!
1. On regrets
“Do you have any regrets? If so, what? And if not, why do you think that is?”
The popular idea about regrets is that they’re useless, and I agree this is the fundamental issue. Not only is it useless to regret things because mistakes are the building blocks of our lives, but also because regrets are presumptuous: In having them, we assume we know how our lives might have gone had we done things differently. Setting aside traumatic or harmful mistakes that would be impossible not to regret, most of the time we have no idea what might have happened, or who we might have become, had we “done things right.” Aside from maybe how much Zara I bought in my mid-twenties, I genuinely cannot think of a regret. I prefer to imagine that most mistakes I’ve made have actually prevented me from making bigger ones—that’s my delusion of choice. Call it the Sliding Doors effect.
Since I’m in my mid-30s, I hear ‘regret’ invoked the most around the baby decision. Many of my friends are afraid of regretting which choice they make and are thirsty for perspectives from people with regrets in either direction. They’re hard to find though. The other day I was reading this piece about parental regret that attempts to spotlight this secret population, and while I think it’s well-written, for me it didn’t quite capture the issue because it didn’t contend with regret itself. I suspect there’s a reason not many people express regrets around having kids, and it’s not just because it’s taboo or because they’re blissfully happy, but because parenthood is an enormous, fluctuating, labyrinthian adventure on the scale of life itself. To regret it feels too tidy or naive. Even if you do feel your life was “better” before, who’s to say it would have stayed that way? Life without kids is also an enormous, fluctuating, labyrinthian adventure. It’s more useful to just commit to making the most of whichever way you go.
The article got me curious to learn more about regretters now that I’m a parent myself (and feel no regret so far), so I visited the “regretful parents” subreddit. I found that most people posting there seem unhappy with their lives for a combination of reasons—their specific partners, families, homes, careers, communities, or other idiosyncratic hardships, like super-high-needs kids. All valid. Many think they would be happier if they undid this one aspect, but would they? Ease is the busy parent’s white whale, but it’s often a bit of a fantasy. In my view, the “regretful parents” subreddit, while useful for those who want to feel less alone, is as good of a window into parenthood as a subreddit called “regretful partners” would be into relationships. These experiences might be too broad, while also too specific, to be clearly understood through the lens of regret. I think we hold onto regret as the ultimate litmus test because it’s strangely comforting—in the sense that we can wrap our minds around it—to imagine that our wellbeing is wholly tied up in the decisions we make, rather than in something more vaporous, like how we think, who we are, or even luck.
Regret may be most useful as a threat. That is, doing things because we worry that we’ll regret it if we don’t. While not the most pleasant form of motivation, sometimes it can help push us past whatever is paralyzing us. As Cheryl Strayed put it in her infamous answer to an indecisive man, “Thinking deeply about your choices and actions from the stance of your future self can serve as both a motivational and a corrective force. ... Not regretting it later is the reason I’ve done at least three quarters of the best things in my life.” Although useful, this strategy is its own kind of delusion, because who knows what would happen if we didn’t heed it? In the end, regrets are just magical thinking. They’re meaningful only in the hypothetical—as warnings, as bogeymen. They’re fears of another form.
2. On annoying questions
“I am 28 years old and have been with my boyfriend for almost nine years, and I am SO TIRED of people asking me when we're getting engaged. It annoys me that people (especially people I legitimately do not know or only know at a surface level) feel they're allowed to ask such a personal question about the status of my relationship, just because I'm at ‘that age.’ And, perhaps more importantly, I don't know if I even want to get married—to my boyfriend or ever.
I feel relatively content in my relationship with a sprinkling of doubt and disbelief that we've been together as long as we have. My opinions on marriage in general have fluctuated quite a bit in my 20s, and while it sounds nice and beautiful and meaningful in a lot of ways, I also know that I don't want to be married/engaged right now and would probably be happy if I never did. When people ask me, I find myself giving some long-winded answer to rationalize why I'm not engaged which, frankly, I'm sick of doing and these people don't need/deserve to have that insight into my relationship.
Anyways, I guess my question is twofold: I'd be interested to hear more about your decision to not get married, Haley, and how you handle questions about marriage and commitment, especially now that you have a baby with Avi. I'd also looove any ideas or suggestions you have on how to respond to this obnoxious and seemingly constant question (hijinks welcome).”