Serious guilt trip

[mick]

My beloved wife of 53 years has been gone 6 months now. I am deeply mourning her.  I always will. Life has lost its meaning. This,  But Lately I have begun to hate myself for the times we disagreed, and when I should have been more loving and understanding. Not cherishing our time together. what I should have done or not done. If I could only go back with her and start over, now knowing how fragile life is.. and how much I should have expressed my love for her.

[MartyT]

30 minutes ago, mick said:

If I could only go back with her and start over, now knowing how fragile life is.. and how much I should have expressed my love for her.

My friend, we both know that your "If only" is not to be ~ but I hope you will find a way to forgive yourself for being human. Few of us realize how fragile life is, until we lose someone we dearly love. And if we're being honest, most of us could do a much better job of expressing the love we feel for one another. Might you find alternative ways to express the love you're feeling for your beloved wife now? What gifts did she give to you in your years together? What did you learn from her in all that time? What traits did she have that you might incorporate into your daily life as a way to honor and remember her? What are the legacies that she left behind for you? Might you begin writing love letters to your wife as a way to express all that you wish you could say to her? 

[Gwenivere]

Mick, you are not alone in your feelings.  I replay scenarios, but I have to remind myself that there was no impending death hanging over us and that is just how couples act.  You can’t put 2 people together without conflict now and then.  We had times of disagreement and arguments, but they didn’t diminish our love for each other.  I don’t allow myself to feel guilt as we had a normal relationship.  It’s too easy to look back and want to change things, but that is griefs influence.  It makes us our own worst enemy, it’s that insidious.  Steve and I didn’t do anything wrong in our interaction.  Had we never had disputes or times we were always loving and kind, our relationship would not have been very deep and honest.  There is a bravery with honesty.  To be able to confront that person knowing it would not threaten the marriage.  It’s how we grew in learning how to deal with those times from the early years of defensiveness where we couldn’t hear each other to being able to talk without having those walls to break thru.  I never feared bringing things up to him.  In fact, I was anxious to do so when they happened so we could put them behind us.  We grew stronger every day.  Guilt is one of the most useless of emotions, IMO, unless used to deliberately hurt someone as then you have reason to feel it by being so uncaring and selfish.  I don’t know how your relationship was, but we told each other every day we loved each other.  Did little things like leaving notes or just ending any conversation with say 'love you'.  So many ways to say it.  He knew it, I knew it and your wife knew it.  You did too.  I don’t mean to sound like I am invalidating something you feel.  It’s real.  I’m just suggesting you look at it at the time it happened as opposed to a time you can’t change it and hopefully see you both expressed your love for each other fully at the time as there are no do overs.  And even if there was, would it have felt natural because they were done from fear of where we are now?

[widow'15]

Mick:  I am sorry you are having difficulty fighting guilt for possibly not saying or doing enough while you and your wife were together.  Being married for 53 years is a long marriage with many times where you might have misspoken or did not react in a loving way.  But, like Gwen stated:

54 minutes ago, Gwenivere said:

You can’t put 2 people together without conflict now and then.

I was married one month short of 51 years when I lost my husband.  Looking back to those 51 years there were many times I wish I had tried harder to be the loving wife he deserved.  Raising two children sometimes took all my time and energy and unfortunately, during those times, my husband was on the bottom of the list.  If I knew then I would lose him some day, I would have always kept him at the very top of that list.  I can't change what happened in the past.  What I can do now that he is gone is try to remember all the good times we had in those almost 51 years and try to do him proud by not giving in to my fears and tears.

You are still in the early days of your grief and I do hope you will continue to live one day at a time and heal as you will always mourn her.  I have accepted the pain I have to live with every day for the rest of my life.  Good thoughts for you, Mitch.  Dee

[Kieron]

I think anyone who shares our life with another person to the degree we have, you're going to step on toes, be short with one another, argue, bicker, snipe, and whine, and probably worse.  We often set the petty, graceless sides of ourselves out on display around those who know us best, and it aint pretty.  If we're lucky, they forgive. 

I, too, have those nagging regrets.  I remember being annoyed or angry but cannot for the life of me remember what it was about.  To paraphrase Dee, if I knew then what I know now...

I wanted to add something: it's wise to be cautious of that word should.  It can wound us further when we're already in pain.

[mittam99]

Mick, I totally understand those feelings of guilt. My beloved wife Tammy passed away in March 2015 and to this day those nagging thoughts of guilt still linger in my mind. There's that part of me that wonders if somehow, some way, something I did (or didn't do) caused Tammy pain. In my case and maybe yours too, I think this guilt trip is our way of trying to place the blame on someone and we're an easy target, so to speak.

The reality is, I loved my wife wife every fiber of my being. She was my everything. She was my life. My world.  My soul mate. We had a love story for the ages. And I know in your case, being together 53 years, you had a love story too.

We're all human. We all have faults. We're emotional. We're stubborn at times. We can be argumentative. We can do stupid things on occasion. That's just a fact of life.

This feeling of guilt is coming from our emotional side. Logically, we know how much we loved our spouse. We know we'd never mean for our actions (or inactions) to cause them harm. And the fact is, I'm sure in all of our relationships our spouses did or said something that had us shaking our heads. Again, we're all only human.

Here's a recent article from Psychology Today regarding grief and guilt: 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/supersurvivors/202006/three-ways-address-guilt-when-you-re-grieving

It's hard living life without the one person that gave our life meaning. The one persion who made us feel special and who loved us unconditionally. But here we are. It's a day to day life (more now than ever with the pandemic) and all we can do is roll out of bed and try to take a step in the right direction.

My heart goes out to you. Come back here and vent anytime. There are good people here who truly understand what this life without our beloved feels like. They will help you.

Last but not least. Know that your wife will always be with you, heart and soul. Let that love you shared comfort you and give you strength.

Side note: Three words that don't help at all... should've, would've, could've. 

Mitch

[kayc]

Good article, Mitch.

Mick, my heart goes out to you.  Six months is one of the hardest times.  I hope you can learn to cut yourself some slack.  This is hard at best.