Benjamin Fry | Forum: NFS - Viewing Profile - Benjamin Fry | Forum

I want to ask a few questions. It is a while since I last posted & a lot has happened. I have done a lot of thinking & in some ways I think I have moved on. In others I don’t think I have. The same issues keep going around & around my head. I would really like some answers to some questions.

Why am I constantly looking backwards? Being dragged into the past? REGRETTING things – especially financial? I have a comfortable life (although it has been a struggle to get to this point) & a kind & lovely man & a family – however I constantly regret the WRONG decisions I made in the past. Especially regarding money. When my partner & I had been together a short while, we almost bought a house together (& this was when property was cheap). Then, for various reasons we didn’t. By the time we did, house prices had reached their peak. There must be 100’s of people in this situation & I surely should be able to say “c’est la vie” – but instead it really, really bugs me and I spend a lot of time thinking “what if” – our lives could have been so different. I feel so stupid for “getting it wrong” and go over all the things that would be better about our lives if we had bought at the “right” time. Life would just have been easier, a lot of the rows would not have happened as they were due to money, we would be in a better place. I may not have had to work when I had young kids. I could afford to have a bigger family. I feel even worse because some of the reason possibly that we did not buy earlier is because of something that happened with me that jeapardised our relationship & took a lot of coming back from.
Money has always had a big import in my life, and the theme whilst I was growing up was “we cant afford it” - & it is like I have just carried that with me as my blueprint: assuming we couldn’t afford to buy a house (when we could) without even looking into it. But this in turn took us into a situation whereby we COULDN’T really afford it, but DID get a mortgage and then subsequently ran up debts because we were so skint. We have slowly dug ourselves out but it has been a hard slog & I just keep thinking WHY? WHY were we so stupid? Why did we buy when we did? (when my partner had just left a career & was starting over again & had taken a pay cut). As I tend to be the driving force for things in the relationship I feel a lot of it is my responsibility. I also feel like in a way, I have driven us into the very place that I feared being: struggling for money, in debt etc. Is it that actually, I felt more comfortable there? We made “bad” decision after bad decision & got in a right mess.
But now – now we are out & should be feeling better about things, I still just cant help harping backwards & regretting those decisions that led us down that road. Why?? I just want to turn the clock back & change things. I realise now that each decision we make in life has such huge consequences for our future path – the ripple effect. Because of a few bad decisions in my early twenties, 10 years later I am still paying a large price (eg working when I could have had that time with my young children) – and it affects my family, because I get really down about it & beat myself up. I cant talk about it because my husband is a “what’s done is done” type of person & just gets on & deals with day to day life. I know I should just be able to enjoy the now & learn from my mistakes for the future, but I find it really hard. I am not totally responsible for the debts etc – he is the type of person who just doesn’t open bank statements etc so he ran up charges & debts, but I do carry a lot of the burden of responsibility for making bad decisions. I also do wonder if there is more to it than just being badly educated about finance & not having the type of parents who could guide me. I wonder if it is partly my psyche trying to deal with a childhood where lack of money was always paramount & we were constantly told “we’ve got no money. We cant afford it.” In which case – how do I change? What can I do to move myself FORWARDS??? The feeling of responsibility is huge – I believe that life is what we make it, that chance doesn’t play a part – but then that lays a lot of pressure on you to “get it right”
The other issue is that I feel like my relationship is mirroring my parents – and again, I just want to change it but I don’t know how. I feel trapped – but like I have very carefully laid the trap for myself & locked myself into exactly the situation I would really rather have avoided. I have read Gareth’s posts over the last few years with interest and I now wonder, like him, whether my relationship has been a vehicle to help me to see (if not yet totally resolve) certain issues & whether I should move on for both our sakes. The problem is that we have small children. I don’t know what would be worse: to stay & for them to grow up where there is anger & resentment & regret (but also a lot of love and stability – we don’t row loudly or in front of them & on the surface are a lovely, loving family) – or for us to split & for them to grow up with 2 loving parents who happen not to be together. I fell head over heels for my husband and loved him I like I had never loved anyone. He is kind, sweet, loving & puts up with a hell of a lot. He is a great father & would do anything for his girls. He is supportive & tries to understand & support me. He adores me (I think still) – despite us having had an extremely difficult relationship at times. Despite me being extremely difficult. But I don’t know that we are actually very good for each other. We have a major fall-out about every 6 months now, where I go into melt-down & then slowly we come back from it.
I guess what I want is a fresh start – but I want a fresh start from myself. I would love to go back to being 20 & re-do everything. Better. Of course that is not possible. I want to know how to RID myself of all the unhelpful feelings.
What worries me is that I can see a lot of things that have affected me, & the behaviours / situations which have occurred because of my past – what I cant seem to see is how to change so that I do not KEEP on re-creating those situations. Is it a case of finding a way to dispose of those emotions – eg issues in my relationship: I really need to talk to my Dad while he is still around. Issues with money – what do I do? I can see some of the cause & effect, but not the way out of the current situation.
Sometimes I am better at staying more “in the moment” & just dealing with day to day stuff, but very often my mind slips back into the past & goes over & over all the places where I messed up: emotionally, financially, practically. I KNOW it is not healthy. I KNOW I cannot change the past, no matter how hard I wish I could, & I KNOW that by going over & over it I am simply using up energy that could be spent on creating a better present & future … and yet it keeps happening. I guess some of it is trying to work out connections so that I can avoid them in the future? But some of it is simpy recriminating myself over & over again. And it just makes me distant & moody & irritable – as I go over & over how stupid I am, how things could have been better. I KNOW that things may NOT have been better. That money doesn’t buy happiness. That the issues in my relationship would still have been there whether the money issue was there or not (although I think things may have been easier if we had had more cash – as money was a major source of stress & arguments) – but then again, I think maybe the whole money / relationship thing was there maybe to force me to deal with things from my past. As I say, we had no money when I was growing up, there was also a whole issue about my Dad being crap with money - & my (now husband) is / was too – so there is the start of me re-creating my parents’ relationship. I know at times I have made my husband feel worthless – another mirror to my parents’ relationship. I have caused emotional distance between us – again; like my parents. I can SEE all these things – but how do I change them? I feel like I want to get out, I want to start afresh – put the whole rubbish section behind me …. But that’s not fair. (1) because my husband is a good kind lovely man who doesn’t deserve to be left (though neither does he deserve a grumpy frustrated angry repressive wife), & 2, because we have 2 beautiful daughters to think about. And 3, because I know I would only be changing the external things – unless I have learnt enough in this relationship to be able to do it differently in another? But then if I could do it differently in another, why can’t I just do it differently within this one? Say “Ok, that’s the past. I made a lot of mistakes but lets leave it there – let’s just look forwards.” And I would still regret the past - maybe more so because I could add destroying my marriage to the list of things I regretted. Some days I manage to be positive, live in the present & the future – but then I veer back round to how things could have been if I hadn’t been so rubbish generally, & with money).
I am driving myself crazy and I need to know how to break the cycle. I think I am getting better practically with money – that comes with age & experience I guess, & I spend less emotionally; but I need to stop the regret. The “what if’s” the “it would all have been ok if only we’d …. “ I don’t automatically think “we can’t afford” – and things do seem to have eased. One thing I realised very recently was that there were points in my life where I felt great fear of something happening (mainly us not having enough money) – but then they happened & we just dealt with them (& also that although I feared it, I was instrumental in steering us into that actual situation). Was that chance – was it naivity & lack of sound advice / taking bad advice – or was it my psyche pushing me to deal with what I feared most?
As someone who feels responsible for everything, I do get the whole idea of projection etc & that we cause our own situations – but it just makes me feel 100 times more responsible for everything. I think that is why I feel so rubbish about the past – because I feel like it is all my fault. I can see where & even why (at some points) it went wrong & just beat myself up, over & over again about it.

I just want a break - I want to stop feeling like this. I am like a junky who instead of getting clean & moving on, I have got clean but keep thinking "God, all those YEARS I wasted" & sits around getting depressed about it (although I dont sit about, I am pretty active!!) I want to think less & just get on & live & enjoy my life. The thing is - that probably isnt possible is it? If there IS trauma etc there then I need to get rid of it & to get rid of it I have to focus on it - I just havent got time! I have a busy life & where does anyone find the time to work on "issues?" - unless they have a total breakdown & re-build? I have a job, a family, a life - I just want to be able to enjoy it all & stop beating myself up.

I have looked slightly into the work of Peter Levine & Pia Mellody as you suggested - but only a toe in the water. I guess I am going to be told I need to do more than that .... !

I am now adding at a later date ... I have just realised that I am totally furious with myself for basically making my life into the opposite of what I really wanted it to be. All I ever wanted to was to have kids & be a stay-at-home mum, yet I set about creating a life that was different to that. Although I have kids I am in a situation where I now have to work - because of the "bad" financial decisions we made in the past. The really ironic thing is that we were trying to build a good basis from which to have kids, but actually would have been in a better postion to have them much younger. I now find myself furious because I have to go out to work every day. I feel more than the normal guilt at leaving them in childcare / not being there at the school gates - because i feel that I have created this situation where I dont have a choice NOT to work. I feel like if I had done things differently then I could have had what I wanted. WHY did I make things complicated for myself? WHY did I not just go for what I wanted? Is it as simple as the fact that I never really got what I wanted as a kid? Was told "I want doesnt get" - is it that easy to translate? Or is is it more complicated? Was it because I dont feel I deserve to have what I want? I really need to find a way OUT of all these constraints which just seem to bind me & block me & stop me from getting to where I really want to be.