Redux: Moving On, Part 2
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The universe has good news for the lost, lonely, and heart-sick. The sugars are here, speaking straight into your ears. I'm Steve Allman. I'm Cheryl Strayed. This is Dear Sugars. Oh, dear song, won't you please share some little sweet days with me? I check my bell by, oh, and the sugar you send my.

Hi, Steve. Hi, Cheryl. So we're in part two of our two-part series on the topic of moving on. Last week, we talked about moving on after the death of a loved one. And this week, we're going to look at moving on from a different angle. How do we move on from our regrets or the mistakes we've made? What are your biggest regrets, Steve? Oh, boy. One thing that I don't talk about a lot is that I was a twin. When you're born into a twinship,

It's a special thing. Like I bonked my head on the crib a certain number of times and Mike bonked his head. Bonk, bonk, bonk, bonk. Drive my parents crazy. Is that true? It's true. When we walked to school as kindergartners, we walked literally shoulder to shoulder, leaning into one another on the way to school. That's how we move through the world.

And what I realized as we got a little bit older was that he was keeping a secret from me. Actually, I didn't consciously realize it, but I knew that he was retreating and withdrawing into a kind of private world that I wasn't a part of.

I dealt with that by feeling incredible anxiety and confusion. I remember him going to sleep over at a friend's house for the first time. And I literally in my body was like, I couldn't sleep. I was wracked by anxiety. It was like, my God, my other half is gone. At any rate, I could tell without he's, he's moving away from me. We were drifting and I couldn't reach him. And I

I only came to realize much later in my, I mean, you know, when we were in college that

that he was struggling with realizing that he was gay and coming out of the closet in a very macho household that for all the psychological insight that everybody had, there wasn't a lot of emotional communication. And I've told you the story of when he came out to me and how utterly shocked I was. I literally thought that he was fooling around with my girlfriend. That's how out of it I was. And I can even remember visiting him at college and

And he had a photo of maybe his boyfriend and him sort of scantily clad. And I remember it was by his bed and he put the photo face down and he looked at, he didn't look at me. He just said, you're not ready to see this. And was he right about that? Maybe, I hope not, but maybe he was. Did you counter that statement? Honestly, part of what the regret is bound up in was the recognition that he was

was, and this is so, I mean, this is what pisses me off. He was ashamed about something he shouldn't have been ashamed about. And I was wrapped up in that as well. In other words, I was reading off of, I better not intrude because this person is already in retreat from me. And I'm just going to say enough that I don't scare him off anymore. And the image that comes to mind when I try to really interrogate

why I didn't say more, why I didn't say, how is that? Are you okay? Is sort of like, we used to be two little fawns or something who just did everything together and we're bounding through forest and pasture together. And then when he was letting me know,

I'm gay in these very small and elliptical ways, it was as if if I moved towards him at all, he would startle and go running back into the woods. And the shame of it is that there weren't any woods. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You love who you love. And that's very clear to me sitting here at 51. But at 21 or 19, however old we were, what I was picking up on is he doesn't feel like

safe sharing this part of his life with me. And if I try to do too much, if I knock my head on the crib, he's not going to knock back. And now I can look back at that and say, my God, you dope. You needed to be there for him. This was a time you could have come through for him. And I think maybe the central regret of my life is that I've never been able to go back to that twinship. And

I have not come through for him. And I have not been there in the way that a brother should be there. And, you know, that's something that you carry. And I should say it to him, but I don't. But to me, the hopeful thing about that is the story isn't over yet. That's right. You know, that your brother is still there and you're still here. And so much of the mistakes we made in the past...

can be remade. Yeah. As you always say, you can make that bad story into a good one. And maybe even more powerfully so. Yeah. That this break between you and your twin could be mended and you're stronger for it.

Because you're brave enough to say, how do we use this as a way to be intimate again? The risk always of doing that is one that you admit what you've done wrong. Right. How you have, and by you, I mean me, how I have failed, how I have failed him. But regret operates that way. It's like a one-way mirror onto our mistakes and our shortcomings. Dear Sugars, I'm a serial codependent. I've married and had children with two addicts.

My first husband was mean, narcissistic, and controlling. My current one, who looks great by comparison, is agreeable, intelligent, and holds a job. But he's never fully present for me or our children. He quietly hides money in empty bottles and disappears into his phone or video games at every opportunity.

He's been to rehab, and we've had all the tough talks. But I'm tired. I deserve more. For the last year, I've been working on my own recovery through an online set of programs and a support group of women that's similar to Al-Anon. I now do the work to take responsibility for my own life and happiness. And I feel confident that I will be able to prevent another codependent relationship in the future. I'm excited about what my future could have in store, with or without a partner.

But what do I tell my kids? How do I explain to my 15-year-old that I chose poorly and therefore I had to blow up his family twice? How do I navigate the aftermath with my extremely sensitive 7-year-old and my very intense controlling perfectionist 5-year-old who is prone to aggression and anger? How do I break the news that we might have to sell our house and go back to renting and sharing rooms after we recently bought a home and decorated a room for each child?

Is this too selfish for me to justify? I'm fine with breaking my own heart sugars, but how do I break my boy's hearts? Signed, Mommy Messed Up. This is such a tough letter. We don't have an easy answer for you. What you should hear is that you are trying to change your life and trying to improve your life.

And a part of that is that you have to disrupt an equilibrium that was unhealthy. You describe your second husband as having been to rehab, but he's hiding money and empty bottles. And that means whatever was happening in rehab hasn't stuck. And so you've realized I'm not in a safe circumstance and your kids don't need you to be perfect.

And they don't need you to make decisions that they always will understand. They need you to be honest and to make the decisions that you think will be the healthiest for you and for them.

And that is gonna cause disruption for your kids and they're not gonna be happy about it. But you have to think with kids in the long term, you have to say, if I'm gonna get to a better place, even if it's a smaller house, if it's more filled with love and harmony and honesty, that's a better circumstance.

And there might be temporary disruption, but that's better than them growing up with an alcoholic father who's not dependable for them emotionally and psychologically. I think about the decision that Erin had to make to step away from her parents for a time and

I think that's a decision that's made her a happier and healthier person. And our kids are, we're upset by that and they remain upset by that, but it's the right decision. And kids are not sophisticated, but they are highly absorbent. They will pick up on that. And I say that to you, mommy messed up. You are not messed up. And what you need to say is mommy who is getting her act together, mommy who is understanding that she wants to give her kids a better stake in things.

And that's difficult and disruptive work, but it's the right work for you to be doing. And I praise you for doing it. Yeah, I think that's just exactly right, Steve. And I want to point to these last two lines of your letter, Mommy Messed Up. Is this too selfish for me to justify? I'm fine with breaking my own heart, but do I break my boy's hearts? And I suggest that you reframe that placement. It's not you...

on one side and your boys on the other. That's right. You know, this life that you're changing is the life that you have with your boys. So, you know, there's nothing selfish about saying, I know that for myself and my sons,

there's a healthier and a happier home environment. And, you know, I think that sometimes what I think a very healthy way of thinking about any kind of divorce, I know I certainly thought about this in my own divorce, which was very different because I didn't have kids and I was in my 20s. But I remember, you know, I felt the most at peace with it. And it felt the truest when I would say,

This is not the end of a relationship. It's the transformation of one that we are altering the terms of our connection. You know, we like to think that everything is severed in divorce, but a lot of people in real life, and especially if you're co-parenting with somebody, that relationship continues. So now the question is, how do you continue the relationship with your husband after

after you separate from him. And that can be, you know, a very important psychological shift that will allow you to make decisions that are about the well-being of your family that have nothing to do with you being selfish. Yeah. I want to just underscore something you said, Cheryl, that I think it's so important for you, Mommy, messed up to hear, which is it is not selfish to

To say I deserve more. Yeah. A greater share of happiness, a greater share of stability, a greater share of honesty in my relationships. You know, the hiding of the bottles both suggest a problem with alcohol and also, as we know, with addiction, a problem with deceit.

And, you know, for all those reasons, saying I deserve more is modeling for your kids that they shouldn't be in relationships that don't nourish them. They shouldn't be in relationships that they don't feel attended to as if they're invisible. And so rather than beating yourself up,

about choosing to get involved with two partners who were addicted. Your kids have seen that. And if you do a full accounting of your regrets, that's true. You made those decisions. And the only way that you can address that is to say, I no longer consent to making those decisions. You're doing exactly the thing that you should do. If you're going to put yourself on the hook,

for getting involved with men who have substance abuse problems. Give yourself the credit for saying, I no longer am going to do that. I'm going to find healthier relationships and I'll model that for my kids. Yeah. You ask what you should tell your kids.

And I would say different things based on their ages and their situations. Your 15-year-old is old enough to have that conversation about, you know, what does it mean to be codependent? What does it mean for you to have realized that you are and addressed it through the recovery that you've done in your online groups, in your women's group that's like Al-Anon? I would even suggest...

this if you can in a therapeutic context. Maybe go to a family counselor with your 15-year-old and allow him to have a deeper understanding of what codependency is. Because, you know, by 15, this kid has had you for his mom, a codependent mom, and it

And an addict for a dad and an addict for a stepdad. Yeah. Okay. This 15-year-old has had many years now where he's grown up in that kind of dysfunctional environment. And I don't say that as a criticism of your parenting, but rather an acknowledgement of the system that you've identified. And so, you know, do what you can to really actually help him, you know, help him in his life, not replicate some of the mistakes he's

in your own. So I would be very honest with him. He's old enough to hear the truth of your life, at least, you know, a lot of it. The other kids, the seven-year-old and the five-year-old, who I assume are the biological kids of your current husband, I think that that's a different thing. That announcement is about you separating and possibly divorcing. That announcement is about making them feel safe as the dynamics of your family shift. And the

And the codependent stuff and the addiction stuff, I think it's probably not a conversation you need to have with kids of that age. You know, and one thing that happens, I will say one note of hope that I've observed in many of my friends who got divorced when they had kids about this age,

from partners who were kind of like you described, you know, sort of not present, retreating into the phone. We don't know what will happen after you separate. We don't know how, what kind of father your husband will be. But what happens inherently when you aren't on the scene is you don't parent for him.

He's going to sometimes be alone with those kids and he's going to have to be more present than he's been. And so many of my divorced mom friends are like, wow, you know, my ex is suddenly a better dad because he has to be. And so, you know, be open to the possibility that frankly,

this could be better for your kids than staying together in this dysfunctional family system. Yeah. And with the younger kids in particular, especially the perfectionist five-year-old, I have one of those. It's important for you to be as honest as you can without being explicit that they understand this is a decision you're making in part because you and your husband are imperfect people to make it clear that it's not because of them.

I think kids oftentimes, and it's a natural impulse, they say, oh, well, all this discord must be my fault. It's their way of trying to sort of exercise control in a kingdom of childhood where you're mostly powerless, right? So I think it is important to at least try to impart to them that this is a decision you're making because of your imperfections. And that's not what matters. Not that you make the mistake. It's that you...

apologize for it, that you acknowledge it, that you have a discussion about it where they see you saying, I'm not perfect. I'm just doing my best. If we're perfect as parents, we do not equip our kids for the world, which is imperfect. We wish you luck. Mommy messed up. We sure do. I will suggest a different signature. Yes. Mommy's doing her best. That's right. Mommy's getting better. So keep doing it. Keep doing it.

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So we are back and ready to talk more about moving on from regret. We've enlisted a great helper, an ally in that effort, Dr. Harriet Lerner, who is one of the nation's most respected voices on the psychology of women and family relationships. She's the author of 12 books, including the New York Times bestseller, The Dance of Anger. And most recently, Why Won't You Apologize? Healing Big Betrayals and Everyday Hurts. Let's give her a call.

Hello, hello. Hi, this is Cheryl Strain. I also have Steve Allman here on the line. Hi, Dr. Lernick. Hi. Let's do it. We're going to have Steve read the letter and then we can discuss it. Great. Steve, will you read the letter? I shall. Dear Sugars, Three years ago, while I was very much in love but in a very long-distance relationship, my boyfriend came to visit me and our time abroad together resulted in an unplanned pregnancy.

While we were both in our 30s and financially secure, and I felt excited to become a mom, we hadn't been together terribly long, and there were 8,000 miles separating us. After my pregnancy was confirmed, I immediately flew home to the U.S., where we spent a week talking it over, fighting, and crying. I've always wanted a child, and despite our difficult circumstances, I was ready to make it work.

Perhaps I could take a leave of absence from my job or he could move abroad with me. We could get married or not. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted both the baby and my boyfriend in my life. Unfortunately, he didn't feel the same way. He was worried we didn't know each other well enough to have a child and he felt the logistics of our situation were too complicated. He refused to leave his job.

He also expressed serious concerns about my history of depression, which he didn't want to pass on to a child. He said he wasn't ready for fatherhood, so my boyfriend insisted that I get an abortion. He said I needed to have an abortion because our relationship wouldn't survive having a baby he told me to choose.

because i loved him and was hopeful that we would one day have kids in the traditional way i allowed myself to be convinced we went to the doctor and with obvious relief he watched as i swallowed a pill to begin the chemical abortion then he sent me home to lie on the couch and bleed while he went back to work

About a week later, I flew back to my job across the world as if nothing had happened. I closed my heart and worked blindly through the next few months, unfeeling and unthinking. I refused to acknowledge what I already knew deep down was the biggest mistake of my life. After another few months, my boyfriend proposed marriage. I accepted, quit my job, moved home, and began what I hoped would be our path to parenthood.

Sugars, I probably don't need to tell you that things didn't turn out as planned. The sadness and anger I had buried for so many months began to emerge even as we planned a wedding and shared our first apartment together. I began picking fights with him, bad ones, and lay in bed day after day, deeply depressed. This only confirmed his worries about my mental health and

We went to couples therapy, postponed the wedding at his insistence, and fought and fought until one day it was just over. Three years later, I'm 36 and staring down serious fertility issues. I'm going through early menopause and I'm too financially strapped to try expensive procedures to preserve my fertility and my insurance won't cover them.

I know intellectually that the abortion was my decision and I don't want to blame my ex, but I feel so sad and full of regret. I'm jealous of my friends who are mothers. I'm deeply anxious and increasingly isolated.

Dating feels impossible. How could a man ever understand what I've been through? Who would want to marry me now? Meanwhile, my ex is dating a string of pretty young women and has become a partner at his law firm. He has all the time, money, and freedom in the world to have a family. I care about him and I wish him happiness, but everything feels so unfair.

I've told him about my fertility struggles and he has never, not even once, apologized for the choice he asked me to make. Sugars. How can I stop hating my ex, and more importantly myself, for this horrible, life-altering decision? Some days I feel certain that I'm going to die alone, a barren spinster, all because I let someone else make a choice that should have been mine.

How do I take responsibility for my actions and move forward, even in the shadow of this mistake that can't be unmade? Signed, full of regret. Wow, that's a hard, deep regret. Harriet, what do you make of this letter? When I listen to this letter, I wish that she could look at this, quote, horrible, life-altering decision with more objectivity and more self-compassion.

It was a young relationship. They didn't really know each other. There were large logistical problems. They were 8,000 miles apart. He wasn't ready or willing. She didn't have a crystal ball. And what's interesting to me is that even though she has a significant history of depression that predates this relationship,

that she views her reproductive decision and its aftermath as the sole cause of her severe anxiety and depression and isolation.

And it's a good example of how in trying to make sense of how bad she feels, she has constructed a narrative. And the narrative itself is a problem because it's so narrow and has a fixed focus on a decision which can't be undone.

And this is not to minimize the real pain of her terminating the pregnancy and facing infertility. It's to say that we have to beware of the stories that we tell about ourselves because we become them. And

A story like the one she's constructed is so narrow and fixed that it's going to edge out all other stories about her past and her present and her future possibilities. So the first thing I would say is that how she frames the problem keeps her from moving on.

And it also keeps her from looking at the real culprits. Right. You know, it's interesting. I'm so, so often on this show, we do talk about these bad stories we tell ourselves and that so much of healing is, is learning to tell truer and better stories. But I'm really struck by what you said about how she's really narrowed the focus. Her regret is in so many ways constructed on an exclusion of her

the facts. You know, you make everything about this terrible one decision that was made while forgetting that you actually made that decision for some pretty good reasons. Exactly. And one of the culprits of that kind of narrowing of her story is

is anxiety. And anxiety has certain predictable effects. It narrows and rigidifies our focus. It blocks us from being able to gather new information and think creatively and explore our options more.

It makes it impossible for us to hang on to a positive thought for more than five seconds. And instead, we wake up at three in the morning, nursing past grievances and worrying about future catastrophes.

And anxiety interferes with self-respect. And she has entirely lost sight of her competence, her capacity for love and creativity and joy. And I think it's important for all of us to know the effects of anxiety as well as depression and shame so we don't confuse them with who we really are.

Yeah, as I read this letter, it does sound like an odd association, but I thought about Lily Bart, the heroine of The House of Mirth, the wonderful Edith Wharton novel. She's a character who moves through an arc where she wants certain things in the way of a companion and maybe even motherhood, but circumstances within herself and around her conspire against that, and she ultimately ends up feeling

incredibly distraught about that. In this letter, you've set down in a very clear-eyed way the history here. And the fact that you wanted this baby and your boyfriend in your life was, at least by my reading, impossible. You couldn't have both because your boyfriend was

refused to leave his job, said he wasn't ready for fatherhood. And then he said, "You need to have an abortion because our relationship won't survive having a baby," which is essentially a hostage situation. I mean, it's quite explicit. It's not as if you were making that decision of your own free will.

And it's easy to rewrite the story of your life where you acceded to him and you should have had the strength to say, no, I want to have this child. But of course, you didn't have the information that you have now. We never do. That's Lily Bart's dilemma. You didn't know that at 36, you would have fertility issues.

You know, you couldn't have known that there would be an onset of early menopause or difficulty with affording a fertility treatment. That wasn't even on your map. Or that that relationship wouldn't last. That's right. As Harriet points out, the crystal ball. Right. Also, you know, in addition to having a very narrow view of why you made that decision, you're looking in a too limited of a way at the...

the reasons for the demise of that relationship. You say you'd buried your feelings of sadness and anger for so long that it began to emerge, and that was what destroyed your former relationship. But, you know, I think that we can't really always know where that stuff comes from. Did it play a part in that? Probably.

But there are probably reasons that other reasons that that relationship ended as well. And it might be helpful to gain some perspective on that. It's usually a more complicated reasons that contribute to the end of any relationship, that it's not just about this one thing that may be another way of interpreting the past is

is to think it's maybe a good thing that you didn't have that child with him because this is somebody who you're not compatible with, who you would have been now bound to for life. And I would say that the chief symptom of that is that he hasn't had the courage and personal integrity to reckon with the decision that he pressured you to make. That's a very bad sign that he's not somebody who you are ultimately going to be safe with. He doesn't have to beat himself up.

But he did say certain things. If we take your letter to be an accurate reflection of the events, he leaned on you to have an abortion. And he knows that you're living with the regret of that. And he hasn't even thought to make an apology. To me, that's a person who's not living...

truthfully and who's being ruled by a shame. Well, what do you think about that, Harriet? You have written your latest book is about apology, right? Well, we can see this through so many different lenses. From my perspective, it was his responsibility to clarify that he did not want this child, that he believed that he could not stay in the relationship if she had the child.

And, of course, in some ways, he absolutely behaved as a jerk, like sending her home on the couch to bleed. Yeah. Or the fact that he pressured her to have an abortion rather than simply defining what he felt he could and could not do. Right. And, of course, he can apologize for the ways that he behaved badly. Right.

But it's very difficult to apologize when you're over-accused. And if she has asked him to apologize with the weight of this, you know, you've ruined my life. Right. People can't apologize, period. And there's a saying that the person who broke you can't fix you. And...

What she means by, I want you to apologize, is not just that he would say, I'm sorry. She wants him to really get it. She wants him to care about her feelings. She wants him to carry some of the pain that she feels. Right. And this is a perfectly normal human longing, but it's not going to happen. Right.

And staying riveted on this false hope about the apology keeps her enmeshed in suffering and comparisons. I think that she can take the important step of ending all contact with him because any contact that she has with him, which includes anything

any source of information she has about him is going to make it harder for her to take emotional leave from a relationship that was officially terminated years ago.

My hope is that she will have the courage to stop that because it's an important first step to shrinking the big negative power that he currently has over her life. Yeah, I think that's great advice, Harriet. She asked, how can I stop hating my ex? You disengage yourself.

On social media, don't follow him. Block him. Don't even let him pop up if he's friends with your friends. Right. Because part of the bad story you're telling yourself is connected to the good story you're telling yourself about his life. You know, he has all the time, money and freedom in the world to have a family. Right. You're viewing that from afar. Again, you're seeing everything that he has is good and everything I have is bad. And you're not thinking clearly about it. The first real indication I had about this is this line. She says,

Dating feels impossible. How could a man ever understand what I've been through? Who would want to marry me now? And I just want to say to you full of regret that there's nothing true about those two sentences, okay? And I think that it's really important that you remember that just because you feel regretful

caught up in the regret and the sorrow and the rage that you feel about that conflict, it doesn't mean that you can't have other relationships and find love again. Now, your fertility is a different question. But if we're just going to talk about dating and love, who would want to marry you now? My answer to that is a lot of people. Cheryl, I want to add something to that. I very much agree. And it brings me back to three emotions, which is anxiety, depression, and shame.

You know, this idea that if anybody really knew the whole god-awful truth about us, they couldn't possibly love us. Right. That she is not worthy of love and respect. And that is shame talking. And she even feels shame about her honest suffering. She sees her suffering as so exceptional.

And as you point out, I mean, there are countless women who have made reproductive choices they regret or who struggle with fertility issues. But this is what shame does, that she sees her suffering as so exceptional that she

Rather than it connecting her to the whole human family, because we all suffer, she feels out of the flow of human connection. Right. And it's good to be able to identify that as the mischief of shame because she's confusing it with who she is now.

And as you point out, she is not that person. She's not a person that nobody would want to date or get connected to because of her story. Yeah. And a couple other layers. There's also grief.

you know, grieving these fertility struggles. You know, I know that so often when we have had letters from women who are experiencing infertility, you know, that's something to grieve. It's such a, you know, one of the bad stories in my, you know, book about bad stories, which is allegedly about politics, but it's kind of also about personal psychology is that in America, we have a tendency, maybe all human beings to exalt our grievances and

as a way of hiding our vulnerabilities, right? And part of how you take responsibility for your actions and move forward is that you have to move past that sense of grievance at those justifiable injustices. I read this letter, I felt so awful for what you're carrying and what's happened to you and just the rotten luck

of both struggling with depression, but also this early onset fertility difficulties and financial troubles. That's not your fault. That's your circumstance. But I also felt that underneath that as Cheryl and Harriet are both counseling, there's real sorrow. And it's hard to face that because it feels insoluble, but you don't get past it if you're stuck at the level of everything feels so unfair. Right.

That's a very important point. And I think Bell Hooks said that grief in America is like a stain on our clothing. We're supposed to hide it. You know, we're all supposed to push forward in the all-American, can-do way and think positively. And we need also to honor our real feelings and our grief, which both of you are saying is

She can't honor her grief in isolation. Yeah. You know, she can connect with other women who are grieving in the same way over the same issues. That's always helpful.

And things like therapy and all the resources out there. Yeah. And in fact, you know, right in the center of your letter is a lesson in what happens when you don't allow yourself to feel what you need to feel. I flew back to my job across the world as if nothing had happened. I closed my heart and worked blindly. And what happened a few months later was,

All of those feelings didn't go away. They just came back with the force of your suppression. The unpleasant truth is that you have to feel what you need to feel. And especially when it hurts, because it's not going anywhere. It's just going to get pushed down and then it's going to come back even stronger on you. Because I think when we tend to push things down, it's like pushing down a spring. It comes back with even more force and it's the force of our own self-deceit and our own shame.

And in addition to honoring her feelings and discovering the full range of her feelings, she needs also to take action. Yeah. And one step we talked about is her having zero contact with her ex. And another could be starting therapy or thinking about...

career goals, what talents and abilities does she want to develop over the next years? If she can't have a baby, what are other ways that she can participate in the growth of children? There are so many available paths and concrete strategies to moving on.

And again, when we're under the weight of anxiety and shame and depression, it's so difficult to act.

So it is a challenge to do one new thing. Right. And we shouldn't put aside the possibility, full of regret, that you might also, if it's important to you, think about how might I be a mother? Right. That is absolutely so important. And there is a way, full of regret, that by focusing so ferociously on this one decision, this one exchange you had with your ex-boyfriend,

that your regret allows you to stay connected to him. Exactly. And when you move away from regret, what you're doing is you're relinquishing, essentially. You're saying, okay, I'm not going to hold so hard onto that one connection. That, you know, the act of relinquishing that is in part relinquishing him. Yes. And I want to actually say something very important for all of us, that it's very hard to stop hating our ex-girlfriend.

Because the hate, the anger keeps us connected to that person. It keeps us connected as powerfully as love keeps us connected. And what I've discovered in my clinical work and research is that we have this unconscious fantasy that if we just hang on to our justified rage and we hang on to our suffering long enough,

that then the other person will finally get it. You know, they'll somehow magically see the light and they'll realize how they've harmed us and they'll feel as bad, better yet, even worse than they've made us feel. So when we leave the anger behind and we stop clinging to this angry internal dialogue, it

We also give up the fantasy of obtaining justice. Right. And we give up the false hope of a wished-for future. But what we gain is the ability to live in the present and to move on, to move on in a real way. Yeah, absolutely. You just said it. You said it. That is surrender as a form of faith. Yes, this is like, wow, what powerful words there.

Harriet, it has been a joy and a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for sharing your insight with us. And thank you for being on the show. Oh, thank you. It was great. Bye. Bye-bye. Wow. She was great. I knew she would be great because she's written all these really profound, deep stories.

important books. That's right. And she's really done a lot of work for many years thinking about how we heal from these things. That's right. How we get into trouble and how we try to extricate ourselves. And I'll tell you what I took away from it when she was speaking and the little plan that took shape in my little pea brain was I need to take action in relation to my brother. Right. And I need to call him, tell him I love him, tell him I feel that I haven't

been closely enough connected to him and whether he wants that or not, I want it. And that's one thing and I'm going to do it. Yeah. And you need to do it even though you can't know what the thing after that will be. That's right. And I think this really applies to both of our letter writers. This is really about doing something and doing something with healthy intentions.

Neither one of you, just like Steve, you can't know where this is going to end up. Right. But we owe it to ourselves to see. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. When we suggested doing this, I was so glad that we're going to talk about regret, you know, because it's like shame. Regret is sort of a cousin and its chief symptom is that we're supposed to keep quiet about it because it means we're stuck and messed up. But actually, regret

Regret, when it's doing bad work in our lives, is a stop sign. And when we're brave enough, regret is a signpost. And it is saying to us, here are the actions you need to take to change your life. And I like that construction because we've all experienced regret. And the problem is not that we feel it, but that we don't learn from it. That's right. We wish you both luck. We sure do.

You know, Cheryl, part of the reason that we had such a long, in-depth conversation with Harriet is because we were fascinated by the subject of moving on. Well, and part one and part two. Part one and part two, right? And part of it is we didn't want the episode to end because that would mean that we would have to move on to our last episode. And so, listeners, next week will be our finale episode. And I guarantee you, one thing you won't say about it is it was too short.

Yes, we're going to try to pack a lot into that last episode. It's going to be bittersweet. Of course, it's been such a great privilege and honor to make the show with you, Steve. And back at you, sis. So we have a lot to say about that and so much more next week.

Dear Sugars is produced by the New York Times in partnership with WBOR. Our producer is Alexandra Lee Young. Our managing producer is Larissa Anderson. Our editor is Paige Cowett. Our executive producer is Lisa Tobin, and our editorial director is Samantha Hennig. Special thanks to Stella Tan. We recorded this show at Talkback Sound and Visual in Portland, Oregon, with our engineer Josh Millman.

Our mix engineer is Eddie Cooper. Our theme music is by Wonderly with vocals by Liz Weiss. Please find us at nytimes.com slash dearshugars. You can send us your letters at dearshugars at nytimes.com. And please check out our column, The Sweet Spot, at nytimes.com slash thesweetspot.