Regret
Dr E explained that he wanted to discuss with me the issue of regret.
“Have you ever regretted anything?” he asked.
“No,” I answered promptly.
“I see. What do you understand by regret?”
“It is a feeling of sadness or perhaps disappointment over something that you have done or failed to do.”
“When have you experienced that feeling?” he asked.
“I haven’t.”
“If I tell you that most people have regrets, which ones would you remember?”
“Which of their regrets would I remember?” I asked. He looked up at me over the top of his red and black note pad and raised his eyebrows.
“I haven’t had any,” I repeated.
“Why do you think that is?”
“Let me see. Probably because I have had nothing to express regret about. The absence of something tends to be the reason why you have not something, wouldn’t you agree?”
“Okay. Now in your many explanations to me you have explained some of the things that you have done. Yes,” he noticed I was going to interrupt him but he kept going, “I know you detailed those at my behest and I appreciate you sharing that information with me. Those acts of commission and omission led to people feeling angry with you, hurt and upset. Would you agree?”
I nodded.
“Okay. Now I would suggest that one might feel regret at having caused those people to feel that way. Would you agree?”
“You might feel a sense of regret Dr E but I do not.”
“Why is that?”
“Why to which part? Why you might feel a sense of regret or why I do not?”
If he was irritated by my pedantry he was not showing it.
“The latter.”
“Because I am not at fault. In all those instances it is the other person’s fault.”
“How about some examples?”
“Okay. Kate’s dog went missing. Do you remember me telling you about that?” He nodded. “If she had cared for it properly and given me the attention I deserve it would not have been lost. Christopher who was fired from his position, he was incompetent. Emily kept asking me the wrong questions so that is why she was treated in that way. Sophie kept asking me what I was thinking so that is why I lost my temper and smashed her television. As for Paula, she was late so I walked off and left her to find her own way home. Do you want me to go on?”
“No, that is sufficient.”
“If people tried harder, if they were more thoughtful then this would not happen. I can do it so why not they? I will tell you why. They become weak and complacent. They think that they can not invest any energy into our relationship, whether intimate or not, any longer. If you do not feed something it will wither and die. They brought it on themselves and they are the ones at fault. My reaction was perfectly natural. I was entitled to respond the way I did. They cannot judge me, they have no jurisdiction to do so, certainly not when they let me down every single time. They bring it on themselves with their weakness and their whining, their reluctance to do what is needed, what I need. It sickens me doctor, it truly sickens me. Have you any idea how difficult it is to find someone who retains my interest, someone scintillating enough to match my brilliance? It is impossible. I try Dr E, I bloody well try to I offer them the world in the hope that just this once they will match my expectations and not let me down. It always happens. I am always let down. She did it the first time and then it happened again and now it is repeated. Why? What did I do that was so wrong to deserve being treated like this? I regret nothing doctor because nothing is my fault.”
20 thoughts on “Regret”
Vent Your Spleen! (Please see the Rules in Formal Info)
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Hello HG. First I would like to thank you for undertaking this blog. I look forward to the majority of your books being available in paperback. I do have a question for you. I understand you are undergoing treatment by the “good doctors” who are, I’m assuming, helping you to either curb or understand your need for fuel, deal with what caused you to need it in the first place, and/or attempt to help you be a “less destructive” person in the world (possibly all of the above). I noticed also in the above comments that you currently have an “appliance” (or intimate partner) from whom you are drawing fuel. In a normal empathically functioning person, this would create a huge amount of cognitive dissonance in receiving assistance for the very thing that you are continually carrying out. I’m curious as to how your therapy deals with this as well as how you deal with this on a cognitive level. If you are also able, I would like to know how this works on an emotional level as well as I realize your emotions function very differently than your followers. Thanks in advance.
Hello Todd, thank you for your kind words. There will be further release in paperback over time.
You raise a pertinent point. I know that the good doctors at this stage are focussed on me understanding what I am, why I am as I am, what caused me to be this way and to increase my overall awareness of my behaviour. Hence I am able to detail in such precise detail our methodologies. The good doctors have suggested that as part of the attempts to alter my future behaviour that I will have to be without a primary source of fuel and thus would have to end the relationship with the IP. I suspect they have recommended this as much for her sake as for the purposes of allowing me to try to alter my behaviour. There is no difficulty for me since I need to draw this fuel at present and the treatment has not yet embraced the alteration of requiring this fuel.
Hi HG,
So am I right in thinking that when this part of the process starts and you are advised to end the relationship your devaluing will start or will you now after knowing what effect you have on NT’s will you go about it in a different way (to end) ? Just curious and of course you have more than likely alreasy covered this but ive not read that far as of yet lol
HG sweetheart…..
How on earth can we know what an N’s preferences are when they can change daily?
N3 would take me out almost daily. I got off work at 5pm. He expected me to be ready at 7pm. That was doable. However, he’d show up to my home at 6:30….and he’d be angry if I wasn’t ready?! With rush hour traffic….how could I be ready 30 minutes earlier that the time he gave me?
In the end, I think he was looking for excuses to get angry at me. His fear of intimacy, I feel; drive his need to find fault with me. We never had a harsh word between us. We were insanely attracted to each other and we had pleasant and meaningful conversations. He needed a reason to devalue me….and that was one of them….
Hi T,
HG can correct me if he believes me to be mistaken, but I believe you have it partially correct. You state that you “think he was looking for excuses to get angry with me.” That right there is part of the manipulation. If he’s getting upset with you for things you weren’t expecting he’s throwing you off balance, making you question your own judgment like the empathic person you are. He’s counting on you taking his feelings into consideration as much, if not more, than your own. Out of curiosity, if you reach back to when you two first met… who was attracted to whom more?
Hi TC!
Pleased to meet you!
Well, when I first met N3…wow…he had me on hook, line, and sinker and I was on dry land…..on our FIRST DATE!
Physically–he was JUST EVERYTHING…*SWOON*…TALL, HANDSOME….FACE LIKE CHERUB, and a real life Eagle Scout….which gained my trust.
Although, he was more attracted to me…he did all of the pursuing…snapped me up into exclusivity in 3 or 4 dates…and LOVED BOMBED for 3 months straight….everything I wanted, needed, and sadly…he gained my complete trust.
Once my love and trust was secured….it was the the N theme song from then on. (Under my Thumb-The Rolling Stones). I lost all of my power and didn’t even realize when it happened. In other words–he flipped the script on me. He devalued me…nothing I did was right….I couldn’t ever be right in his eyes again…he really NEVER HAD A REASON TO throw me off balance…we did love each other (I know..I know..lol) ….we really got along….and we were crazy attracted to each other….
That relationship consumed my life until the discard….BY TEXT!!!!
There have been benign hoovers…malign hoovers…but now…I think he’s just gone….and even if he isn’t–I’D NEVER GO THERE AGAIN!
I’ve met someone nice….I have moved on. I hope that is my last N.
TC, tell me about yourself?
T
There is no point it will be not good enough etc etc etc etc etc erv erc etc Soon enough he will be unmasked and he will be replaced set aside as well . What goes around comes around
HG. I have a question here.. What about communicating those expectations and needs? You dont feel them? I guess its part if the grandiosity feeling?
Thanks
You should know them already, that is what we expect of you.
Never your fault when you did nothing wrong. I heard that constantly.(replace rhe pronouns). This answers my question if I could be a N. I felt regret and sorrow many times…and guilt.
How long do you foresee your current appliance lasting?
No concerns so far
HG, how long does your golden period last? Or is there know set time?
No set time Fool Me. It could last a long time in the right circumstances
Does she know she is an appliance?
No at all she is the light of my life my flower in Bloom etc etc
I hope it stays that way forever.
Wow.. Sounds really challenging. Top high mantainance.
What I fimd the most challenging is expect the needs to be filled up 100% but not communicate them.. Like
” i want this and this and that, and I dont like this, this should not happen..”
But it seems finding out is also part of the challenge isnt it?
Quiet a challenge here.💣… Sound like a ticking bomb.
The no regret part I have experienced from working colleagues, on how expectations are set on a third party and after a ” working relationship full of only expectations, and punishments the result was the loss of 3 of the products. I had never seen that in my whole career,
Once when I way talking to her about what happened and how things could have been improved, she said.
They are so incompetent, they killed the products themselves. Which in a way was mainly true but with less expectations and more help like I always told her, the end result I am sure would have been less tragic. But there lies the difference…..
She just expected and measured the supplier and punisjed based on her standards and I wanted a team work, to help them and work things out together..
Because of this experience I undertand very very well the posting above.. Very well..,
Enjoy your day HG.☀️. You are so precise and spot on 😘 And soo honest communicating the concepts. 😘
Are you really projecting weakness and complacency onto them because of your real fear of intimacy and being unable to share about things like the creature and your childhood? No one can meet your expectations when they can’t be mind readers.
It again was very telling when you say the other person, no matter the capacity, does not want or no longer invests their “energy.” It’s not even someone needing to match your intellect. That would be a nice bonus, but not necessary.
It is the eternal dance of exchanging the energies each person provides the other that they are craving due to their subconscious wounds.
I personally do not focus a lot on regret. It can be overrated.
Like if my mother had given me an allowance when I was a teenager, I wouldn’t have had to steal money out of her purse; if Renee (a former co-worker) had done her fair share of the work, rather than dump it on my desk, I never would’ve had to tell the boss about her long lunches (although that one backfired on me, I told about her long lunches, she told about my liquid lunches, I ended up getting fired); if my cousin hadn’t looked up my dress when we were kids, I wouldn’t have had to hit him across the bridge of the nose with his own baseball bat. The department of it’s always the other guy’s fault.