All deep structure regrets reveal a need and yield a lesson. With moral regrets, the need is goodness. The lesson, which we’ve heard in religious texts, philosophy tracts, and parental admonitions, is this: when in doubt, do the right thing.
喂养一只兔子，因为溺宠，放出铁笼子后，吃多兔粮包装袋的塑料而去世。[*]
Female, 38, China
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“Inaction. Not asking the girl out, not starting the business sooner, not applying to speak at the conference. I regret inaction more than any mistake I’ve ever made.”
Male, 43, Canada
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“Not taking my grandmother candy on her deathbed. She specifically requested it.”
Male, 35, Arkansas
10.
Connection Regrets
To understand connection regrets, let me tell you the story of four women, two friendships, and a pair of doors.
The first woman is Cheryl Johnson, a native of Des Moines, Iowa, a resident of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and the former research director at a publishing company. Cheryl is in her early fifties. She’s devoted to her husband, her gym, and her latest projects, a house she’s building and a book she’s writing.
In the late 1980s, Cheryl attended Drake University, also in Des Moines, where she became fast friends with the second woman in this tale. Her name is Jen.
Cheryl and Jen belonged to the same sorority and lived in a house with about forty other women.[1] Among the group, these two stood out for their seriousness and ambition. Cheryl became president of the sorority; Jen was elected president of the entire student body. “We took our college careers a little more seriously than the typical student, and that made us oddballs,” Jen told me. “We connected in part because we felt on the fringes of things socially.”
They talked all the time. They supported each other’s enthusiasms and aspirations. They hatched big plans to take on the world.
Shortly after graduation in 1990, Jen married—Cheryl was a bridesmaid—and moved to Virginia. And shortly after that, Jen invited Cheryl to visit her at her new home. Jen said that she wanted Cheryl to meet a friend of Jen’s husband, who she thought might be a good romantic match.
Cheryl was taken aback. She’d been dating another Drake student for two years. “I thought he was the one.” Jen knew the guy, but Cheryl said, she “clearly did not think he was the one.” Cheryl politely declined the invitation to visit. No drama. No hard feelings.
Over the next few years, Cheryl and Jen, living in different parts of the country at a time before widespread email, exchanged letters and cards. Cheryl eventually ditched the boyfriend, whom she refers to today only as “Mr. Wrong,” and says, “Now that I’ve matured into the person I am, I can see what Jen saw.”
Within a couple of years, the letters dwindled. Then they stopped. Cheryl hasn’t talked to Jen for twenty-five years. They haven’t seen each other in person since Jen’s wedding.
“We didn’t have a falling out of any kind. I just let it kind of drift away,” Cheryl told me. “I regret not having that relationship in my life. I’ve missed having another person in my life who could share with me the kind of growth I’ve experienced over the years.”
The absence disquiets her. “If you’re going to die in a month, are there things you would want tied up?” Cheryl said. “I would like her to know that [the friendship] feels significant to me even twenty-five years later.”
During a conversation over Zoom one spring afternoon, I asked Cheryl if she’d consider trying to revive the friendship—or at least to call, email, or write Jen.
“I think the door’s open,” she replied. “If I were not a coward, I would reach out.”
* * *
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Connection regrets are the largest category in the deep structure of human regret. They arise from relationships that have come undone or that remain incomplete. The types of relationships that produce these regrets vary. Spouses. Partners. Parents. Children. Siblings. Friends. Colleagues. The nature of the rupture also varies. Some relationships fray. Others rip. A few were inadequately stitched from the beginning.
But in every case, these regrets share a common plotline. A relationship that was once intact, or that ought to have been intact, no longer is. Sometimes, often because of a death, there is nothing more that we can do. However, many times, in many roles—daughter, uncle, sorority sister—we yearn to close the circle. But doing so requires effort, brings emotional uncertainty, and risks rejection. So we confront a choice: Try to make the relationship whole—or let it remain unresolved?