A 2012 study by Mike Morrison, Kai Epstude, and Neal Roese concluded that regrets about social relationships are felt more deeply than other types of regrets because they threaten our sense of belonging. When our connections to others tatter or disintegrate, we suffer. And when it’s our fault, we suffer even more. “The need to belong,” they wrote, “is not just a fundamental human motive but a fundamental component of regret.”[2]
Closed door regrets vex us, because we can’t fix them. It’s over. But doors that cannot budge hide behind them a benefit: they offer another example of how regret can make us better.
A few years after Deepa died, Amy learned that another childhood friend had been diagnosed with cancer. “I kept revisiting my previous experience [with Deepa],” Amy said. “I really needed to get myself on board for however difficult this would be.”
Amy called this friend frequently. She visited her. They exchanged emails and texts. “I did as much as I was able to make sure she knew that she was always in my thoughts. I made a much more concerted effort to be present with her and acknowledge the reality of her situation.”
The friend passed away in 2015. “We maintained a connection up until she died,” Amy told me. “It didn’t make it easier. But I don’t have regrets.”
RIFTS AND DRIFTS
Cheryl and Jen never argued—not even a small squabble. They never discussed the dissolution of their friendship. It simply faded.
While the connection regrets that people reported in the surveys numbered well into the thousands, the specific ways their relationships ended numbered only two: rifts and drifts.
Rifts usually begin with a catalyzing incident—an insult, a disclosure, a betrayal. That incident leads to raised voices, ominous threats, crashed plates, and other mainstays of telenovelas and Edward Albee plays. Rifts leave the parties resentful and antagonistic, even though to outsiders the underlying grievance might sound trivial and easy to repair.
For example, a seventy-one-year-old Canadian man regretted that:
A disagreement with my son at Christmas over the behavior of his five-year-old son （my grandson） turned into a huge, albeit brief, argument. It has resulted in a family estrangement that has lasted almost five years. We have not talked or communicated in any way since then.
A sixty-six-year-old Texas woman wrote:
I regret reacting negatively when I found out my daughter-in-law . . . and my son were immigrating back to her home in Australia after we were led to believe she wanted to live near us. They left and are now estranged.
Drifts follow a muddier narrative. They often lack a discernible beginning, middle, or end. They happen almost imperceptibly. One day, the connection exists. Another day, we look up, and it’s gone.
A Pennsylvania woman regretted:
Not taking time to be a better friend, sister, daughter. Letting time slip away and suddenly realizing that I’m forty-eight.
A forty-one-year-old man in Cambodia wrote:
I regret letting good friends drift away by not staying in touch.
For many, the situation is recognizable only in retrospect. Said a sixty-two-year-old Pennsylvania man:
I wish I had tried harder to foster deeper relationships with my work colleagues. I’ve worked at the same place for over thirty years, but I’m not sure I would really call any of the people I’ve worked with a close friend.
Rifts are more dramatic. But drifts are more common.
Drifts can also be harder to mend. Rifts generate emotions like anger and jealousy, which are familiar and easier to identify and comprehend. Drifts involve emotions that are subtler and that can feel less legitimate. And first among these emotions, described by hundreds of people with connection regrets, is awkwardness.
When Cheryl has contemplated reconnecting with her old friend, she’s asked herself, “Would it be better for Jen not ever to hear from me—or for Jen to hear from me and have it be kind of creepy?” And Cheryl’s concerns about creepiness have always prevailed. She worries about “the weirdness of reaching out” after a quarter century. She fears that such a gesture “might seem not right” to her friend.
The same barrier prevented Amy from telephoning Deepa. “There was a sort of awkwardness to me of ‘I haven’t really talked to you in years. But, hey, I heard you’re dying and I’m going to call!’？” Amy explained. “I wish I had not been afraid to confront the uncomfortable feelings I knew I was going to have when I called her.”
If Amy had faced those feelings, she might have been surprised, even gratified. Human beings are impressive creatures. We can fly planes, compose operas, and bake scones. But we generally stink at divining what other people think and anticipating how they will behave. Worse, we don’t realize how inept we are at these skills.[3] And when it comes to perceiving and predicting awkwardness, we’re next-level bunglers.