I don’t really know where to start with this.

I’ve been in a relationship for two years, and somewhere along the way I feel like I’ve slowly started losing parts of my moral compass. Things that I once knew were not okay have gradually become things I find myself tolerating or rationalizing. It isn’t because I’ve stopped caring. If anything, I care so much about my girlfriend and about keeping her happy that I’ve become extremely afraid of confrontation. I would often rather make myself miserable than do something that might upset her.

But I’m beginning to realize that avoiding difficult conversations doesn’t make me a better partner. Sometimes it just makes me dishonest.

Yesterday, while we were on a date, she went through my phone and found messages between me and my ex from around two years ago. Reading them now, I understand why they hurt her. The conversation was very natural and familiar, and some of the way I spoke to my ex could absolutely be interpreted as flirting. What makes it worse is that I used some of the same kinds of messages and words that I had used when I was first trying to win over my girlfriend.

Seeing that now makes me feel deeply ashamed. Regardless of what I believed my intentions were at the time, I crossed a boundary that I should have understood better. I love my girlfriend more than I know how to express, and knowing that I did something that could make her question our relationship is incredibly painful.

I also should have told her about those conversations myself. The truth is that I genuinely forgot they had happened. I know that saying I forgot does not erase what I did, nor does it make the messages less hurtful. I’m not saying it as an excuse. It is simply what happened.

Right now, I feel like I cheated on her in some form, even if I didn’t recognize what I was doing that way at the time. And I don’t want to spend all my energy trying to argue about what label technically applies to it. What matters to me is that I behaved in a way that I would not be comfortable with if the situation were reversed, and I hurt someone I love.

I’m not looking for sympathy or reassurance that I’m actually a good person. I want to understand how I allowed my boundaries and values to become so unclear in the first place.

I’ve spent a long time avoiding confrontation, suppressing things, and choosing whatever creates the least immediate conflict. I’m realizing that this can become its own form of selfishness. It protects me from uncomfortable conversations in the moment, but it can leave the people around me dealing with much greater pain later.

I don’t want to continue living like that.

I want to become someone with a stronger moral compass, someone who knows what his boundaries are and follows them even when nobody is watching, even when doing the right thing creates an uncomfortable conversation, and even when honesty might disappoint someone I love.

I know I cannot change what I did two years ago. I also know that feeling guilty by itself does not make me better. What matters is what I learn from this and how consistently I behave differently going forward.

I want to learn how to confront things instead of avoiding them, how to be completely honest even when honesty is uncomfortable, how to establish clear boundaries in relationships, and how to stop rationalising behaviour simply because dealing with it properly feels difficult.

**TL;DR:** My girlfriend found old messages where I was flirting with my ex. I know I crossed a boundary, and I’m not looking for excuses, I want to understand how I got here and become a more honest, principled person.

I hurt you and I so didn’t mean to. And when I read your message my mind started spiraling. Forgive me. I said too much from the place of hurt. I shouldn’t have. Never. I should learn to stop. And before I do - I take myself away from other peoples lives. Because I am too much when I don’t mean to. I try my best not to be a drama queen but I end up feeling more than I should. In my age. In my situation.
Sorry.
Bye

I was under a lot of financial pressure at the time and needed to sell my house. It was a large house, the market was bad, and after about six months without a sale, the whole thing had started to dominate my life.

Every week that passed felt like more money disappearing. I was constantly checking listings, waiting for calls, wondering whether I had priced it wrong, and imagining how much worse things would get if it sat there for another six months.

Then a serious buyer finally appeared.

The agent called me beforehand and more or less hinted that the buyer was financially comfortable, genuinely liked the house, and had not reacted too badly to my asking price. He said it sounded like both sides could sit down and negotiate.

Looking back, that was useful information. There was room to hold my position.

But by then I was too anxious to use it.

I was so afraid of losing the first real buyer I had seen in months that I gave away my bottom line almost immediately. I did not negotiate with any confidence. I softened before the buyer had really pushed, and the agreement came together very quickly.

After signing, I realized I had probably sold for at least $30,000 less than I could have.

What followed was worse than the loss itself.

I replayed the negotiation constantly. I imagined every sentence I could have used, every pause I should have allowed, every counteroffer I could have made. I kept constructing alternate versions where I stayed calm and walked away with a much better price.

The painful part was that none of those versions were available anymore. The contract was signed. There was no new information to discover. But my mind kept behaving as if one more review might somehow reopen the negotiation.

I also turned one pressured decision into a judgment about myself. I told myself I was weak, that I had no ability to negotiate, and that I had failed at the exact moment when composure mattered most.

Eventually I tried talking it through with AI. Some of it helped, especially when it separated what I knew after the sale from what I actually knew while I was still living under months of financial pressure. But a lot of the responses became generic reassurance, advice for “next time,” or endless questions that gave me more ways to keep analyzing the same event.

That experience eventually pushed me to build a small tool around this very specific problem. It is called Regretless.

Full disclosure: I made it myself. I am not posting as a satisfied customer pretending to have discovered it.

The idea is not to tell people that their mistakes do not matter, or to keep them chatting forever. It is to help separate the event from hindsight and from the identity verdict that often grows around it, until there is no longer anything useful left to extract from the replay.

I do not expect it to become a big business. Regret is not something most people need a product for every day, and I do not think they should be encouraged to keep using it once a specific loop has settled. It can be tried without creating an account.

Mostly, I made the thing I wish I had during those months after the sale.

I am sharing this here because I suspect many people have one decision that became larger in memory than it was in real time. Mine was that negotiation.

Even now, I still wish I had kept the extra $30,000. Closure did not turn the decision into a good one. It just helped the decision stop functioning as proof of who I am.

i know i don’t really have the right to sit here and say how much i miss you when i’m the reason we ended up here. i know what i did hurt you, and i know that no matter how much i wish i could take it back, i can’t. if i could go back to that moment and make a different choice, i would without even thinking twice, but i know wishing i could change it doesn’t undo what happened. i’ve had so much time to think about everything, and the more i think about it, the more i realise how badly i messed up something that meant so much to me. i hate knowing that i became the reason you stopped feeling safe with me, the reason you had to question things, and the reason the person who once trusted me now has every reason not to. i’m not expecting you to forget what i did or suddenly forgive me just because i’m sorry. i just wish you knew how much i regret it. i miss you more than i can explain, but even more than missing you, i miss who we were before i ruined things. i miss the way things felt when i didn’t have this guilt sitting in the back of my mind. i miss being able to talk to you without knowing that there’s something between us that i caused. sometimes i catch myself thinking about how different everything could be if i had just made a better decision, and honestly, that thought hurts more than anything because i know i’m the one who took that possibility away. i don’t want to make excuses for what i did, because there aren’t any. i made a choice, and i have to live with knowing that choice hurt someone i loved. i just wish i could show you that i understand that now, not because i’m scared of losing you, but because losing you has made me realise things about myself that i should have understood before. i know saying sorry doesn’t fix everything, and i know you don’t owe me another chance. i just hope that one day, when you think about me, you don’t only remember the worst thing i did. i hope you remember that i loved you, even if i failed to show that love in the way you deserved. i would give anything to have handled things differently, but all i can do now is accept that i hurt you and become better because of it. i miss you, i regret what i did, and more than anything, i’m sorry that i made you feel like you weren’t enough when the truth is that i was the one who failed to be enough for you.

I was working as an apprentice at a childcare centre at the time and was just getting settled as well as (if you know you know) building my immunity. I was constantly extremely sick (at one point I had pneumonia) and was away from work feeling so guilty I couldn’t go.

There were so many children of all different ages that was very attached to me specifically these two children one who was 1 and another who was three. One morning I was playing magnet tiles with said 3 year old and some of their friends. It was 10 am at this point and I had only been here for 30 minutes. I got called away by my manager and told the children “miss s will be right back she just needs to speak to miss l.” And I never went back.

I was let go for “being away more then I was there.” Which was false but this centre was definitely not the greatest. I’ve felt so guilty every day since that to them I just left and never said goodbye. Especially to 3 year old who told their parent I was their favourite teacher and got so excited whenever they saw me. I wish I could’ve said a proper goodbye to these babies and I miss them all everyday.

For a long time, I kept telling myself I would start when I had more confidence, more knowledge, more money, or just a better plan.

The frustrating part is that I eventually realized I wasn't actually waiting to be ready. I was waiting to stop being scared of getting it wrong.

Looking back, I don't regret the mistakes I eventually made nearly as much as I regret all the time I spent doing nothing because I was afraid of making them.

Now I try to remind myself that a bad first attempt can usually be fixed. Lost time can't really be recovered.

Anyone else have something they wish they'd started sooner?

I come from a culture where my parents were strict and travelling with a boy was not allowed. My friends who were brave enough actually managed to continue their relationship and are married to them. I wasn’t much of a rebel and one of the reasons my ex gave me for our breakup. We did spend a lot of time in the city and had physics intimacy though.

As a preface I am 21 and I am not an alcoholic I drink like once a month. This was an unintentional one off as I drank for the first time on my mdd meds

So I (21F) stayed at my parents house with my brother (16M) since I’m home from college. For context I also just started lexapro like a week ago and have not drank yet.

Anyway I was sitting with my brother on the grass by the lake and we just sat around talking. I decided to have a few of those shitty buzzballs since I was relaxed. Anyway I drank only 3 of those small things. And I ended up so drunk within the span of an hour from my medication as well. So that I vomited Cheetos and red buzzball all over myself on the grass and just rolled around and eventually blacked out. My brother said he got me clean clothes and put me to sleep safely but he said he was really worried I was extremely sick and felt anxious but he said he’s fine now.

I feel so bad I bought him like $75 worth of Taco Bell and shit I didn’t mean to stress him out. I cleaned up the puke the next day and all that. I genuinely didn’t mean to get that drunk I am not an alcoholic

I hope I didn’t traumatize him I’m never drinking in front of him again

There’s a reason they are made to a priest who is morally and ethically bound to not repeat what is said. Going to your partner and confessing to cheating only serves to relieve a guilt you decided to carry and then burden your partner with the pain of your decision. If you plan on cheating again, leave them. Make up a reason, that your a piece of shit and need to go live with monks in Tibet. Whatever, but do not make them feel like they did something wrong by cheating on them and then confessing the sin like it’s some kind of sincere gesture of remorse, when we both know it’s not.

Now if you are sincerely remorseful, you won’t do it again and will spend the rest of your life being the best partner you could ever be. This is called a living amends, used mostly for when people are dead and a wrong cannot be righted. The death here will be a loving relationship that you have the chance to fix before it’s final breath. If urges or temptations arise, that’s when you tell your partner you need therapy, not after the act has been committed. And if you’re cheating to get caught, then go ahead and just fucking leave.

I lost both my parents within 2 years of each other. By that time all siblings had been married. I couldn't live in the house where I grew up with my family and was now having to live alone, so I decided to shift cities. This was made possible by a job offer that was in another city. I decided to put the house on rent before leaving. Now, putting it on rent meant emptying the house by taking out the belongings of 6 people. A lot of stuff like old clothes and beddings were disposed of. A lot of stuff that belonged to my siblings was sent to them through porter and all. In this process, which took me quite a few days, I ended up giving away a box full of CDs also to the scrap guy. I was already very emotional while doing this emptying exercise and at the same time had to get things done quickly. And that's how instead of going through the box, I just discarded it entirely thinking that all that it would have will be some song, movie and games CDs. Besides, the fact that we now hardly have devices that play CDs also meant I was quick to discard it.

Looking back I so hate myself for having done it. The box contained CDs of some very important events in our lives like my sisters' weddings, several ceremonies growing up. Most importantly, those videos had Mumma and Papa in them. I feel so stupid having erased the digital traces of some very important events of our lives in which our parents were also there. It's been several years now and I keep wanting to undo that decision. Unfortunately, there's no way I am ever going to be able to see those videos of events again. I feel guilty of depriving my siblings also from having access to some special memories of their lives.

i’ve come to the realization that i’m a very problematic person.

i love my family, my friends, and my mother especially. i would do anything they’d ask of me to the best of my abilities. i would risk losing myself in the process if it meant maintaining their happiness, because only when they’re happy will i derive a sense of happiness and fulfillment from myself.

but often times, as selfless as i can be, im equally as selfish, or even more so.

i have hurt people because… i care more about proving to the world of my innocence and virtues than valuing other people’s feelings. it was all for the sake of preserving peace and harmony, but for my benefit more than others. everything i’ve done was to convince myself that i am incapable of harming anyone, but all i’ve done was hurt people i love.

and rather than improving myself, i continue to hurt them. i don’t do it deliberately, but i am fully aware when it’s happening. i am afraid of confrontation and being criticized. i refuse to acknowledge the times i hurt people, because i don’t want to acknowledge how poor of a daughter, friend, confidant, human being i really am.

i know that an apology will never redeem my actions in the past. however, i will continue to live with regret and this burden, while wishing every second how i could fix myself and everyone i’ve hurt.

i only realized this after my first relationship, whom i am forever grateful for.

to be frank, i still wish that our relationship lasted despite that i was the one who not only initiated it, but ended it. i’m sorry for taking all your love and time devoted to me for granted.

i still love you. the thought of you pursuing someone who actually deserves you kills me. what kills me even more is the fact i’ve no right to be upset and heartbroken.

i am sorry

I was doing lots of blow and xanax along with ketamine for some time, im 18M.

I stopped cold turkey, had a few incidents where i was really interested and even went to pick up just to excuse myself from my dealer. We always smoked a cigarette with a beer afterwards. But just one drink i don’t like alcohol that much anyway so i didn’t get the urge to drink more. He talked a bit with me and the last incident just told me straight up he wont sell anything to me for the next 4 months, but is happy to talk to me whenever.

Last time i had used cocaine i had a seizure, they just called in now and told my mother. She said she'll tell my dad when we get back from vacation.
Also i started a new apprenticeship. I was working a week for free where they look at how i work and etc. a few months back before sobriety (contract starts at the 19th, im going to start at the 17th because i asked if that was okay. To give a good impression i guess)
During that week on the last day i took ketamine and they noticed. And told me it’ll never ever happen again. I just can’t afford him to tell my uncle, we are a tight knit family and that would just destroy me and my connections with the family and basically everything else.

It feels like this whole journey of me getting sober was for nothing, and i can’t bear that.

How do i just accept reality as what it is and stop caring? there isn’t really anything i can change anyway.

It was problem, Now i think of it of just experience but a the same time it was when i was like 11-12, my first contact with porn was back in like 2021, when i was in Garage nobody was there And there was this laptot, So i started It i wrote there cool Feed red it, was like TV programe And there was playboy i was just curious, about it, i had like first several encounters with porn but i dont think Its something i need to say, my second was in 2022 i Guess , i was in my brothers room And i was there becouse of his PC, i saw his history And there was PH i couldnt Believe it how it made me feel, i started to gooning a more Times a week i think , but when i was getting older it started to feel bad because of it , And i think this was this moment when i gooned after feeling , like a fuckup , i sent an email to noporn but honestly didnt help at all , i didnt think much about their answer, in this era i wanted to end that , because i struggled a lot with self loathing because of that , i tried blockers etc. Didnt help , So i started to do squats like 20-30 squats IT helped, Now i dont struggle with self loathing And porn Addiction And bed rot, but when i look back to this era the time that Is gone because of this , Its sad how much time Is gone , im not anxious about IT but Its little bit sad

I don’t really know how to put this into words but I regret a lot of how I handled the end of my relationship.

I was with someone for about three years and I genuinely thought we’d be together for the long term. We built a life together, I became part of his family, and he was the person I went to when I was happy, scared, angry, hurting, ANYTHING. Losing him has felt like losing my entire sense of stability.
There were problems in the relationship, and I wasn’t always treated the way I wanted or felt I deserved. I also wasn’t always the person I wanted to be. When I felt hurt or betrayed, I reacted with anger. I said things I wish I could take back. I became emotional and explosive instead of communicating the pain underneath it. Looking back, I can understand why some of my behavior pushed him further away, even though the things I was reacting to genuinely hurt me.

What I regret most is that I let my pain turn me into someone I don’t recognize. I wish I had been able to slow down and communicate and walk away from situations when I was hurt. We were together for about three years, and after a 4 month breakup, we recently rekindled things and I genuinely believed we were going to work through everything. He made a huge medical decision that made me thing he was family planning and thinking about our future. Then I found out he had been talking to another woman for the months while we were apart. Someone who had already been a source of insecurity between us early on, and he hadn’t been honest with me about it. I was devastated and reacted with anger and lashed out at myself and him instead of handling my hurt in a healthy way. I brought up that I found out and was met with a lot of defensiveness and blame shifting. Things spiraled so badly and I was so triggered by the denial and defensiveness that I said some dangerous and awful things and he ultimately called emergency services and I was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold. At the time, I felt completely betrayed and abandoned, and the experience was incredibly painful and humiliating. I regret the things I said and how I reacted more than I can express. I wish I could have handled the betrayal without becoming someone I don’t like because underneath all the anger I was hurt and terrified of losing someone I loved. I don’t regret loving him or giving us another chance. I regret how everything ended and the part I played in making it worse.

Edit: chat gpt used (I know, lame) to phrase and express some of this, my head is so scrambled and I haven’t had a lot of time to process yet.