What's something you were told you'd regret in the future, but you still don't regret at all?
1mon 28d ago by reddthat.com/u/Anchorxiety in asklemmy@lemmy.ml
Not having kids, every time I have any remorse I spend some time around kids and their parents, in about 5 minutes I'm good
I love kids, but I have never felt a want for them.
This is an interesting nuance. I find most children annoying, and I don't want any of my own, but the love I have for my niece and nephew is bigger than I ever could have imagined.
I guess there's always room for exceptions.
I hadn't planned on kids or marriage. I'm so thankful to have both.
There is truth in the saying "you won't understand until you have your own". The love I feel for my kids are like nothing else and nothing before it.
With that said, I'd never tell someone they would regret not having kids. As much as I love them, they take ALL my time and then some. It is a very big investment of your time (years) and if you don't want that, that's cool.
Same here, having watched how the lives of my friends who had kids changed reaffirmed the decision of not having any for me. You basically have to be prepared to dedicate next couple of decades of our life to raising kids and not doing much of anything else. And you end up giving up the freedom to do things like move to a different town or try a new career. Your primary goal in life becomes having stable income to raise your kids.
The whole "not much of anything else" mellows out as they get older, and you can even share those interests with your kids. I loved the whole process of going to amusement parks with my daughter, watching her go from enjoying but also being terrified of the small ones, to getting used to those but doing the same for the medium ones, being nervous about going upside down, then seeing it wasn't such a big deal and now loving the big ones as much as I do and we got to experience the most intense one I've ever ridden for the first time together.
Yeah, and nothing wrong with that if it's the sort of thing you enjoy doing.
I'm in the same boat, except I've never felt any kind of remorse. How often do you feel it?
My mom didn't think I should buy a house. In 2009.
I would have been absolutely screwed by now if I'd listened to her advice.
I had the opposite. In 2007 my mom convinced me it's conventional wisdom to buy as much house as you can afford, because historically it is one of the best investments you can make.
Thankfully all I could afford at that time was a pretty cheap house...
We went for a house somewhat below the maximum we could borrow, hardly cheap because nothing is cheap. But I am happy with it and don't see any reason to move. I just want to pay off the mortgage and hopefully retire early. Why the fuck would I want to work years longer just to have a house that costs more?
We also bought under our maximum budget at the time. Good call as well because my partner got sick and had to stay at home for a year. We had to use a lot of our savings that did not go into buying a house to pay our bills.
Transitioning.
Tattoos.
Joining the Fediverse
What kind of tattoos?
What molecule is the flower one? That looks sick
Estrogen!
Unfortunately, it will be my only colour tattoo, because I had a hell of time healing that one. My body has rejected all of my piercings over the years, and clearly didn't like the colours either. It seems to handle blacks just fine though
That sucks, but if you can only have one color tattoo that seems like the perfect choice even if you didn’t know that going in lol
I’m not normally a fan of tattoos (pretty ambivalent overall) but I really like that one and the added meaning for anyone more up to date on their ochem than I am is even cooler 😂
Body only wants big black tattoos and oestrogen, got it!
Loving the birds on the boobs, you were smart to keep them off to one side!
i think theyre bats!
Good point, I only looked at the thumbnail!
Oh lordy yes, tattoos ... my mother drilled it into me when I was a kid that only prostitutes had tattoos, and I took that negativity on board in a weird way.
I got my first tattoo a couple of years after I'd finished doing regular sex work
Not wanting kids.
Cons: you don’t know what you’re missing
Pros: you don’t know what you’re not missing
I don't begrudge anyone not wanting kids. It's not for everyone.
That said, my first thought when I saw the post title was "I don't regret having kids".
I suppose the caveat is that my twins are only 2 and a half, I may well regret having kids when they start getting pregnant, selling drugs, marrying chat bots, that sort of thing.
Edit: I just scrolled through some of the other comments and noticed that the majority of them say that they don't regret not having kids. The fediverse is pretty homogenous I guess.
Were you told you would regret having your kids? That's wild.
It's a lot more common for people to be told that they will regret not having kids, than being told they'll regret having them... so I think the similarities in the responses is quite natural, dont you? Not a lot of parents can answer this post with their kids in mind, but pretty much every voluntarily childless person can.
It’s a lot more common for people to be told that they will regret not having kids, than being told they’ll regret having them
That's not my experience, at all.
When I was in my 20s plenty of older guys would tell me not to have kids. Admittedly, these were the older weirdos hanging out at bars, but the source of the advice isn't really in question right now.
Every single voluntarily childless person I've spoken to have had the experience of being told they'll regret it.
I can only recall two people being told they'd regret their decision to have kids... and they were both teenagers, so even though I don't agree with saying something like that, I can understand the sentiment of wanting them to wait a few years.
Seems we life in very different worlds.
It's just so rude to say someone will regret their choice regarding kids... BIL is free to make that choice for himself, and more than welcome to keep his mouth shut on your choice.
In my own case, it's certainly been one of my life's great adventures. The most meaningful thing I've ever done.
This is the mantra of the family I married to. Sometimes a little too much.
Still love them though:)
That's a damn good answer.
This. 100 times this.
A variation of this that I realized fairly recently is that striving for excellence doesn't mean the journey towards it is garbage. I can both feel pride in what I've done while also acknowledging where it could have been better with the intent to either circle back and do it better in the future (for like house projects) or avoid that mistake next time (for creations).
Like I did a cross stitch of a wolf and it skewed a bit because it had a lot of half-stitching (without going into too much detail, a full cross stitch equalizes the forces the threads put on the canvas while a half-stitch puts an uneven force on it). So for my current one, I got hoops that I previously didn't think I needed, which hold the canvas in place outside so the threads are less likely to put a high force where they are.
And my next one will involve a better ordering strategy because my fairly random approach caused some areas of the canvas to bunch up more than others. Less noticeable than the wolf's skew, but still a flaw I'd like to fix going forward but I'm not beating myself up about the current one.
Assuming this is even relevant to the context you mean lol.
No one has told me I would regret that but so far living like that is great.
Not going to church
I mean, the whole point is that you are going to regret it after you die so it might be a bit early to comment on that
There is no hell but the ones created here on earth by humans, often driven by religion
That’s fucking stupid.
Eh, that’s the kinda thing you don’t know what you’re missing. Contentment and Hope are a powerful life force.
Don't need church for those.
Two things the Church is against. I'll keep my Happy Heathery, thankee
On my 5th birthday my parents threw a party for me with friends from kindergarten. My father had a pretty good camera for the time and loved taking photos. This was during analog times, way before digital cameras, so you wouldn't just take a bunch of photos because it got expensive. He wanted to take a group photo and I, always being a little annoyed back then with the constant photos, stuck out my tongue. He tried to make me smile but I refused. So he told me he'd take the photo of me sticking out my tongue and I'd regret it when I'm an adult that I don't have a nice photo of me on my 5th birthday. I'm 40 and I don't regret it. Love that photo.
When I was a kid I went through the boxes that held all the family photos and threw away the ones of me, there is now very little physical evidence I existed at all up in till the mid 90s.
getting a hysterectomy. this last year has proven that my foresight was indeed correct, the post right above this one is an article about the government planning to reduce or remove access to contraceptives, and no way in hell is anyone gonna make me be pregnant. i was extremely lucky to find a surgeon who would do it since i have no kids and was under thirty at the time.
It is extremely concerning how many surgeons are happy to sterilize men on request, but push back HARD when women ask. I've talked to several women in this exact situation, it's like if you're under 30 and don't have 5 kids you must not have any idea what you want and you lose agency over your own body. One friend who wanted this had surgeons demanding a permission slip from her husband. What the fuck? Does her body belong to him? I find this situation abhorrent. Your body your choice end of story. And if you regret the consequences that's on you, not your doctor. And SHOULD NOT BE your doctor's job to dictate your life plans
As a man who's been very sure he wanted to remain childfeee since his teens: most surgeons won't sterilize men on request either. I was told several times to come back after I was married with at least three kids. Had to move to the literal opposite corner of the country to a place where Planned Parenthood isn't under constant assault to get a vasectomy after decades of chasing one.
Wow. That's unreal. If I may ask were you trying to do a vasectomy (which can often be reversed) or something more permanent?
A vasectomy, mostly. I did try to get into some studies for things like IVD, but that never materialized either.
I was shocked at how easy it was when I got to the NW and just...walked into a Planned Parenthood and scheduled the appointment.
Florida in the late 90s/early 00s was very "unreal", but it's gotten worse every time I've gone back to visit.
There was a quote something like no matter how bad life gets religion can always be counted on to make it worse.
my surgeon has your mindset and i trust her with my life. she also said if i decide to start T she manages transgender care as well. a few months ago i even saw her on a youtube ad advocating for womens rights and body autonomy. i just hope she doesnt leave the area, as a lot of doctors do here.
being extremely fucking transgender
Spending time playing video games. I enjoyed every minute and I didn't miss out on much.
Not having kids. I have hobbies, and money/time for them.
One of the previous popes called childless couples selfish. I say a never-married 70-year old operating the world's largest paedophile welfare programme has nothing to say to me about child-rearing.
Not having kids.
Getting tattoos. Parents, grandparents etc all said by the time you’re 30 you’ll hate them. Well I’m in my mid 30’s now and I still get new ones.
In light of some other replies: the same could be said about having kids.
not having kids. I still think it was the right decision for me
Having kids. Maybe it is just communities I am in, however I fealt whole internet is against having kids.
It was the best decision I ever made!
Indeed! Good for you ignoring the doomers!
Kids are an absolute blessing. Like a bunch of best friend mini-me’s to enjoy life with.
Some say it's unethical to bring kids into this world, yet they don't seem to be in any rush to leave it themselves.
Plus humanity and life have faced difficult situations before. None of this would have existed if they had instead just given up and said "this is too hard for kids to handle".
Are you seriously suggesting that people who don't want to bring kids into a world where they don't see a path towards ensuring their well-being...should kill themselves if they're serious about it?
No, I'm saying the ones who say it's evil to bring kids into this world are hypocrites if they themselves want to keep existing in this world but think a child couldn't possibly want to exist in it.
Like anti-natalist, not just child free. I don't think anyone has a duty to have kids and think not wanting kids is a great reason to not have them. I even disagree with doctors who refuse to sterilize people who would rather remove that possibility than keep the risk (and think the doctors should be shielded from any consequences when a patient later regrets that decision). I'd also call it fair if you said some people have no business having kids.
But there's some people online who take that position to the next level and say that anyone having kids these days is wrong to do so.
It's pathetic, considering how existence itself was a struggle for the past 3 billion years, then gets easier over the last like 100k, and now there's new challenges and anti-natalists want us to just give up because it is hard?
And inconsistent because they don't want to give up themselves, but want everyone else to not give future generations a chance.
And I didn't say they should kill themselves, but if they believe existence is so painful and hopeless that creating new life is wrong, why haven't they? Though that "if they are serious about it" is the crux of my position: I believe they are being dramatic or overcompensating for those other assholes that insist having kids is our only purpose and that everyone should have them and gets in their business about not wanting kids themselves.
I also believe that kids born during a collapse will probably have an easier time handling it (emotionally) than those of us who got used to life before a collapse. It's just hard to say if that will apply to kids born soon or if it won't be the case for some decades yet.
Well, now that I've got the long and short of it, what you're saying makes sense. Thanks for expanding. I didn't have that context.
I don't have any disagreements. I think a decision like whether or not to have children is ultimately up to the individuals making the children. I do think there are many oft overlooked factors that can make having kids unethical, but I'm drawing my line well before suggesting having kids is always evil. That thought heavily implies that humanity itself is unethical and should be ended, and I say it's not our place to decide that (though we could obviously stand to be so much better than we are now).
I appreciate the food for thought. Cheers.
They're anything bus serious, but that does appear to be what they're suggesting, yes. Typical pronatalist nonsense.
Not moving out. In Germany there's still a bit of a stigma around living with your parents past your mid-20s but when I see what's currently going on with, you know, the housing market I'm glad I made that decision. I might have been a bit too lazy as well...
Plus I was able to save a bunch of money because of that, which is gonna come in handy for my move to Australia in September.
I've accepted that my daughter probably won't be able to get her own place once she's done school. I'm OK with it, would rather she have that option than be potentially pressured into a toxic relationship to afford to live.
How'd you get approved for that? I thought Australia was very locked down for immigration
I didn't get approved for anything yet but getting a 417 visa shouldn't be that hard AFAIK and from there you just have to get lucky and be sponsored for a 482 visa by an employer, after that you can get permanent residency on the 186 visa, after 2 years with the same employer. Aaand from there it's just another year until you can apply for citizenship.
Pretty straightforward, albeit a bit tedious...
30% of the population of Australia was born outside Australia.
Immigration is straightforward (although maybe expensive) if you can get one of the skilled migration visas.
I wonder how your parents feel about that
In terms of living with my mum? She doesn't mind; I do pay her a bit every month to compensate as well.
In terms of moving? My dad doesn't care, I have a feeling that he wouldn't even come to visit me. My mum obviously both doesn't really want me to go and wants me to live my own life so she's ultimately fine with it.
Honestly, living with my mum hasn't been easy for the last year. There's just so much petty drama happening between her, my sister and anyone who they think wrongs them (I won't go into detail but it's bad); so it'll be great to get away from that.
That's far faaar from my only reason to move to Australia, mind you.
Cracking my knuckles.
Still waiting on that arthritis I was promised.
Here's a guy who Cracks His Knuckles in Only One Hand for Over 60 Years. What you need to worry about is when they stop cracking, symptom of systemic inflammation.
Hey if you don't mind, roughly how old are you?
Becoming atheist
Not going to prom. Really don't know on what basis people would say that.
I had zero things in common with my high school classmates. Even before cell phones were ubiquitous, I saw all of them as reckless and incompetent. I identified more with the teachers. They seemed normal and level headed for the most part.
What do you do in that situation? /genq
I think I'm in the same spot but I can't just kill off my social life, that has the capacity to be even worse
Anal
Getting heavily tattooed, not having kids, not getting married/“settling down”. I grew up in an extremely conservative Christian home that pushed the standard “American Dream” plan but never embraced it. I’m aware there’s experiences that I’ll never have that are a source of joy and life defining for others, but I knew very early on those things weren’t calling me. Decades later I have zero regrets about what I didn’t do and what I did do.
Not doing homework as a kid. Got to have a full childhood with lots of independent fucking around that has shaped my personality for the better. Tested out of school, and now me and those of my cohort who tried are all in the same boat anyway.
Hell yeah, brother. I'm in the same boat. Sunk myself into my computer instead of doing boring tasks after school and now it's my job.
Were you homeschooled? That's the only way I can imagine a kid could escape homework, because traditional shitty schools require homework. Because schools' objective is to make children miserable & accustomize them to the agonizing relentless pressures of responsibility. I'm sincerely happy for you that you broke free from that bullshit & found true enjoyment in childhood, while traditional shitty schools rob children of their childhood joy 😥
Were you homeschooled? That’s the only way I can imagine a kid could escape homework
Disclaimer: I'm from the EU, I don't know if it's more difficult in the US. But I escaped homework by simply not doing it. I got yelled at, there were a lot of talks between my parents and the school, teachers made fun of me in front of the whole class...but that just made me more angry and more unwilling to do them. :)
Ultimately, there was nothing they could do, except giving me bad grades, but I didn't much care about those. I've been a little shithead.
What also helped was my parents not giving much of a fuck either, they trusted me to do what's best for me.
Same, just didn't do the homework or attend school full time. Only turned up for a morning presence and went home shortly after. School tried for a year or 2, gave up and ignored it
The way I avoided home work in the 80s was not do it and not care about the repercussion, though I did drop out at 16 and get my GED.
Not playing football, or being interested it it at all.
Leaving proprietary software.
Yes. I keep hearing how Microsoft or Apple or Google is about to do something I shouldn't miss. And they (the unmissable things) keep being kind of big nothings.
Spending so much time at the computer
Yeeees
That one takes time to catch up with you.
Intermittent touching grass is essential. ;)
Same! My parents were so worried about how much time I spent at the computer. Now it's my day job (computer programmer).
Never trying alcohol or drugs or cigarettes or gambling. My whole life I've had a strong intuitive sense to avoid all that stuff, and I've never even had the slightest desire. When I was in the army my colleagues would tease me that eventually some day I would crack and give in to the dark side, but nah.
Getting tattoos
I regret not getting more by now. Long wait times for good artists put me off but by now, I could have gotten through many such waits.
Sign up for a wait now!
Not going to college
i went to college and i regret it; but i suppose i regret it less than going to the army like i originally planned.
Dodged a bullet there
Possibly literally
i would have died cancer from the depleted uranium weapons in iraq.
instead, i'm just saddled with student debt for the rest of my life with useless degree to show for it and a marriage that was forced to end by the federal gov't w zero prospects for another.
What do you do for a living?
Work at a major brokerage firm as a Sr Specialist in Tech Support, I basically help reps on the phones solve issues, and over the past year getting to do devops work on our internal site for our dept.
They will respond to you when they’re done putting fries in the bag.
Hurhurhur
dropping out of highschool. best decision I ever made tbh
I've kicked myself in the ass over that decision a lot over the years. It's far behind me now, but I still kinda regret it.
Getting divorced and married. (The second time)
Cannabis.
Never getting a credit card.
Not making sport. My mum told me im gonna get fat like my dad but im still thin
I was told I would regret not enjoying and living up high school. To this day, still do not regret doing more with my shitty life in high school. College? Yeah, probably. High school? Nah
Refusing to learn cursive and long form division in 3rd grade. Never needed either.
Question, if you never learned cursive, does that mean you cab't read cursive, or doea it juat take a little longer? And can't you just kinda write cursive after a while anyway? I learned cursive like a year after i learned writing, so it just went hand in hand, and i never thought about it as a skill per se.
I can somewhat read cursive. Takes me a long time, so I'm not going to bother with anything longer than a sentence. I can sign my name in cursive and can more or less write in lower case cursive but i doubt it's easy to read and I take a lot of creative liberties.
Came here looking for someone saying "face tattoo". None so far.
"stop wasting time with that Linux thing. Nobody will ever hire you unless you specialize in Windows"
Linux has done far more for me professionally than being a Windows engineer ever got me, and it repeatedly keeps being proven.
Wish I could say the same, so far Linux knowledge seems to have done very little for me as far as employment goes. I have used it at work before but normally it isn't something anyone else seems to care about. At least my limited knowledge of Windows hasn't been too significant of a problem so far either.
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did someone tell you you'd regret that, and they were right?