Do you ever think of what you would have been like had you made different decisions in your life?

[DawnM]

I am looking at a friend's page from my college years.   He actually dated my friend for a short while.   I was not interested in him and I assume he wasn't interested in me as he never pursued anything.   But it got me thinking of how he used to be part of my social group and how different I am than I was back then and how he is pretty much the same.   His views on things, his politics/spiritual stuff, etc.....he is what I used to be.   And I was thinking that had I married him, or someone like him, how I might be that same person and think the way I used to think and I wonder if I would have grown into who I am today had I married him or one of our group of friends back then.

Sunday night pondering......

[DawnM]

And I know I posed the marriage difference, but really, it can be anything......career/children/living location/school/etc...

[Melissa Louise]

ALL THE TIME!

and it's actually quite bad for me to do it, so I'm trying not to do it.

But definitely there are the moments of choice where things could go one way but they go the other.

The moment I most wonder about is when I agreed to delay my honors year while ex did his PhD, because dd was having a bad time and we couldn't both be studying. Then after his PhD he got sick and couldn't use it anyway,  and I had to go out to work, and that honors year, and the Masters that was to come after it, drifted away as an opportunity.

[Kidlit]

Yes, sometimes. . . But also, I avoid it--this way lies potential discontentment for me. 

[mommyoffive]

Oh yes all the time.  Hindsight is 20/20.  What if we wouldn't have bought our first home right before the housing market crashed?  What if we would have had more kids?   Had kids younger.  Majored in something else.  Moved somewhere else.  Moved abroad instead of not.  RVed around for as long as we wanted instead of coming home.  Lived in country instead of city.  Worked instead of stayed at home.  Sent my kids to school instead of homeschooling.

Edited June 12, 2023 by mommyoffive

[Shoeless]

Yes, but I got over it? That sounds flip, but it's true. I spent a lot of last summer mourning what could have been career-wise, and realized that I could either spend my days stuck in the past or embracing today. 

[DawnM]

1 minute ago, mommyoffive said:

Oh yes all the time.  Hindsight is 20/20.  What if we wouldn't have bought our first home right before the housing market crashed?  What if we would have had more kids?   Had kids younger.  Majored in something else.  Moved somewhere else.  Moved abroad instead of not.  RVed around for as long as we wanted instead of coming home.  Lived in country instead of city.

Oh yes, the moving thing is a big one for me.  I wish I had kept our first house and rented it out instead of selling it.   And I wish I had never agreed to leave California.

[DawnM]

5 minutes ago, Shoeless said:

Yes, but I got over it? That sounds flip, but it's true. I spent a lot of last summer mourning what could have been career-wise, and realized that I could either spend my days stuck in the past or embracing today. 

Yeah, it can be good (as in I am glad I didn't marry the other guy) or bad when you lament things.

[Jaybee]

I do, sometimes, but it mostly makes me so grateful for the life I have had. I have changed a lot over the years; not basic values, but the way I think about a lot of things has continued to morph. Thankfully, my dh and I have done so together. We aren't the "same person" as each other, but we have challenged each other in our growth. Our life path has taken us through some difficult things that have helped shape us. Sometimes, I would have preferred not to have gone through the difficult things. At the same time, I am so thankful for the things we learned through them, and I don't see any way we would have learned them without going through the hard times. Occasionally, I think about what it would be like now if I had gone ahead and gotten that PhD or training in a couple of fields I considered. But if I had done that, I would have given up other things I wanted to do, so 🤷‍♀️. So while I do think about it occasionally, and wish there were some things I had known/understood earlier in my life, there are so many areas in which we have no way of knowing what really would have happened had we taken a different path.

[Katy]

Not just with what could have been… I STILL think like a college kid when I see a job opening. Could I do that? What would I need to do to be well qualified? Would I like it? Could the kids handle me traveling that much? Then I slowly talk myself back into reality. I like my life. I don’t want a job. I might change my mind a year and a half from now when I have more time and this house is more settled. I still don’t have a place for everything and I’d like to paint almost everything and renovate a few rooms and redecorate many of them. 

I have seriously considered taking a job at Pottery Barn or any Williams Sonoma company just for the employee discount.

[DawnM]

I also sometimes wonder what my life would have been like had I not been adopted and had my birth parents raised me.   Their story isn't horrible.   My birth father was an engineer and was in the Air Force and then laid pipes throughout the USA.   My birth mother was 21 when I was born and came from a good family.   They had a weekend trist, and, VIOLA! Here I am!  

[I talk to the trees]

All the time, yes! There are actually two very clear points in my youth where I wish I had made a very different decision than I did. I sincerely believe my life would have been so much better, had I had more courage in those situations. Makes me wish I had a “Clarence” (from It’s a Wonderful Life) to show me what would have happened in either of those cases. 

[TheReader]

Mostly not, but there are some things we (DH & I both) wonder about - what would have been different, with the kids in particular, had we not gone to Brazil.  Would we have caught youngest's dyslexia sooner? Would the older kids have been better off? Would a million different things have gone better? 

We can't know, so I try not to think about it. A friend tells me (and others) - you made the best choice you could at the time, with the information you had at the time you had it. I try to remember that and not second guess. 

Career....school....marriage....all of that, solid.  Should we have skipped Brazil....?  no idea, hope not, who knows......but it's the only thing I think about "what if". 

[Arcadia]

19 minutes ago, mommyoffive said:

What if we wouldn't have bought our first home right before the housing market crashed?

We bought in 2006. On one hand, we would have been able to afford a bigger but not necessarily nicer condo if we bought when the housing market crashed. On the other hand, we would not be approved for a mortgage as we had very little credit history and banks became very strict on issuing mortgages. 
 

8 minutes ago, DawnM said:

I also sometimes wonder what my life would have been like had I not been adopted and had my birth parents raised me.

My twin sister died when she was 3 days old of cardiopulmonary failure. I nearly died too. I have wondered the what if’s. 

[Shoeless]

Life might not have been better under the "what if" scenarios, though. I think a lot of us kind of think that maybe we could have had better lives if we'd made a different decision. 

Maybe you're already living the best-possible-outcome.  Maybe the you living in an alternate universe wishes for the life you currently have. 

[wintermom]

I'm at a conference for women in the construction trades right now, and one of the amazing speakers said something that was so powerful, "I am the hero who saved my own life. I did the actions to get me where I am today. I struggled through the tough times to get to where I am today, and I'm proud of my accomplishments." 

I don't hear many women take ownership like that very often. It was refreshing, and powerful and inspiring. 

I will start looking back to remember all those decisions and actions that I did to, and focus on the good place I am now. Not everything I did was perfect, and I did make mistakes along the way, but I also did a lot of pretty amazing things and I am happy about where I am. I've had a lot of good luck, I had some back luck, but my intentional decisions and actions are things I'm content with. 

Edited June 12, 2023 by wintermom

[klmama]

Yes, I occasionally think about past choices and how my life might have been different, but I realize that a different life would mean I would lose much that's important to me now.  I'm glad to be where I am.

[Clarita]

Yes, most of the important to me things I'm better for the route I ended up taking. There were a few decisions that would have meant more money in the bank for me today and that's a bummer. I think you can think about "what ifs" in a fun way and not dig yourself into a pit of despair. If you can't then you shouldn't do it just look forward and what can you do now for the future.

In terms of spouses I could have had I'm definitely living my best life on that front. Although I don't think me as a person would be that different with my exes just that I'd be way more unhappy. 

[fraidycat]

Yeah, sometimes I do. Not in a negative or wishing things were different way, but just wondering what might be different.
 

In the past, there were times I wished I had made different choices, but I have learned to accept and be grateful for the past - it has made me who I am today.

 

[Grace Hopper]

Yes, I think we all do that at times, contemplate our other possible selves. And I can think of many things I’d do differently if I got a do-over.
 

But what I come down to every time is this: my kids are great. Not perfect, but really good young adults. And if any variable in my own life would have produced a different outcome, my kids would probably be different. And I wouldn’t want them different. So that satisfies my occasional foray into woulda-coulda-shoulda. 

[Laura Corin]

Sometimes.  But usually in terms of: I'm glad I didn't go that way.  I've been lucky in the largely accidental 'choices' I have made.

[LauraClark]

On the good side: yes, all the time; and I am so thankful. Could have married a man who turned out to be a drug user and ended up in prison. Dh and I moved away from everyone we knew and were forced to grow up and be responsible together. We were led to a pastor who explained the Bible in a way that made sense (that sounds cultish, but it's not and I don't really know how else to word it-haha!), a friend offhandedly asked if we had prayed about having more children (we had 3 at the time and thought we were done), friends encouraged us financially to just purchase a house based on 1 income (I was working at the time too). Of course there's things I wish I had done differently, but like others above, I kind of try not to think about those.

[lovinmyboys]

Yes all the time. And I don’t know that it is good for me. For the most part I am grateful for the choices I made and I really appreciate my life. My main thing I wonder about is if we should have stayed in one place for my kids childhoods. We have lived in 6 places and in some ways that has been amazing. But other times I worry that I have messed up my kids- or myself. It is hard to really know people when you move every 2-3 years. 
 

I especially wonder about our move to Europe, where we currently are. I think it has mostly been good- a once in a lifetime opportunity. But, I think we are missing out on things at home.

[Carrie12345]

I just read The Midnight Library, which is all about what ifs. I don’t want to give away the whole story, but it added some new ideas to my perspective.

Is there such thing as an uneasy peace? Because my high school boyfriend of about 3 years was the ideal first love. I broke things off when leaving for college and it was a very painful decision. He’s still a great guy, but would not be a good match for adult me. He was the perfect person at the perfect time AND didn’t turn out to be awful in the long run. I’m so grateful for him, and so glad we didn’t run off and get married!

[HomeAgain]

I look at everything as ripples in a pond, or the butterfly effect.

Sure, I could have made a different decision at X time, but everything I have now would have disappeared because of it.  I'm fine dealing with the bad because I have the good that came with it.  Plus, I think I seriously dodged some bullets by making smaller mistakes.

[SKL]

I don't dwell on it, but sometimes I wonder.  I was a person with a lot of intelligence and education, but no confidence.  In grad school, I met the friend who would become my long-term business partner.  She is my total opposite.  Had I not met a person like her, I suspect I would have struggled to make ends meet all my life.

As far as marriage, I guess I never met Mr. Right.  I dated 3 people who could have ended up in marriage.  The first one would have been a good partner if he wasn't a cheater.  The second one, super nice guy, but even he didn't consider himself marriage material, so probably better off single.  The third one had so many red flags within the first 6 months that I was already scared of him, so no.  Thank God I got away before he had any legal hold on me.

But if I'd met Mr. Right, I'm sure I would have evolved differently.  I probably would have had kids a lot younger and had a much more inwardly focused outlook than I do.  Not sure whether adoption or business ownership would have been part of my life.  And maybe at my current age I could be farther into the retirement process?  (My original plan was to be a teacher.)

[Ottakee]

1 hour ago, LauraClark said:

. Could have married a man who turned out to be a drug user and ended up in prison. 

Well, I did marry a man that ended up in prison after 25 years of marriage.  He is serving 90 years and will never get out.

That said, while I desperately wish his victims never would I’ve had to suffer, if I had not married him, I would not have had the kids I do now.

I figure I can’t live on the past and try to make the best decisions I can in the here and now.

[wintermom]

52 minutes ago, Ottakee said:

Well, I did marry a man that ended up in prison after 25 years of marriage.  He is serving 90 years and will never get out.

That said, while I desperately wish his victims never would I’ve had to suffer, if I had not married him, I would not have had the kids I do now.

I figure I can’t live on the past and try to make the best decisions I can in the here and now.

Hugs to you. How difficult that must have been for you. All the very best for you going forward. 

[Mrs Tiggywinkle Again]

I wish I’d considered a career more.  I worked in human services and frankly I wish I’d stuck with that. The issue is that the pay just isn’t there.  Or that we had planned for me to be a SAHM from the beginning, but way back then that wasn’t something I was interested in.  I had always been told that having children would be difficult for me, if not impossible, so kids weren’t really something I factored into my career choices.  I felt pretty locked into my job when I did become pregnant when I was almost 30.

My new job is turning into something like a bait and switch; without any deception or ill intent on the part of management, and I am finding myself wishing I could go back to 19 year old me and make a lot of different choices.

[marbel]

Sure, I think about stuff like that all the time, too often actually, and I work hard to shut it off. We have no way of knowing how another path would have worked out for us. 

[DawnM]

2 minutes ago, marbel said:

Sure, I think about stuff like that all the time, too often actually, and I work hard to shut it off. We have no way of knowing how another path would have worked out for us. 

100%

 

[Kidlit]

6 minutes ago, Mrs Tiggywinkle Again said:

I wish I’d considered a career more.  I worked in human services and frankly I wish I’d stuck with that. The issue is that the pay just isn’t there.  Or that we had planned for me to be a SAHM from the beginning, but way back then that wasn’t something I was interested in.  I had always been told that having children would be difficult for me, if not impossible, so kids weren’t really something I factored into my career choices.  I felt pretty locked into my job when I did become pregnant when I was almost 30.

My new job is turning into something like a bait and switch; without any deception or ill intent on the part of management, and I am finding myself wishing I could go back to 19 year old me and make a lot of different choices.

Same.  I wish I had entered a profession that made adequately compensated part-time work a viable choice.  I considered speech-language pathology after my master's degree, but it wasn't something I could get locally or without a life upheaval.   I know it's something that is in high demand locally, and something that would be much more flexible (& adequately compensated) than anything I can do now.  
 

I guess you could say that the majority of my "what ifs" are job/career related. 

[Granny_Weatherwax]

Yes, almost every day. This is not the life I envisioned and it makes me sad. But, as others have said, if I allow myself to sit with those thoughts too long, it breeds discontent, regret, resentment and a host of other not-so-useful emotions.

[Faith-manor]

I was faced with a tough choice early on. Marry my best friend, and potentially have that impact my performance career, especially if motherhood was involved, or pursue my career, end our relationship, and keep going with my original dream. So I know what would have happened if I had not married Mark and had the kids. He wanted children, that was very important to him - a deal breaker -  and I knew what it meant to have children prior to having a very well established music career, and even then, for many women, domestic life still ends up trashing their employment opportunities as professional instrumentalists no matter how well their careers are going. But, I couldn't let go and break it off. We eventually had four children, and I settled for teaching and regional performing instead of what I had trained for and hoped to do.

If you have ever read or watched "Mozart in the Jungle" then you can imagine. That would have been my life, and if the performance career never materialized beyond cobbling together meager income and subsisting with roommates in some flea bag apartment in NYC, I would have eventually, like Haley, given it up and exchanged that dream for some peace, contentment, and reliability. So I have the weird knowledge of the distinct probability of how plan A could have worked out vs. plan B which is the route I chose.

35 years later sometimes I have some twinges, some longing for that career. However, I can't imagine a life without Mark and the kids, and my new direction in career, Aerospace and STEM education is keeping me busy and fulfilled. I have a university rocket team I am mentoring this coming academic year and am very excited about that.

[regentrude]

Not really. Things turned out okay.

I am still at peace with giving up a real academic career after my postdoc because it allowed us a less stressful family life, and I have the bandwidth to compensate for the lack of intellectual stimulation (because, let's face it, teaching intro physics gets pretty boring) by focusing on my poetry. 

I had struggled with emigrating to the US for the first ten years, but it's okay now, except for the elder care issues overseas. I have come to make the most of the opportunities of this rural area which are completely different than all the things I loved doing back home that I missed very much.

I absolutely won the spouse lottery, couldn't think of a better husband. We just celebrated our 30th anniversary. 

Eta: Everything in my life would have turned out completely differently if the Wall hadn't fallen in 1989. Thank you, Mr. Gorbachev. 

Edited June 12, 2023 by regentrude

[Granny_Weatherwax]

2 hours ago, SKL said:

<snip>  I was a person with a lot of intelligence and education, but no confidence.  <snip>

This I understand completely. I was so full of promise but the lack of confidence, esteem, and efficacy coupled with not finding a person (mentor/partner) to encourage me or show me the way has been devastating.

[JustEm]

Dh wrote a really interesting short story about this concept. The premise was he had a way to meet all his other hims. They were all him but the ones who made the opposite choice at all his major decisions. It was fascinating reading because it really gave me insight into his feelings about those choices, many before me but still impacted us and many around me entering his life. 

For me, I never really think about it. I've always been of the mentality that all my decisions in life got me to the me I am right now and the life I have. I really like myself and my life and am pretty confident that other decisions might have made me just as happy but not happier so no need to spend energy on thinking about them.

I have run into people from my past and left the interaction thinking, 'i sure am glad I left their life at the time I did.' But that is about the extent of thinking about it that I do

[Ausmumof3]

I have done a fair bit of this after having to go back to work part time. Wondering if it would have been easier to have had the kids in school and whether it would have been better for them. A few weeks of placement in public school has definitely settled that in my mind a lot. I’m so glad my kids got to learn and play the way they did in the early years. It was worth the cost!

[73349]

I just finished a 10-day challenge around making choices that benefit our Future Selves, so I've also thought about Past Me's choices some. I think in some way we're always still becoming ourselves. Some of that is shaped by choices we make from the options around us, and some of it by, at least for me, a sort of inner compass.

I am *deeply* thankful to my 13- to 24-year-old self, who made some really good choices at an age when there's plenty of opportunity to do otherwise. It would have been wise to establish more "house rules" or shared policies when we got married. Could I have made a better career choice? Yeah... maybe, though, not as good a choice I might make in the future, because I was coming from a narrow world and didn't know the possibilities. But OTOH virtually all the friends I have today, I'd never have met.

Do I wish I had known more and done some things differently? Sure. But I could only grow as fast as I did; there were doors I didn't see or that I wasn't ready to open yet. Thinking about this gives me a sense of openness toward the future, as I see the potential for cultivating more and more understanding.

Edited June 12, 2023 by 73349

[Bambam]

Sometimes I wonder, but then I realize that it really does no good. I can't go back and make those changes, and I know that the choices I made rarely turned out exactly like I thought they would.  But when things do not go well, I do try to evaluate to see if I could have made a better choice/what did I forget to consider/or what did I put too much emphasis on/ etc and try to do better in the future.  I tend heavily towards super practical problem solver though - so what-if's I don't find very useful. 

[footballmom]

I am fully convinced that if any of my big decisions were different decisions, I wouldn’t have the kids I have today, so then I have total peace in anything I would want to change. This is not at all about DH. It’s about the micro decisions - where I went to college, where I lived after college, my career, etc that led into my mom life. 
 

One thing I have let myself wonder is WHO I would be if I was raised in a healthier home growing up with parents that didn’t bring as much trauma into making their own family. 

[Kidlit]

52 minutes ago, 73349 said:

I just finished a 10-day challenge around making choices that benefit our Future Selves, so I've also thought about Past Me's choices some. I think in some way we're always still becoming ourselves. Some of that is shaped by choices we make from the options around us, and some of it by, at least for me, a sort of inner compass.

I am *deeply* thankful to my 13- to 24-year-old self, who made some really good choices at an age when there's plenty of opportunity to do otherwise. It would have been wise to establish more "house rules" or shared policies when we got married. Could I have made a better career choice? Yeah... maybe, though, not as good a choice I might make in the future, because I was coming from a narrow world and didn't know the possibilities. But OTOH virtually all the friends I have today, I'd never have met.

Do I wish I had known more and done some things differently? Sure. But I could only grow as fast as I did; there were doors I didn't see or that I wasn't ready to open yet. Thinking about this gives me a sense of openness toward the future, as I see the potential for cultivating more and more understanding.

What is the challenge for your Future Self?

[Lecka]

I am still struggling with Covid.  It’s better, but once again — I saw this title and thought “Covid!!!!!!” and nobody else is mentioning it.

 

We moved in the summer of 2020 and my husband retired from the military in the summer of 2020 as well.  
 

I like our house, I like living in my hometown, I like our church here.  
 

I don’t feel like my husband or two of my kids had a good introduction to living here, and I think some things would have been different/better for them without Covid.

 

But I also think — we would have been worse off “not” moving because of how Covid played out in our previous location.  
 

But in a perfect world — I would say, we didn’t have Covid and we stayed in our previous location until my oldest son turned 18.  
 

But there are cons to that too, because my son has a really close relationship with my parents, and he would not have it if we hadn’t moved when we did.  
 

There’s also a much easier path forward for him at this age, than there would have been if we hadn’t moved.  
 

But there’s a lot of reasons to think we would have just had an easier move without Covid.  
 

If next year goes well I think that will go a long way (or all the way) in feeling over it.  I just don’t feel like we’re at that point yet.  I feel like it’s still effecting some things in a big way.  
 

 

[73349]

15 minutes ago, Kidlit said:

What is the challenge for your Future Self?

I run a different kind of challenge for the first 10 days of every month on Habitica and in a FB group. I'll PM you.

[lovinmyboys]

48 minutes ago, 73349 said:

I run a different kind of challenge for the first 10 days of every month on Habitica and in a FB group. I'll PM you.

What a great idea! I love this 

[lovinmyboys]

One other thing I wonder about is if I would have made the same choices if I would have known I had a choice. I was raised in a church that preached women staying home with their kids was their calling. So, I got married young and had 4 babies in my 20s and homeschooled until my oldest went to high school. I actually don’t regret any of that, but I mostly just did it because it was what I thought I had to do. I guess I didn’t only do it because I thought I had to. I really loved all those years home with my kids, but also, I never even thought of living a different life.

Edited June 12, 2023 by lovinmyboys

[SKL]

44 minutes ago, lovinmyboys said:

One other thing I wonder about is if I would have made the same choices if I would have known I had a choice. I was raised in a church that preached women staying home with their kids was their calling. So, I got married young and had 4 babies in my 20s and homeschooled until my oldest went to high school. I actually don’t regret any of that, but I mostly just did it because it was what I thought I had to do. I guess I didn’t only do it because I thought I had to. I really loved all those years home with my kids, but also, I never even thought of living a different life.

I have friends who were raised in very traditional societies.  Depending on whom you ask, many people believe that having limited choices does reduce the angst of "what is the right choice," "did I choose well," "should I have done differently."  Of course, there will be outliers who have even more angst about not fitting into society's expectations.

If we're honest, having to make choices is really stressful.  Should I be a cook, a horse barn owner, an engineer, a businesswoman, or a lawyer?  (My daughter's actual dilemma a year ago.  Not to mention the whole "how should I identify" angst.)

When I was a kid, I leaned toward more traditional roles, but my folks and my teachers were all "you can't waste your God-given talent."  I think they were right, but it took a while to see it that way.  And if I'm honest, I was still a square peg in a round hole.

[TechWife]

Yes, I do.

In high school I wanted to be a lawyer. I wish I had at least explored this idea more.

I wish we hadn't home schooled, at least not beyond elementary school.

I wish I hadn't stopped exercising when our son was a preschooler.

I wish I had realized that, after my son graduated, that two years goes by in a flash and that MSW would have been more than worth it professionally. Instead, eight years have passed & I continue to not meet minimum requirements for jobs or careers I would be interested in.

I'd currently like to go to grad school for my MPH for my own enrichment, but that's unlikely to happen. My dh wants to go for the same reason, and he deserves to do something enjoyable for once. We have $$ set aside for one of us, but not both.

 

 

 

 

[Hannah]

My what-if is around what our lives would have been like had we emigrated when all of our friends were doing it 14 years ago.  Dh had been flown overseas for interviews and had three job offers to choose from, we had a firm offer on our house, and then health issues stopped us in our tracks.  When things settled, a move had become way more disruptive for the kids and we were getting too old to pursue skilled worker visas anyway.

There have been many lifestyle advantages of staying.   Both our kids have done competitive horse-riding at national level and I don't think we would have been able to afford that overseas.  They've also had a very rural upbringing with a lot of time spent outdoors.   When we were looking at emigrating the job opportunities were in big cities.   Our country is basically falling apart, but the universities here are still good and the ones the kids attend are in the top 500 of various world rankings.  We can afford to pay their fees and for them to study debt-free.  I don't know if we would have been able to do that.  But there have also been sacrifices. For me the biggest has been that our friends circle dwindled.  We used to have weekly barbeques and frequent dinner parties, but when one after the other of our friends left, it became more difficult to make new friends as one usually does through being in the same young parent group or homeschooling group, etc.  We had social contact through our kid's sport, but no longer the closeness I still have with those friends that now live so far away.

Our younger child is talking about emigrating after university and that's going to be very hard.  I've seen how hard it has been for my Dad with my sisters living overseas.  We may have avoided living far from our kids as we age had we still made emigration happen when we could.

[Corraleno]

I often wonder how different my life would have been if my college choices had been different. My first choice college for undergrad lost my financial aid application, so I went to the school that gave me a full ride, and then I got into my dream PhD program (Berkeley), but without enough money, so I took a full fellowship offer from UCLA. I often wonder how different the trajectory of my life would have been if I'd gone to Berkeley instead — would I have stayed in an academic career? Would I have married someone more compatible than my now-ex?

But I try to remind myself that in that alternate universe I could just as easily have been hit by a bus, or never had kids, or married someone even worse than my ex. And my current life did provide me with lots of opportunities for world travel, plus it obviously gave me the kids I have now, for which I'm very grateful. Still, it's hard to not occasionally wonder "what if...."

Edited June 12, 2023 by Corraleno