What's eating you?

It's my new advice column

Photo by Simone Secci on Unsplash

I mentioned back in January that I might start doing this, and it’s taken me a while to get it together, but here you go. As usual, share your thoughts in the comments, and if you’ve got any, share questions for me to answer in future columns too. If enough of you like this, I’ll do it again.

I am trying to get over a past love who came back into my life briefly and I saw everything that could have been. I think I need a “how to get over someone” playlist.—Liz

Oh Liz,

Is there anything more poignant than mourning what might have happened, instead of what did? To see everything that could have been, as you so movingly put it, is bittersweet at best. It can also, if you’re not careful, lead to rumination and obsessive thinking, and not much good ever comes from that.

Fixate on the road not taken—which almost inevitably looks like the preferable one in retrospect—and you’ve got a losing proposition on your hands, happiness-wise. Life with the person in question here might have turned out superior to the life you’ve got, but you’ll never know for sure; you can’t know. And it’s too tempting and easy to convince yourself that things would have been better, that everything would have turned out different, with this person in your life.