To err is human

“I pushed him away” – Maeve said – “and the thoughts of what I have done haunt me”. When one of my clients began telling the group her story, everyone listened to her with curiosity. What could she have possibly done, that was so bad, which has haunted her so much?

In these situations, we expect the worst. If someone cannot forgive themselves for something, we tend to imagine the worst case scenario, such as them causing death of someone, committing an unforgivable offence or partaking in another dramatic event that harmed others. This is why, it came to us as a surprise when she said it was the fights that drove her husband away.

She had been married for over 5 years and had two children with her husband. As soon as the first one was born, she quit her job to make a happy home for her family. They could afford it as he had a steady job, with a decent pay, which allowed him to provide solely for his family.

The first few years of their marriage were stressful, because the first little one came barely five months after the wedding vows. However, as the years passed by, their marriage went from bad to worse. Year by year, month by month, they became more distant, less intimate, caring, loving. Soon, they began to feel like flatmates, rather than soulmates, living under the same roof, but sharing only the responsibility of looking after their children.

One day, he told her he had enough. The next morning he left, carrying with him only a small suitcase and leaving behind his family and the life they have both worked on. Initially she was shocked by the turn of the events, wondering about some practicalities, such as the house, income.

He continued to provide for her and the kids, but surviving was just not enough. When the shock of their breakup subsided, it turned into hurt, anger and blame. She missed him and wanted him back, yet did not know how to communicate it to him, so day-by-day she was losing yet another piece of him. All she kept doing was fighting, which kept pushing him further away, until one day when he finally served her with divorce papers.

“I pushed him away” – she told us – “and the thoughts of what I have done haunt me”. She blamed herself for taking him for granted, disregarding his problems, arguing, screaming, and purposefully hurting his feelings. “What you have done is nothing unusual” – another group member said – “We all do it at times”.

And this is it: common humanity. It is human to get used to the good life we have. It is human to take it for granted. It is human to argue and it is human to hurt others. Of course, we don’t want to purposefully do it, but it is human that sometimes we do. Maeve was blaming herself for being just like you and I – a person who is imperfect. Why is it that when a thunder strikes, we want to believe we are super-humans who can take it all on with grace; rather than accepting we are just human, making mistakes and learning from them.

If you’re like Maeve, beating yourself up for something you have done – just stop and remember that after all to err is human.