Do you ever contemplate how your life would have turned out differently had you married a different person, taken a different job, or moved to the city you were thinking about? Is it even possible to imagine our own alternate lives, or must we view our potential life paths through the lens of our actual experience?
I often wonder how my life would have been different if Iād made other decisions. My life certainly didnāt turn out the way I thought it would. If Iād never gotten married would I have followed my college plans? Iāll never know; but I can dream.
Itās too difficult to contemplate because itās a complicated web. Every decision, every encounter, every event is our lives is based on prior decisions, encounters or events. Anything, big or small can alter your entire life. Itās mind-blowing!
I have contemplated how my life would have differed with other choices. Would it have been better? Iāll never know but marrying someone else, living in a different city/state, alternate educational choicesā all would have changed my life.
Oh yeah! I often think of the choices I made in youth that led me to where I am today & how different life would have been had I made other choices, especially when thinking about marriage.
I donāt often think of if I had married anyone else, but I do wonder what would have changed if I had married later, rather than at age 21. I also wonder how my career projectory would have changed had I accepted a particular job offer in my 20s, instead of staying at my current position. But the older I get, the more satisfied I am with how things turned out.
Isnāt that what dreaming is called?
Yes - I think we are typically curious about different outcomes if our choices and/or circumstances were different. With age comes wisdom, however, and with that additional perspective we can often see the advantages and opportunities that are unique to the decisions and paths in our lives.
I really donāt think about this. I think I would call this a dream.
I have thought about past decisions I have made and if I made a different choice that I possibly would have a very different life, but no regrets! It is more about that I would not know the people I know now and would have missed out on those relationships. Canāt miss ones that I never had 
Of course! I often ruminate about past experiences and choices Iāve made and speculate about how my life would have been different.
I think its probably normal to think about the āwhat ifā moments of life. I donāt do it often but am generally very accepting of the choices I made.
I do. I married at 19 and have been married for more than 60 years. I have no regrets, as I did finish my university education and eventually move into my career choice while raising two sons, but sometimes itās fun to think about āwhat ifā¦ā
I often think along the lines of āthank heaven I made that choice.ā My life turned out pretty well, but without making some of the choices I did it could so easily have turned out differently. My city, Portland, has a pretty significant homeless population, and I feel that at some stages of my life it wouldnāt have taken much to be in the same boat (āThere but for the grace of god go Iā¦ā).
Donāt we all do this! I guess if the comparison illustrates how wonderful your life is now then there is comfort in your choice. I think when the opposite is true then it leads to dissatisfaction and a search for something better.
Of course! I think this generation has access to wider, more flexible choices that I did 50+ years ago. Those choices would have led to a very different life, but, perhaps not as rich as the life Iāve had.
Definitely a loaded question! I think we all deal with the āwhat ifsā in life. I would have chosen a different path. Not my profession, but my choices and what I sacrificed. It always easier to look back, age has a way of doing that. Itās the āif I knew then what I know nowā situation. But if I could have a redo? Yes I would make different decisions.
Yes all the time, but Iāve learned that the grass is not always greener on the other side, and we need to remember why we fell in love with our partner in the first place, that any relationship takes a lot of work, a lot of love, and a lot of compromise and communication to make it work. My husband is not āthe man of my dreamsā when it comes to looks or even personality. But weāve worked very hard on our relationship over the years, after 20 years of marriage, our relationship still feels like weāre newlyweds, we love each other deeply and openly, and what I love the most about him is heād rather spend any available moment with me than do anything else, even all these years later. When we need our own time, we just go into a different room, but the door is always open, and thereās always room for the other one if they donāt need the space. People nowadays are too quick to throw in the towel at the first sign of trouble. As long as itās nothing too serious, everything can be worked through as long as you remember the love.
Absolutely! And just for fun I checked my attic in the hopes that it has a ārenew husbandā feature. Some days are like that!
As I get older and time gets āshorterā, I sometimes think about how life could have been different if only I had known ā¦ Iām glad I married and extremely grateful for my three children, but I sometimes wish, after my divorce, that I had found someone to be head over heels to be in love with and spend the rest of my life with.