Ever find yourself wondering What the dickens was the matter with me that I didn’t {do X, Y, or Z} instead of the stupid thing I did do?
Afraid that’s not a rare occasion for Funny. Honest to Gawd. I’ve done and said the stupidest things over the years…when if I’d kept my mouth shut at the time — even for a few minutes, to say nothing of a few days — things would have turned out much for the better.
Case in point: My father & his bitch wife. If, that time when they came mincing up to me and said “ohhhh we want your permission to get married,” instead of uttering a slack-jawed “well, o’course!” (while thinking these idiots are grown adults: why do they imagine they need their kid’s permission to get married?), I had said “Are you kidding? You’re sixty-some years old, not sixteen years old. You don’t need my permission to do anything,” things might have turned out a lot better for them.
Why?
Well, this is just a guess. And that guess is: if they had stopped and thought about whether they really wanted to marry, rather than getting a kid’s imprimatur, they might have thought twice about it. Or who knows? even three times… They might have slowed down enough to give themselves several weeks or, better yet, a couple of months or three before they waltzed into marriage.
A marriage that turned out to be flickin’ miserable. The LAST thing those two needed to do was get married.
Living in sin would have been infinitely preferable: at least they wouldn’t have had to navigate courts and laws to get un-hitched.
Simply proceeding as girlfriend and boyfriend — keeping their own apartments at the old-folkerie but acting as grand friends — would have more than infinitely preferably. Then they would have no hitching to un-do.
Like all of us, I’ve occasionally made spectacular mistakes. Some of those have had less than sterling results.
The upshot of these adventures, over the years, has been one crucial rule of thumb:
When in doubt, don’t.
Sounds glib, but it ain’t. Seriously: if you’re not sure about some decision you’re about to make, don’t proceed with it.
STOP!!!
Stop and wait. Nine times out of ten, you will indeed have time to wait long enough to think things through; maybe to discuss with a trusted friend or advisor, or just to put it all off until your head clears.
And that, my friends, is what you most need to do before making any key decision.