When Someone Else's Choices Disrupt Your Life

A road detour sign on a country road at dusk

Somebody made a decision and now you’re living in it. He left. She relapsed. Your business partner did something reckless. Maybe your parents sold the place. Your kid dropped out. Somebody drove drunk and now your family looks completely different than it did on a Tuesday two years ago.

You didn’t get a vote and you’re paying for it anyway. That’s one of the hardest configurations there is, and almost nothing written about acceptance is honest about how much it stings.

The two things people confuse

Acceptance means acknowledging that a thing is real and has happened.

Approval means saying it was okay.

Those are separate and we mash them together constantly. This is why acceptance gets such a bad reception. When I bring it up, people hear me saying they should be fine with it. They get their back up, and they should.

You can be clear that what happened was wrong, unfair, selfish, or cruel. You can do this while simultaneously stop arguing with the fact that it occurred. The arguing is what’s costing you.

What the arguing looks like

It doesn’t look like arguing. That’s the thing. It looks like running the conversation you should have had, again, in the shower, for the eleventh time. Also, it could look like a mental case file you keep building. New evidence, better arguments, the thing you’ll say if you ever see her.

It looks like asking why for months. Why would he do that. Why would somebody do that to their own family. There’s an answer sometimes and most of the time there isn’t one that will ever satisfy you. The answer lives inside a person whose reasoning you would not accept anyway.

It looks like waiting for an acknowledgment that may never come. This one holds people the longest. You’re not stuck on the event, you’re stuck on the fact that nobody ever admitted it. All of that is your energy going into a situation that has already happened and cannot be relitigated.

Why we do it

Accepting it feels like letting them win. That’s the fear underneath, and it needs saying out loud. If I stop being furious, then what they did just stands. Or, if I accept this, I’m agreeing that this is how it goes and nobody ever answers for anything.

Your anger has been the only witness. It’s been holding the sign that says this was wrong. Nobody sets that down until somebody else will hold the sign.

So here’s me holding it. What happened to you was wrong. It should not have happened. You did not deserve it. Now, separately, what do you want to do with the next five years?

Getting practical about it

Sort the damage. There’s what they did. Then there’s what’s currently in your life as a result. Those need different responses. The first one gets grieved. Then the second one gets handled.

Write the actual list of what changed. Money, living situation, custody schedule, your name on something, your reputation, your Thursdays. Concrete. People carry this as a fog and a fog can’t be worked with.

Deal with your column. Some of the fallout has practical fixes. Get the lawyer, change the account, have the conversation, move the thing. Doing one concrete piece of it does more for your state than a week of processing does.

Let the why go last, or not at all. You may never get it. Some people are willing to do things you would never do. Understanding it fully would require becoming somebody you don’t want to be.

Watch what you’re concluding about yourself. This is the piece I care about most. Under every big disruption, people quietly draw a conclusion. I’m a fool. I don’t get to have good things. Maybe you say to yourself that you should have seen it. Those conclusions do more long-term damage than the original event. They’re drawn on the worst day, by the worst judge.

The forgiveness question

People want to know if they have to forgive.

Here’s how I teach it. Forgiveness comes in parts. The offender’s job is to sincerely ask, with specifics about what they actually did. Then it’s in your court, and you forgive the facts first, which is the easier half. Then you forgive the impact, and that’s the Grand Canyon work. A butterfly bandage will not hold it closed together to heal.

If they never ask, you’re not obligated to hand them anything. What you can do is release your own insides from carrying it, which is a different transaction entirely. This does not require their participation. If a hurt keeps surfacing, one of those parts hasn’t actually been done. That’s diagnostic, not a failure.

What I’d tell you

You’re in a life you didn’t choose, built partly by somebody else’s decision, and you still have to live it.

The part that’s yours starts now is not the event. Honestly, it is not their character. The next stretch, which is the only part anybody ever actually gets. Find your voice and use it. You can be kind and have authority at the same time, and you can name exactly what happened without letting it decide who you become.

This is education, not therapy. If you’re in crisis, call or text 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you’re in Kentucky and living in the wreckage of a decision you didn’t make, I’d be glad to help you sort it. Circle of Hope Counseling Services.

God’s Work Often Happens in the Unseen