Here’s the Real Reason Some People Actually Hate Being Wrong

Okay, I admit it. I am one of those people who hates being wrong. Can I admit when I’m wrong? Sure. Sometimes I need to lick my wounds first but I’ll always orbit back and clear up the messes I’ve made if I can.

There’s a reason behind my aversion to being the one in the wrong. Aside from the fact that it’s more enjoyable being right… underneath it all, I hate being wrong because I hate making mistakes.

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There’s A Responsibility to Making Mistakes

Making mistakes is not easy

The difficulty relies on more than just the loss, itself. When you make a mistake it can cost more than just you.

Mistakes, for many of us, are scary to make when it comes to other people. We are so damn fragile. We are such breakable creatures.

I mean, one wrong —

word
move
glance
intention
mood swing
moment

can change a human being for the rest of their lives. Nobody really wants to be responsible for that. Sure, we can put the blame on others for how they respond to the things we do. That’s easy.

The problem is it doesn’t negate the fact that we are sharing a planet and that the things we do matter, to more than just us. Whether or not we are willing to face this fact, the truth remains the same.

You can very much be the reason someone needs lifelong therapy because of something you didn’t even realize you did. Mistakes are that easy. You can be the reason someone decides they are never going to love again. Mistakes are that potent. That’s what makes making them so damn terrifying.

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People Like Me Hate to Lose

Mistakes are like transactions — they cost something in the end

You’ll also realize that people who hate making mistakes not only hate to be wrong, but they also hate to lose. Whether that’s losing—

games
opportunities
money
items
people/relationships
ultimately, themselves

Losing things of value is a hard pill to swallow. It has the potential to induce lifelong regrets. Losing changes us as people, it makes us feel things we wouldn’t otherwise feel. And it hurts.

I am no different.

Years ago, I lost someone very close to me

I lost my best friend, possibly the closest friend I might ever have. He didn’t die, I just fucked up the friendship we had. I wasn’t as aware as I am today or nearly as mature as I am now.

Had I been back then who I am now, none of that would have ever happened. I was careless with his heart and my heart wasn’t as open as I truly believed it was. I took the good things for granted. That only ended when all was lost.

This brings me to my very next point — people like me need to fail. We need to lose and we need to make mistakes because this is what has the potential to make us fundamentally better people. The things we fear most hold the answers we’ve been looking for.

I can say this with great confidence because it was losing him that actually made me a much better person. It made me the woman I am today. So as much as I hate losing him (and I think about this every single day) I couldn’t grow if I hadn’t. Some losses (expenses) are predetermined.

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Some Mistakes Put You On Your Path

Predestined mistakes

Mistakes we’re guided (or feel pulled) to make, are what I like to call “predestined” mistakes. These are the actions and choices that don’t make any sense but feel sensible to us.

These are the things we try our hardest not to do but end up in situations to do them, regardless. The mistakes we have unnatural confidence in making, regardless of the consequences. These are the mistakes you can trust. Because these mistakes make you better at not making them (again).

My best friend was in love with me, healthy love. Whereas I was used to toxic relationships. His love felt boring because there was nothing wrong. I wouldn’t — no, I couldn’t — have told you this before. Because I didn’t understand the depth of why I just could not seem to fall in love with him.

I met a man that set my soul on fire and I chose him

I chose him over my best friend. It was the man I talked about in this article. I allowed the friendship to dissolve and set him free because I realized I was wasting his time by lingering in his life.

If I couldn’t love him back, or love him right, who am I to take up someone else’s place in his life? Who am I to hold him up from finding, and being, with someone who deserves his love and can appreciate it? So I let him go because I felt divinely encouraged to do so, I had faith in taking this loss.

It was the first in a long string of responsible decisions I would make. It was the most responsible mistake I have ever made to this day and as much as I miss that man, I cannot help also being proud of trusting myself enough to make it. Because even if he was the best I ever had, he deserved better me — than who I was.

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Making Mistakes Is Inevitable

Some mistakes are simply harder lessons we need to learn

I realize now that one way or another I was going to lose him because I was supposed to. I needed to change and that meant letting go of, and therefore losing, the best connection I was ever gifted, outside of the one I have with my mother.

I hate the fact that it was at the expense of such a vital connection in my life but losing him caused me to become him, in all the best ways possible. It matured me. It made me realize how to treat people. It taught me the value of having a good person in your life.

I haven’t met one like him since, so I became one more and more. Now, I am the example of a love I’ve once known. On a much more tragic note, I realize I was in love with him. I just didn’t recognize my own feelings because, again, I was used to toxic relationships.

I was used to “love” making me feel —

anxious
depressed
paranoid
and unsafe

He gave me none of those feelings, and I interpreted it as he didn’t make me feel “alive”. Do you realize how tragic (and toxic) that is? Not being in a constant state of fight or flight registered to me as not even being alive. I never would have come to these understandings of myself if I didn’t have his absence to feel to enable it.

This is how I realize this part of my journey was inevitable. This is also when I (partially) made peace with the fact that the reason we should embrace our mistakes is that we’re going to make them anyway. Mistakes become a healthy reason for us to learn to be okay with failing.

Failing teaches us how to win, and how to appreciate it when we actually do instead of taking the success of any kind for granted. We have to feel what it’s like to fail — I mean truly fail. We can’t turn our failures into lessons learned until we recognize where we’re failing, and why.

We learn this by reviewing how they’re being made. We learn why by repeating our mistakes and seeing the choices that lead up to them. This is why we have to learn how to fail by making mistakes until we can see every aspect of these mistakes.

But first, we have to grant ourselves permission to experience our mistakes. We’ve got to give ourselves the room we need to make them. Sometimes, fucking up can be the best thing for us.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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