What if I don't feel guilty?

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Question: You said in one of your posts that "guilt has a function, it keeps us from screwing people over." Well, what if I don't feel guilty? I was dating this guy and he fell in love with me and I broke his heart and I thought I would feel really bad because I knew things were heading that way, but I don't. What does that say about me?

Answer: If you do a bad thing and you don't feel guilty you have either 1.) learned to rationalize and justify your behavior in your own mind, 2.) possibly the thing you did was the best choice you could have made in the situation, 3.) you are a sociopath, 4.) some combo of the previous three.

Guilt, like any emotion, is not a good thing or a bad thing it is a response to the stimuli of your environment. In this way emotions are the same as our senses of touch, taste, smell, etc... If you were to say to me "my baby had a dirty diaper but I couldn't smell it, what does that say about me?" As an isolated event, nothing, if it happens all the time you either have an amazing baby or a poor sense of smell.

The fact that you are even questioning if you should feel more guilty suggests that you are not a sociopath or any other personality disorder (borderline, narcissist, etc..) because you are questioning your own behavior and your impact on others. Your acknowledgement that you don't feel as much guilt as you think you should suggests you have felt guilt in the past and this is less intense.

Guilt falls on a spectrum, it is not like you either have it or you don't. The anger spectrum can go from mild irritation all the way to rage. Similarly the guilt spectrum ranges from mild regret to a paralysis of shame and self loathing.

Guilt is about what you have done, shame is about who you are. It sounds like you do have some guilt, or at least mild regret, that this guy got hurt. You kinda wish you could have avoided that but but it isn't eating you up inside. Ok, works for me.

If this becomes a pattern of behavior for you, where you put your needs ahead of the needs of others and you feel just dandy about it, that would suggest your guilt has stopped functioning the way it should and you will end up having crappy-selfish-one sided relationships if you don't do some work on it.

Some people seek to justify selfish behavior by saying "I'm just an asshole" or "I'm just a bitch" as if they are frozen that way and others just need to accept it. 99% of us are selfish at times but if we can consider the needs of others some of the time then we do not have to act like jerks. We can rationalize guilt away all we want but ultimately there is a direct relationship between selfish behavior and unhappiness.

None of us like feeling guilty but without guilt in the appropriate amount for the situation we will end up very lonely. Personally I would rather have the guilt.