How do you say “we shouldn’t have” in Spanish?
secreto y culpa tras una infidelidad con el esposo
B1 Spanish listening practice · Mexican Spanish · Picked for people who know some
Deber normally means “to have to” or “should,” but put it in the past tense and pair it with an infinitive, and no debimos means “we shouldn’t have [done that]” — a compact way to express regret about something already done. In this telenovela-style scene, one character says exactly that after an affair: no debimos, “we shouldn’t have,” immediately followed by a partner brushing the guilt aside instead.
The pattern is flexible: no debiste decir eso (“you shouldn’t have said that”), no debí confiar en él (“I shouldn’t have trusted him”) — just deber conjugated in the past plus any infinitive. It’s one of the cleanest, most reusable ways to express hindsight and regret in Spanish, useful well beyond dramatic scenes like this one.
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These words are harder than B1. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-ESP 2011 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.