Anyone had a 'sliding doors' moment?

[EvilHerbivore]

Inspired by another thread - Anyone had one of those moments or decisions where you know it would affect the way the rest of your life would pan out?
Other than the chose to go to university or to try for my DSs, I'm not sure if I've had a sort of 'defining' decision or if I've just bumbled along and dealt with how life has just turned out

Yes if I hadn't have chosen to walk back into the pub where my future husband was I'd have had a completely different life.

Ive had a few but the most memorable are:
If the temping agency hadn't have sent me where they did i wouldnt have my great career now.
If i didnt go to local wildlife park & soft play on a sunday i wouldnt have met my bf

Yeah, kind of. After uni I worked in a bar. Really enjoyed it, the work, the social life. I got offered manager position, accepted it, then thought about it and declined it as I wasn't sure it was what I wanted.

I got another job, fell into a really good career which continued until, and then after, I had kids.

Had I of stayed, I know I'd have enjoyed the life, but think it would have been very different and probably wouldn't have met my husband.

I think the thing about that is that so often, we only recognise those as defining moments with the benefit of hindsight.
If you are talking about knowingly making a life-changing decision, mine would be 1) deciding to marry Dh and 2) having children.
Otherwise, although many other decisions have affected the way my/pur lives have panned out, none of them were taken knowing that.

Yes I was going to give up on OLD after 6 years of it and being utterly fed up with men. Then just before I cancelled I saw a message from DP. My gut told me to pursue it.
We fell in love, he became step dad to my two boys who adore him, we bought a house together in the countryside after living in a big city for our whole lives, we have been pregnant three times in 4 years (but have lost all three) - something I never thought about before and thought my child rearing days were over (maybe they are at this rate), and we are getting married in April next year.

My life completely turned around and it has been incredibly hard with the baby losses and now fighting PCOS to get pregnant again and keep our baby, but I might well still be stuck in a tiny flat in that big city and never found the love of my life if I had given up on OLD before I saw DP's message. I was so close to giving up, only seconds away from deleting the dating app, and was so convinced I'd never meet anyone and be alone forever!

This probably isn't healthy but I sometimes obsess over what minor decisions in life (like what shoes to wear or what pizza topping to order as a teenager) could have been my sliding door moment. Like could I have been a howling success with the world at my feet if I'd gone for the pepperoni or ruined my life beyond repair if I'd done for the ham and pineapple.

I need to get better at living in the here and now I guess

If I hadn’t turned back round at my ex’s place and said sorry after a row we’d had and just gone home I wouldn’t have had the first of 6 kids
If I hadn’t have been bored that night and set up my OLD profile I wouldn’t have met my fella-been together 4 years now
If I hadn’t have hit rock bottom in life and thought ‘fuck this shit’ I wouldn’t have googled college courses-I’m now a qualified hairdresser
If my narc mother hadn’t rang that day to heap a whole load more abuse on me I wouldn’t have been having the week from hell and I wouldn’t have told her where to go-and I wouldn’t have gone nc with her and my mental health wouldn’t have improved massively

I split up from DP for 8 months a couple years back. I thought about him every day and after 5ish months I decided to message him, knowing full well I was either going to break my heart again or I'd be with him for the rest of my life. Now two years down the line and we have a baby and are very happy. That was me having a sliding door moment that I knew about.
The one I didn't know about was going NC with his family - if I hadn't done that I wouldn't have made him meet me in my town instead of me going to his house (he lived with his family still) and I wouldn't have gotten pregnant with my little girl (we didn't have sex in public, we went back to mine and everyone I lived with was out which never usually happened).

Definitely university choices - I had to make a choice between two insurance offers and flipped a coin. I went to one, my life could have been quite different had I gone to the other. I'd have met very different people and had a very different year abroad, although I could have still potentially ended up in the same place to work and beyond that I might have had the same career path.

I wish I had one. Ivebeen sacked dumped relocated... i am trying to think where I chose between two options. I feel at this point in my life though that I would be here (emotionally) regardless of what idiots i dated or what jobs i won or lost.

If i didnt go for that walk with my cousin,i wouldnt have met my dp.28 years ,5 kids and a gc later.We are still here and happy[ish]

Hmmm, seems lots of people do have them then, maybe I need to work on my assertive decision making!

I have probably had two. One was leaving my abusive ex, I was really scared about doing it and I think if I hadn't snapped one night then I would still be there.

The second. One night I came back from a terrible date and drank a few glasses of wine. I was tired so thought, I'll just head to bed. My laptop was next to me so I thought I would put it away first but when I moved it, the screen came on and it was still signed into POF. I had had quite a few awful dates and thought, maybe I should widen my search area just to see who is out there. I put in a stupidly long list of interests and one person popped up, but he lived four hours away. I clicked out of it and almost went to bed again but then I thought, just message him and say hi first. We have been together for four years now, married for two and I have never been happier. I know if I had gone to bed I wouldn't have messaged him the next day due to the distance.

Wow. So much of life is chance.

I suppose my sliding doors moment was also leaving abusive x. I almost wasnt brave enough.

Every night for two years at least i used to get in to bed and think "thank god im here not there" so actually yes thamks @barbedbloom i see i do actually have a sliding door moment!.

I've had one, but at the time I didn't know the ramifications of the decision.

I'd just moved back to the UK after a few years abroad. To widen my social circle when I arrived, I debated beween joining a members' club for people in the arts (sounds a bit wanky written down, but it was actually quite cool) or join a synagogue after nearly a lifetime of atheism.

It was a case of vascillating between sending an email to the club or to the synagogue. I knew I wouldn't have the time or mental capacity to immerse myself in both. I chose the synagogue. Two years later I'm about to marry a man I met when I went there for the first time!

Had my parents when they divorced not decided to split us children up (me with mother sister and brother with father) i dont think I would have ever moved to the UK. I would have had support for my dyslexia and would have ended up at university or similar..

When in England had I not decided to go with my friend to her boyfriends 30th I would have never met dh.. I had 2 options that night. Birthday party or meeting some friends for a drink down our local. I picked birthday party as 2 of my closer friends couldnt make the drinks that night.

I love these! Mazel tov! ⛩🥂👫

@31RueCambon

Wow. So much of life is chance.

I agree - as I said in my earlier post most life - changing decisions are exactly that. There are very few, for most people, where they know when making the choice that they are also going to change their life forever.
I chose to go to an event where I met the manager who would ultimately become my DH. But I'd been to similar events loads of times before and at the age of 16 meeting my future husband was definitely not even in my radar.
Going in to help at my children's school led me to the career I've been in for 20 or so years now, but again, not something I did with that in mind.
And of course, some decisions don't work out for the best - choosing a slightly different route than usual or leaving home at a different time and having a car accident etc.

Two: but they might be memorable because I made the wrong choice both times!

I randomly met a guy at a festival and we ended up going out for 4 years despite living at opposite ends of the country. We split up but just before that happened his best friend and I ended up at the same uni. We shared a house with a couple of others from the second year onwards.

A while later my ex's friend got a bar job and said he'd met a really funny guy at work , who he thought I'd like....he introduced us. 18 years later and we are still together with kids I'm very happy. Sometimes think if I hadn't randomly met earlier boyfriend I'd never have met my DP and have the kids I have. I suppose that's always the case really, an element of luck.

Mine was to go travelling for a year with my then boyfriend (now dh) or take an internship at a well known magazine!! I went travelling 🤣🤣🙈🙈

Yes. I knew if I never gave him my phone number, just knew, down to my bones, everything would be different. 20 years, 3 children later, no regrets.

I had good A-levels, the university confirmed my place .... and I decided not to go, but to go and earn money instead. My life would have been veeeerrrryyyy different.

I thought that the whole point of a sliding doors moment is that it's random...you either get on that train or you miss it by seconds and that determines the course of your life.
We're all having sliding door moments every day!

Choosing a dodgy flatshare because something just clicked with the housemate who showed me around. Two years later she introduced me to my future husband.