Aibu to ask if you are living the life you hoped for?

[thelastjedi]

Hi all,

Just wanted to get some views to see if people are living he life they want to live basically being nosey.

On paper I have the life I've always aspire to have, two kids, my own home, a very good career that lets me work 4 days a week with pension, good holidays etc.

In reality I am so tired from keeping up this existence and I have a bad hip/pelvis which started to play up over a year ago and hasn't been right since. I'm still young-ish and I just feel I'm on the treadmill of life, commute, pick ups from after school club and childminders and rushing around like a maniac every evening before bedtime only to have very early starts the next day with a long commute to work.

If I could go back in time and tell my younger self that by the time I was 30 I would have a great career,two gorgeous kids and my own (mortgaged) place, younger self would have thought my life was set. Present self feels like it's not all it's cracked up to be.

So.... is it normal to feel this way or would you say your life is what you expected it to be and do you enjoy it?

I'm not trying to sound ungrateful but sometimes I wish life would let me have time to take stock of things instead of moving in a hurried blur.

I do have the life I aspired to in some ways but others not. I spent far too long in education working towards a career in a specific area only to realise the past 2 years I actually don't want to work in that area at all. I now potentially have to go back to square one and retrain in something else so I've effectively wasted years I could have been climbing the ladder. My friends are now earning very good salaries and I'm at the same stage I was at after I finished my 1st degree years ago!!

However, in terms of other things I guess I've achieved what I always wanted and I'm happy. In the last couple of years I've got married, bought a house and have had 2 amazing kids. Life has come together in that sense just as I planned and I love my family.

I'm very happy, I think I've just failed at the career side of things when I had so much potential to go far. I just made the wrong decisions.

Not at all. It's probably the life I deserve, though.

Nowhere near where I thought I'd be. I'm 45 and thought I'd be married, several kids, and a loving extended family, and a decent job that I enjoyed. How it's actually turned out is that after a lot of early cancer deaths in my family I have very little family left, and I was either caring for terminally ill parents from age 23 to 34 or grieving their loss to actually be in a good place to meet someone or have kids.

But, I feel like a turned a corner when I hit forty. I moved back to my northern home city after a few years living in London after my last surviving parent died. I bought a house and put down some roots. I made a decision to get out more and travel more - not easy when you're an introvert, but I've been to Cuba, Morocco, India, Nepal, Jordan - and learn more: so far Spanish, long distance cycling, and climbing and mountaineering. Life is definitely not what I expected, and I've learnt that you can only plan so much because life does send you a number of curveballs to throw you off track, and you have to make what you can of it and adjust accordingly. After a lot of heartache in my twenties and thirties I feel I am in a good place. If I find a bloke to share it, then great, but if not, that's not a problem either.

Wow! This is a sadly depressing thread. ☹️

I’m largely happy and grateful for what I have as I work with people who sometimes have nothing. It makes me feel very fortunate especially the amount of support we get from my immediate family. Yes we have childcare to pay for so aren’t as financially comfortable as I’d like. H also has a serious long term health problem which is likely to deteriorate but hopefully with a transplant he can get back to nearly full health.
My family (parents) try to solve any problem we come across together and that is priceless as we never feel alone or that anything can’t be overcome.

Yes and no.

I have amazing children, a great marriage, a lovely family and a job I adore. I am studying and making steps to reach my new goals.

Of course not everything is great, my husband is unwell a lot of the time, which is a struggle. Financially things could be much much better. I don't own a house and I can't see a time where I will ever be in the position to even get a mortgage . I am never going to be financially very comfortable. That is through my own choices.

Life is sometimes a hard slog, it is for everyone. I have to fight to keep myself mentally healthy myself. My husband's illness can sometimes be draining and of course children bring their own set of worries and difficult times which can be exhausting.

However, I had a shit time as a child right to my 30s really, so I really do appreciate what I do have. I am content with what I have and content with the fact that I am never going to have everything the younger me hoped for.

I think I have been - twice, and both times it's ended. I'm hopeful that I will be again.

Basically I'm happy with a quiet life with loved ones, unfortunately my 1st H left when our kids were 5 & 2 and my 2nd H with whom I'd found extreme happiness died last year.

At the moment I'm not unhappy, but I'm lonely and still grieving.

I don’t think I ever had a plan for end game. There are things I wanted to do but no particular lifestyle I expected.

I think this thread is interesting mainly just to see what different people's expectations of their lives were when they were younger, and to think about their upbringing, in particular class background I guess, how that influenced their expectations of what their life would be like. Not that it's necessarily straight-forward, obv many competing influences in your background which helped you build up your expectations of the future. So for example a poster who was 23 working in Tesco and earning 19k, lives at home, no partner, very unsatisfied that she didn't see her life like that. I'm 24 and I only earn £15.5k albeit vaguely in the sector I want to work in, I only graduated in summer which is later than I expected but then I had no expectations of walking into a well-paid job post-graduation as most of my graduate friends have graduated in the few years before I did and I can see how they have, for the most part, gone into low-paid work. So if anything I was delighted to find paid employment in my sector, a job that does require my degree qualification, within 1 month of graduating, despite the poor pay, so have no complaints there, as my expectations were that I would spend a good few months looking for employment only to go into a low-paid job potentially not in my sector at all. So expectations were exceeded there whereas for someone else their expectations would not be met at all, if they had illusions of graduating and walking into a well-paid job etc. In a similar vein, I am married, and if you'd told teenage me I'd be married at 20 I would have laughed in their face. But it happened and here we are. I think I have always had low expectations of my future because I have Asperger's Syndrome and have suffered with mental health problems since about the age of 9, which were severe in my later teenage years. I struggled to see any future for myself at all really so everything feels like a pleasant surprise. I think that is a nice way to live, as I feel grateful for everything I have and don't tend to compare myself to other people or wonder why I don't have more.

Yes and no.

I hoped for a nice house with children having a room each and a spare. A businessman or professional husband at bank manager/GP level. 3-4 DC and to be a housewife. I also wanted a variety of foreign hols. and the DC at the lical grammars or indies depending on 11+results. This based on my Kent seaside upbringing. I left for London and six months in Switzerland.

I actually got a workaholic husband beyond the ken of GP or bank manager. Homes in London and France and have had two careers both of which have been successful.

But, after miscarriage after miscarriage and one baby whose condition was incompatible with life, we settled for two DC almost sticking at one. Also DH is driven and I have sometimes shouldered absolutely everything at home so.etimes feeling like a single parent with a man child as well to look after. And a man child who doesn't like variety in holidays. He finds a place and sticks to it, hence the home in France.

I would swap it all in a heartbeat for the list babies but I wouldn't swap DH. I suppose the surface isn't always a reflection of one's hopes or perhaps one's hopes adjust with experience.

I am miserable as I am alone in the world and my partner whom I thought would marry me and have dc with cheated.

But the majority of people on here are miserable with the drudgery of marriage and children and wanting more.

Maybe we are never happy.

Sort of.

Job is not what I envisaged myself doing but i like it. It's convenient. Pay is alright.

Have dp, ds and dss. Never expected to be a step parent and some of its been awful (ex related, dss is no bother) but I've got the one baby I wanted.

In a few years I imagine we will be exactly where we want to be (buying a second house, bit more financial freedom, mote holidays) this will mainly because ds nursery bill will half!

I'd quite like to be married but as time goes on I'm less bothered.

I didn’t really have any ideas or aspirations about how my life would turn out when I was younger, but turning 40, stuck in a house and town I hate, facing imminent unemployment and being lonely and friendless wasn’t how I hoped things would turn out.

Life seems a depressing, pointless slog at the moment but I have my health and a roof over my head. I’ll keep plodding on in the hope that things will get better eventually!

Not really no. I’m in a complete different career than I’d expected despite spending years doing what I’d always dreamed of and it’s not going anywhere but I enjoy the work and the money’s okay.

I’m a stepmum which no one ever plans to be and there are good bits and bad.

I’d never considered not being a mum by this age and I’d hoped for 4 children but now find myself wondering if I’ll ever have any.

My husband is the best thing that’s ever happened to me but it’s my second marriage and the awful years in my first one feel like wasted time.

We have a beautiful home in a nice area, I have a lot of amazing friends, I’m healthy and my family are all healthy and okay. But you don’t assume that won’t be the case so while I’m grateful for the good things, it’s inevitable to be sad when things you took for granted don’t pan out.

Not at all. 3 kids, one on the way, single parent again, I absolutely dispise my life.

I'm unhappy with where I live but I can't move as kids settled at school, eldest taking exams soon etc

I have zero job prospects when this one is born and won't physically be able to earn enough for wrap around care for 2 plus my youngest (won't get any financial help for this one. Apart from 13.40 child benefit) due to the fact that I have zero qualifications. I can't retrainas I have very little support in caring for the children etc and as I'm on benefits, I don't qualify for any help with childcare via the local college.

The father has had a complete mental breakdown since I asked him to leave, including losing his job due to not turning up, his house as he didn't pay rent and now is threatening suicide every weekend. Which is fun to deal with.

On reflection, I actually hate my life and there is no way to change it.

Yes, but only since I’ve consciously decided to make it that way.

Before I moved I had two children who were not happy, they rarely saw either parent and were constantly in nursery, after school club etc. We saw them in the morning to get them dressed, drop them to nursery and then that was it until night where it was bath and bed. I hated it, but we needed money. I hated my job, I hated the house that we lived in it was nothing like the house I’ve always dreamed of. Mine and my husbands relationship was failing due to spending no time with eachother. I sat down with my DM and told her it wasn’t what I wanted and she told me to change it.

No we’ve moved to Devon. We’ve both got very good jobs, that also allow us to be with the kids a lot and I work from home. We have a gorgeous house, two more dc who are very happy. We have days out as a family all the time and our relationship is the best it has ever been.

20 yrs ago, I thought I had it all...lovely House,2 dcs and a dh with a super job and well thought of in his career
He then had a break down( due to bullying at secondary school he'd never told me about and previously undiagnosed depression), he attempted suicide, lost his job, we lost many of our so called friends, and had to rely on benefits
I had to retrain and go back to work to support family when our dcs were still small - I now have a decent career
thankfully eventually dh recovered with a lot of drugs and CBT and we had another dc!
He then went back to uni retrained in a totally different career....
He's now incredibly successful in this new career and although we still have a long way to go to clear certain debts we have a much better quality of life than if we'd stayed in our old life.
Dh is more connected with the dcs and we now realise who our true friends are

OP, go for gait analysis. My hip/pelvis was agony- orthotics have been a godsend.

Not quite. When I was younger I didn't want children, I just wanted to travel the world. I did quite a bit of that, but then I got bored and decided I wanted to buy a house, have one child and be creative.

I've ended up with my own house, one child and I do creative things every day. But, I'm not living in the place I wanted to live, I have a low wage no social life. Life's not perfect, but we're fairly happy.

I am in a way... I have husband and children and, thankfully, they seem well and happy. I have friends, a fulfilling career, house, cars and can afford some treats and toys now and again.
I live in the sticks because DH is an archetypal countryman, who couldn't bear to live in sub/urbia. It's not my choice, but I make the best of it. There are pluses, but I’d rather have had easier access to arts and cultural stuff, and more cafe culture/buzz.
I have a health issue which restricts my life somewhat and may deteriorate, but I suppose that's just ageing.
All in all, not too bad.

Not 100 percent but close enough. Maybe reduce to 3 days so it will be less manic. Finding the right balance always found was the key plus ignoring people who moan.

In terms of my husband and where I live yes. I have two healthy boys who I love dearly but I think that I thought I would be better at Motherhood. I have a self-employed job, not a career but I love it which is lucky. In terms of family, I wish I had my Dad in my life properly. He is with a very difficult partner who probably has dementia and I am feeling very low about the fact that it is so hard to see him. He lives 200 miles away and I am planning a day up on the train in February, but he is already trying to talk me out of it. I know its cause of how difficult his partner is going to be about it, but boy does it hurt. He is going to be 80 at the end of this year and I cannot help but feel tht time is running out, sorry for the hijack/essay.

I never really thought about what I wanted, other than switching directions, moving and changing careers when I felt like it. I just didn’t think of the picture of my future life. Maybe because, coming from a tiny rural town, I was often exploring the new or bigger.

But I’m really happy to be in London, in a house with 3 (just) dc. I still like the idea that things aren’t stuck and changes (career etc) can still be made.

More than.

I hoped for superficial things but my reality is a partner who loves me more than I ever imagined and 4 children.