To ask what you’d do if single, childless and likely to stay that way?

[muddywatersedge]

Aged 38.

I’m a critical care nurse and bored in my job: I’d have worked for Médecins Sans Frontières and travelled to areas in crisis hoping to make a difference.

What happened to Brookeberry happened to me, nobody was more surprised. My dating history could be be written on the back of a matchbox.

OP, you say you are not very attractive? I say love yourself, value yourself, and you will be valued and loved back. Every bread can find it's butter.

@ShadyLady53 - if I could go back and speak to my 34 year old self I'd tell her this: It can all still happen for you. You are young enough. Keep your standards high. Hold on for the right man, do not sacrifice yourself for the man that comes along. Be open minded. Try new things. Lots of new things. Join groups and groups and more groups. Go to the pub. Accept pretty much any invitation because you just never know. It can turn on a knife edge.

If it's what you really want, it can still happen for you. Good luck.

Thanks @Gabilan, means a lot. I must be on the right track because I have no spare time hardly due to various hobbies and groups I attend! I've just started a new part time job alongside my freelance work and I've turned down a guy who was all wrong for me earlier this month despite a voice inside screaming "just settle, he might be your only option". Only thing i'm not doing is going to the pub as I don't drink and don't feel very comfortable in pubs tbh. I say yes to as many invitations as I can but so far haven't met any decent, single guys.

I need all the luck I can get so thank you!

@ShadyLady53 - maybe not the pub then! I only mention it because recently I was in the pub with a friend of mine who was whinging about my lack of love life on my behalf. I've given up whinging because I've just accepted it for what it is. Anyway, almost as if on cue, a really rather lovely single male acquaintance of hers wandered over to say hello to her. Not sure if anything will happen between us. It might not. But if I hadn't gone to the pub that day, and if his friends hadn't been late meeting him, I'd not know he even existed. I made damn sure he got my phone number though, which I pretty much never do So who knows. it can change very quickly and if it doesn't, you're out there doing stuff and know it wasn't because of lack of effort on your part.

I’m 38, single and childfree and intend to keep it that way. I’ve never had a desire to have a long term committed relationship or to have children.

I work in a fairly demanding job with an excellent salary, though Ireland’s punitive tax rates mean I don’t take home as much as I’d like, or as people think I do... my sis can’t understand why I don’t have a much more glamorous lifestyle than I do!

I go on regular holidays, sometimes on my own, sometimes with my sister, sometimes with a friend who’s also single and childfree, and I have two married friends who both have children but who go on 4-night breaks with me twice a year.

Day to day, I live a fairly boring life. I can be very sociable but at the same time I’m quite an introvert so I relish time on my own. I love coming home to an empty quiet house, where everything is as I left it. I often sit in silence, reading or browsing online, the silence doesn’t bother me. Solitude suits me! I’d have no interest in being out 2 or 3 nights a week at classes/groups/clubs etc. I’d find that too much of a commitment.

I do think though that some people have a false view of what being single entails. Rather than having the freedom to be reckless with money, instead you need to be careful- there’s no DH to bail you out. You and you alone are responsible for your home and all expenses. You can’t exactly pack in work and head off somewhere obscure and exotic to indulge yourself if you want a pension and secure accommodation etc. you have to work like most other people, and thus don’t magically have all this free time to spend on weird and wonderful aspirational hobbies.

Wait 2 years and then expect all the stray cats in the neighbourhood to move in

@Gabilan - that sounds very promising! I'll admit I did think of heading to a pub in a nice area when the world cup was on and England were playing - thought there would be plenty of single men there but didn't have the guts to go alone.

Hope that the guy gets in contact with you and that it all works out !

I was single and childless til I adopted my child when I was 38. I know what you mean about not knowing your place in the world. I’d had a couple of serious relationships for most of my twenties but had been single (apart from brief relationships with total fuckwits) for all of my thirties.

For me I got to the point where I felt I wanted / needed to make a decision. I’d tried pretty much everything to meet someone (evening classes, hobbies, friends of friends, blind dates, meeting people in the pub, online dating etc) and it hadn’t led to anything worthwhile.

I asked myself could I live without another relationship? (answer - yes if I had to though I would like to meet someone) and could I imagine never being a parent? (no).

For me, adoption was the way I wanted to become a mum. It’s bloody hard work doing it alone and not for everyone but for me and my child I’d say it was the best decision I ever made.

The grass is always greener.

There is a huge weight of responsibility in raising children that you don't appreciate until you're neck deep in it. And with relationships come compromise. Hopefully it's with someone you love, respect and like, so you're willing to do it.

I wouldn't change my lot for anything - but I think many of us are sometimes wistful for the autonomy and relative freedom of our youth. And yes, of course we're looking at it through rose-tinted glasses, while ignoring all the negative aspects.

to you OP, if you're not happy with the way things are panning out.

I love my son and DH and know I couldn't have been happy without a loving partner in life. I haven't really been single since I was 18 so I think I am just programmed to be part of a couple. But I don't think that's the same for everyone. Of I had remained single I would have gone to the Pacific Northwest of America and become a writer and journalist.

@Gabilan don’t take it out of context, I’ve had two failed pregnancies. I said to those who are content with their decision not to have dc and those who make the choice not to have them.

I’m a few years behind you but in the same position op. I feel my motivation for dating waning. I feel like I’ll never meet anyone or have a family of my own. All I ever wanted was to be a wife and mother, I’m not career minded but my job is to ‘play mum’ in other peoples families anyway.

I like the idea of travelling and working abroad a bit but I worry I’ll narrow my chances of meeting anyone even more, and the thought of having to start from scratch again when coming home is really scary.

I’ve got so many hobbies that I do, I’m relitively outgoing, not horrendous looking. I rent my own flat and drive my own car. I’m perfectly good at living independently but I don’t want to have to, I want a partner in crime.

Day to day, I live a fairly boring life. I can be very sociable but at the same time I’m quite an introvert so I relish time on my own. I love coming home to an empty quiet house, where everything is as I left it. I often sit in silence, reading or browsing online, the silence doesn’t bother me. Solitude suits me!

I've got about a decade on you, but feel exactly the same way. I LOVE being alone. Not all the time sure, but I could happily go days on end without talking to another person. I kind of create my own little world. That might sound a bit batty but seeing as my job involves me dealing with other people all the time, and as I've never had any complaints and in fact get praised for my rapport with others, clearly I'm quite capable of being sociable when required.

@IcedPurple we’re eerily similar! I’m a psychiatrist and I spend my working days talking with people and developing a good rapport with them. I’m bloody good at my job, am warm and empathic, but when the days work is done I just want blissful solitude! I could think of nothing worse than going home to a noisy busy house and having to engage with people for the evening.

I've been widowed for a number of years and, apart from a few random dates that went no further from OLD I've been on my own. Childless and will stay that way.

I work long hours and am self employed so have to, as my income is the only one I have.
I don't holiday much as I can't justify spending the money - as I'm the only one to pay the bills and if I'm off work, that's it.
I have few friends because I'm the social pariah.
I rarely see my family as they have that MN cliche of their own little family to concentrate on and I'm just seen as a source of potential inheritance

The people saying they would have all those adventures are either young, lucky or fantasists. The reality is. Being single and childless over 40 sucks.

I certainly wouldn't say it sucks. But I do agree that you can't just swan off. There's no back up. All the bills are yours. Nothing is split, nothing is shared. It's not carefree. Most of the time I enjoy it, but as a PP said, if all those people with families think being single is so great, why didn't they stay that way?

I have been where you are. I spent time with my friends, worked in a job I liked, dated a lot of frogs and went on some fabulous holidays - from holiday in the Caribbean with a friend who was also single to adventure holidays with companies like Explore & Exodus. (I went on a safari and saw Gorillas and trekked the Inca Trail).

I actually met my husband in my early 40s. I'm now married and have one DC. Having done of lot of socialising and travelling, I'm actually not bothered so much about go out

Enjoy life.

I mean, what’s the option? Sadness? Bitterness? Jealousy??

Nah bruv. That don’t sound like much fun tbf.

Life happens to us, with us, as a result of us. If you want it, make tracks to get it. But don’t think a different path is of less value.

OP I think many of us crave what we don't have- hence the huge amount of responses suggesting that you enjoy the single life, doing what you want when you want etc etc..

Many of the people who seem to think k that your life is wonderful would probably be struggling if they were in your shoes.

I'm married with DC and I love and value my family very much. They exhaust me though so sometimes I do wish for a bit more time to myself.

However, there was a time when all I wanted was to be a parent and I wouldn't glibly tell someone in your shoes that I think it's easy to be 38 and single if that's not what you wanted from your life.

Having said all that, I guess it's sensible to make the best of what you have and find the positives from your situation- and I really hope that you are able to do that.

I would work abroad, expand my horizons that way. Maybe take up a bit of a new direction and take a few career risks to find something really worthwhile.

If I wanted it to be that way id enjoy it. At 38 though if I didn’t id consider that it’s not over till the fat lady sings and make a massive push to get a mate and ...well mate... until i was 43 and then give up and make the most of it. Technically you could still have a natural baby later than that but it would really be pushing it. That would be my “oh well I’m resigned to this” age.

And I know it’s crazy but if that had happened to me I’d probably have become a nun. I’m Christian and I don’t really have much libido and I don’t think I’d be very motivated to achieve things without my kids around really. I’d be looking for meaning not pleasure if I didn’t have them.

To a PP who said you can move abroad with a family, maybe, but it's much harder to have to consider the career needs of your spouse in addition to your own, plus the needs of your children and unsettling them.

I was always adventurous and envisaged working around the world, soaking up different cultures and experiences, being a bit nomadic... but I settled down young with a very lovely and very home-loving man who had zero interest in any of that! So it won't happen in my situation now and that's ok. But if I were single and childfree, it's exactly how I would live my life.

Maybe take up a bit of a new direction and take a few career risks to find something really worthwhile.

It's easier to take career risks when you have another person jointly responsible for the bills.
By the age of mid 30's even single, childless people have a high level of financial responsibility. On threads like this is it often clear who the people are who settled down in this 20's.

Travel...travel....travel