Would you say I have succeeded?

[florasecret]

I’m 40 in 2020 and I feel a failure.

I earn £47,000 p/a in my job. But I am single and will be spending Christmas alone. I feel like a failure looking at my friends.

YANBU to struggle; this time of year is hard for many people for many reasons. But no, you're not a failure, you're just being very tough on yourself.

Do you have much planned with friends after Christmas?

I guess it depends on what you are measuring. Are you happy?
What is it about them that makes you feel like they are doing better?

Ah I’m a one for looking at my friends too. I know in my heart it’s not worth it, and “success” and “failure” are very subjective and meaningless terms.

I have a good job but not stellar like I imagined when I was 18, I’m a single parent to two wonderful children, I live in an unfashionable part of London. But they are wonderful kids, I have a nice house, I have great friends. Maybe pick out some things you feel happy about - is it a job you enjoy, do you help people through it, do you have hobbies you like etc? If not is there something you’d like to do in 2020?

Different things matter to different people. Instead of thinking about what you earn, do you enjoy your job? Do you feel you're making a difference? 40 is still young: if you're not enjoying your role or would like to do something different, there's still plenty of time to retrain.

And having a family or a partner or children is an extremely old-fashioned and narrow indicator of "success". Don't let what others have or (seem to be) are happy with be the yardstick by which you measure yourself.

For me, the only metric that really matters is "can I live with myself and the choices I have made? Am I comfortable with myself? Is the world better for my being in it?"

I can answer yes to all of these (I happen to be married, but even when I have been single, the answer has been yes) and therefore consider my life so far not to have been wasted.

You are not a faliure x

I think everyone has something they beat themselves up about. I am very happily married, but infertile so I struggle with this season because of that. You earn a lot more than I do. I think honestly no one is ever truly happy and there will be plenty of people hating Christmas purely because of the person they are with as it tends to mean drunken arguments, disappointment etc in those cases.

And having a family or a partner or children is an extremely old-fashioned and narrow indicator of "success". Don't let what others have or (seem to be) are happy with be the yardstick by which you measure yourself.

I should point out that is not intended to be a judgement - society has conditioned us all (particularly women) to use this as the yardstick for success! And if this is what you would genuinely like to achieve, then there is still time for you to do so, but if you never do then I think achieving the metrics I mention above are still a sign of a life well-lived.