What does life look life from your age perspective?

[PrincessLouis]

Inspired by the thread about whether a wife with a high earning husband should give up work, in which a lot of 50s MNers were saying at their age all the high earning husbands have left the SAHM wives and married high earning women... I’m wondering what life looks like from your age perspective?

I’m ‘around’ 40 (ahem ), two professional jobs type life, my observations are:

1. Almost everyone gets married, so when you’re in your 20s/30s thinking it will never happen, it probably will. Haven’t seen much infertility but maybe that’s still to come given age. Most marriages seem healthy and strong
2. Seen two affairs, both ended marriages with kids
3. Mental health is a massive thing in lots of people’s lives - I think there is a lot of responsibility when you have young kids, need to earn etc and that’s often how the stress comes out, hoping this will get better as kids get older etc. Also know a few people our age with serious physical health problems
4. Interestingly with all the Caroline Flack stuff in the papers (not saying she did anything) we have known two cases of wife on husband DV, no husband on wife cases
5. Re my parents and their circle, health got quite wobbly for a few people around 60 so good to have financial options

Interesting thread! But I think it's going to come down to people's circles, not age.

I am late 20s. My takes are:

1. I agree that most everyone gets married eventually. Some don't but I think they're in the minority. At my age it's about 50/50 with people being settled down, married with kids vs single, carefree, getting drunk at festivals etc.

2. Good mental health is hard to define. There's a whole generation of people whose economic prospects are worse than their parents' (for the first time ever), can't get on the housing ladder, can't get decent jobs etc. So there's a lot of anxiety and worry. Whether that equates to MH issues for everyone? Hard to say.

3. A lot of early marriages/LT relationships fail. Out of the people I know, everyone who got into a LT relationship in their teens is now split/divorced, apart from me and my DH !

4. Nobody really has a career. They just have a job. I'm not saying nobody progresses or gets promoted, they do, but I'm not sure there's any overarching plan.

Mid 40s here:

1. Loads of people get divorced/separated!
2. Loads of people struggle with their mental health.

1. Loads of people have affairs!

Just turned 40-

• Most of my friends are married. Most have primary age children.

-Some couples have split up- not due to affairs but unreasonable behaviour.

• Don't know any couples where only 1 person works.

• Starting to get to the age where parents are hitting poor health so mental health/feeling stretched in both directions is more obvious

I am 39 (so nearly 40) and I would disagree with a lot of your experiences.

I know hardly anyone who is married (although lots living together as couples in long term relationships)

I’m late twenties:

1. Lots of people struggle with mental health.
2. Nobody has a career just a “job.”
3. Nobody gets married these days, just live together with their partner and kids.
4. Affairs seem like the “normal.” But maybe I’ve read to many MNs threads.

These are mine:

1. Almost everyone gets married, so when you’re in your 20s/30s thinking it will never happen, it probably will. Haven’t seen much infertility but maybe that’s still to come given age.

Actually have quite a few unmarried friends now in their 50s and 60s. Maybe because my profession is one that encourages complete immersion. Also know plenty of co-habiting couples.

Most marriages seem healthy and strong

Have seen quite a few split-ups, but overally probably yes.

2. Seen two affairs, both ended marriages with kids

Same here. Though kind of wondering if the affair (which in both cases went on to a relationship) wasn't there to do exactly that thing (and yes, I thought that was a shoddy and cowardly way of doing things, though I knew that both marriages were unhappy and needed to end).

3. Mental health is a massive thing in lots of people’s lives - I think there is a lot of responsibility when you have young kids, need to earn etc and that’s often how the stress comes out, hoping this will get better as kids get older etc. Also know a few people our age with serious physical health problems

Certainly see a lot of that. Well, I would, since MH problems are hereditary in my family (long-recorded history going back at least to early 1900s), but also because of my job. Ditto physical health problems. Life is, to some extent, a valley of tears.

4. Interestingly with all the Caroline Flack stuff in the papers (not saying she did anything) we have known two cases of wife on husband DV, no husband on wife cases

I've only known male on female- including one case where a lovely young woman was killed by her partner.

5. Re my parents and their circle, health got quite wobbly for a few people around 60 so good to have financial options

Of course it's good to have financial options, but given how many essential jobs in society are either low-paid or precarious or both, it is unrealistic to imagine that that can happen for everybody, unless something is done about how we remunerate people's contributions as a society. I'm in my 50s, fully trained academic with 30 years' teaching experience and decent publication record, still on precarious contracts. My financial option is basically to drop dead at that lectern before I need to start worrying about my pension. And I'm one of the lucky ones: the people doing arguably more necessary work as cleaners and carers far less so.

Early thirties here

1 most of my friends are married and have kids. Seemingly strong marriages, but some of their husbands seem lazy (refusing to have their kids by themselves).

1. One affair I know of, they're still married.

1. Most struggle with their mental health. There are too many pressures. Housing costs eat a lot of money, some have been fortunate to have parental help.

We'll see what the late thirties/early forties brings!!

I'm 50. In my 20s I was surrounded by women being left by their husbands. I saw their financial struggles and put myself through night school to ensure I was well educated and able to support myself and any children I had.

I've encountered many younger women who have had fertility issues.

I've encountered many women who have been subject to domestic violence, including myself. However I've not encountered any men, oddly.

I've known many people, both male and female, to have affairs.

I've encountered quite a few people with mental health issues. Lots of eating disorders. Work related mental health issues are quite common in the environment I work in.

I'm in my 50s - a whole range of married, not married, cohabiting, divorced (sometimes multiple times), affairs not so much though.

Mental health issues seem really common amongst young people and again for women over 40.

Lots of people working in new ways with far less job security, young people locked out of the housing market and consigned to insecure private rentals.

At my age bereavements and health issues both for myself and those around me are a major thing and most folk are anxious about funding their retirement.

Rich/poor divide seems a huge issue and social mobility is really poor.

I'm in my mid thirties in the south east.

Most people I know of a similar age are married (or living together).

Probably slightly more than half have young kids - everyone started having them about 3 or 4 years ago.

Everyone I know has a career.

There have been a couple of divorces. No affairs that I know of.

A good few people have mental health issues.

Many of my friends and relatives don't have children, I think this is becoming far more common.

Early-mid 40s.

Aware of the fact that we all live in our own bubbles. I can't speak for 1976 births much more accurately than Prince Andrew could speak for 1960 births.

I’m 40 and I’ve learned that there’s no escape. When I was a child living on a rough estate I used to think I’d grow up and have a nicer life somewhere else. But now I’m grown up and I’ve realised that unless you’re extremely rich you can’t avoid being around bad people. You can become middle class and live somewhere nice but you’ll still share public facilities with scummy people who have no decency. You’ll end up next to them on a NHS hospital ward. Your child will end up in a class with their child. Unless you’re one of the few who are rich enough to cosset themselves with private schools and private clubs and private property, you will still be surrounded by scum.

@Aureum Are you ok?

Late 40s here:

1.a) Almost everyone is still married. Some seem questionable but most seem strong. We, and friends largely have early secondary age children (a few still in the tail end of primary). For 3 or 4 of our friendship group this is their second marriage, with the first having ended childless at some point in mid-twenties.
1.b) There is a tendency for some of the wives (probably about a third) to have done SAHM for some of the child-rearing years. Now all working although majority part-time. High powered part time as well as minimum-wage-esque working in a school. None of the men are part time.
2) Seen three affairs, (one from H, two from W) ended 2/3 of those marriages
3) Mental health was more of a thing for DH and I a few years back. We tackled with counselling and now regular exercise/healthier eating/cutting back hugely on the alcohol. I think kids being older (secondary age) helps. for now...waiting for the true teenage years to hit
4) One suspected male to female DV. If not DV then certainly emotional he is an utter twat One female abuser - now split.she is an utter, beyond evil, cow
5) Parents use the NHS a lot but generally OK. Not looking forward to increasing frailness - whether physical or mental.

Hating to tempt fate - but overall life is good. Mortgage nearly paid off, no intention to move, DC settled at secondary, health good/OK, finances OK, and got hobbies/spare time to enjoy life. My forties have been my best decade yet. Although a year or so of early forties was pretty shit.

Late 40s.

Mixed group - couples married happily, long term relationships, some with kids - some without, and some whose relationships split after affairs.

Almost everyone I know feels anxious about the future in some form or another. There doesn't feel that there are many feeling any hope. Many live for the here and now.

Health wise is again a mixed bag. Some with cancer, some with life limiting conditions, and some with just the normal aches and pains of getting older. However, mental health and access to support is of huge concern.

I'm 34.

Half of my friends are married, the other half are cohabiting with a partner. One friend who is single (plus myself). No affairs.

Almost all of my friends have had mental health issues at some point. All seem quite stressed at this point in life, mainly due to relentlessness of work (or juggling it with young children).

Having all lived in London, my friends are now dispersed allover the country (or world in some cases).

Most friends own a home but some still renting and saving.

A few friends have had parents who have died in recent years.

Also, as you get older life sucks up all your time. I’ve just had an argument with a 20-something cousin who’s angry that I didn’t respond to her text within 48 hours. At her age I absolutely wouldn’t have understood how someone didn’t have time to respond to a text. Now from an adult perspective I can see how your life is eaten up. Between opposing work schedules, overnight business trips, childcare, housework, cooking, ironing, home maintenance - it’s not unusual for DH and I not to sit down together for days on end. I have DC while he does stuff, we do the hand over like ships that pass in the night, then he has DC while I do stuff. We recently had dinner with friends who live ten minutes away but who we hadn’t seen for two years, simply because we didn’t have time to get together.

I think the trend reverses as you hit your 60s, work slows down and you have no DC to look after. I’m worried I’ll emerge from the fog of not having even five minutes to spare, only to discover I’m an old lady.

I'm late 40's
Hardly any of my group of friends married and the ones that did divorced due to cheating.

I don't know anyone that is or was a SAHP

A few have had MH problems and we all rallied and did what was needed.

In my 60s and alarmed at how rapidly women are being sidelined re safety around self ID. Actually the erasure of women as a sex.

Early 20's -

I am the minority in a lot of things:

I'm the girl who has fertility issues

Because we have a lovely house everyone assumes we have had help, not that we worked are ass's off

We probably look like we have it all, yet would give up every damn thing to have a family

About 50/50 with my friendship group of being parents / wanting to go out and party

My friends talk about feelings a lot more than I do, probably should learn

Everyone is much trendier than me at my age

Early 50's.

Too many stressed people trying to hold down work and caring commitments.

Most have kids grown up and left home.

Some given up work/ been sahm and now caring for gc.

Lots of divorces from various forms of living.

Many paid off their mortgage, but some single/divorced now in rented.

My life is different/ alternative though, as struggled with mh trying to conform to societal norms.

I'm in my fifties. My social circle is small but mostly includes moms of teenagers. Also we all only work doing seasonal jobs so have a lot of leisure time.

I agree it's about the circles you move in, and the area you live rather than just age. I am 29 and was living in London until recently. All of my school friends there live a typical city life - long hours job, out for drinks a few nights a week, renting, have boyfriends but not engaged or married and definitely no kids anywhere on the horizon.

In contrast, in the place where my DP grew up, at 29 you would be expected to have kids and be settled down with a partner or married, probably own your house if you have a job as housing is cheap, and as a woman you would likely be a SAHM or in a low paid part time job that fits around the kids. Of course not everyone is like this, that is just from the people we know in that area.

My parents are in their 50s and I have seen loads of their friends divorce after 20+ year marriages recently.