To think there's a point where it's too late to hugely change your life

[FloatingOutOnTheTide]

I'm forever hearing "it's never too late to change"; "life can be anything you want it to be"; "only you hold yourself back".

But just being realistic here - by the time you are in later middle age. Married with children and no good reason to leave your marriage. In a career. If you aren't already very wealthy, you're not likely to become so, unless you inherit or win the lottery. You can't make drastic career changes that late in life. You can't strategically marry if you're already married (and yes, before I get flamed, a lot of people do aquire wealth through marriage).

It is far harder to be a free spirit travelling the world if you've already got children and mortgage commitments. Your body and looks are only going in one direction, eventually, no matter how much you fight it with treatments and exercise. It will catch up with you at some point.

Just doing a lot of thinking at the moment and it seems it's just too late - I'd like to be super successful and wealthy and well travelled and to have made more of my looks whilst younger.. But the barrage of inspirational slogans saying it's never too late just don't ring true. Sometimes it is.

My husband retired last year and is now doing a completely different job. He loves it : minimum wage and not every day , but it keeps him busy and he is happier than being at home. He likes meeting new people. It's been a change for the better after forty years on the treadmill full time working. It wasn't too late for him in his late 50s but I know it wouldn't be ideal for others to do this one after they retired.
I don't think I could do exams again or retrain for another job as I couldn't absorb any new information my age now. I admire people that do though. I've never pushed myself enough to be honest!
I would love a bigger home but I realize I should be happy with what I do have. Plus it would be more to clean and keep tidy!
I do dream a better life but I think everyone does at times. Have to be thankful for what we do have and I am that ( although it's not much)

Really interesting. I suspect that our human brains aren’t designed for too much contentment unfortunately. That’s probably how we as a species have progressed so far.

To a 20 year old I spoke to recently, I’ve “made it”, as I’ve got a decent job, own a house, and have dc. From my perspective, they’ve got it all because of their youth and freedom. Grass is always greener I suppose.

I changed job sideways to one with a lot of travel. Obvs now it is all wfh and MS Teams but up until then the job filled the travel bug. Children are teens so I'm less essential than when they were toddlers.

Maybe get your head out of corporate ladder greasy pole thinking. Men with housewives tend to climb that ladder because they give more to mental energy to the corporate culture of work for more years. I gave up competing with them. I moved into adjacent work. Consulting and small business work in the same field (at different times). Am considering lecturing / running training courses in future.

@WaterAndTheWild I'm rapidly approaching 40. I would love it if I wake up one day and have outgrown longing for wealth. I'm by no means poor, and I don't wish for millions....but I have always aspired to more than this and feel it's my own poor decisions that have cost it.

@IrmsFayLear thank you, it's good to know there are others, sometimes it feels like we are caught in this crazy conflict between being sold huge dreams all our lives and told to shut up and be grateful for what we've got. But at the moment I just feel stuck and like it's too late.

@jennie0412 yes, it is depressing but I can't figure out how to fix it. It genuinely feels like there's a crunch point where This Is It and, aside from making little tweaks - a treat here, a holiday there, a new pet, heck maybe a grandchild....there is no more to expect now. Something to do with the complication of unpicking threads, and whether you'd even want to unpick them once sewn.

@FloatingOutOnTheTide

I'm forever hearing "it's never too late to change"; "life can be anything you want it to be"; "only you hold yourself back".

But just being realistic here - by the time you are in later middle age. Married with children and no good reason to leave your marriage. In a career. If you aren't already very wealthy, you're not likely to become so, unless you inherit or win the lottery. You can't make drastic career changes that late in life. You can't strategically marry if you're already married (and yes, before I get flamed, a lot of people do aquire wealth through marriage).

It is far harder to be a free spirit travelling the world if you've already got children and mortgage commitments. Your body and looks are only going in one direction, eventually, no matter how much you fight it with treatments and exercise. It will catch up with you at some point.

Just doing a lot of thinking at the moment and it seems it's just too late - I'd like to be super successful and wealthy and well travelled and to have made more of my looks whilst younger.. But the barrage of inspirational slogans saying it's never too late just don't ring true. Sometimes it is.

Most of the world’s successful businesswomen started their careers after their kids and grandkids grew up. In China and India it’s almost commonplace for women to start a business up at 50-60 and for them to be really successful. Most of the day to day food businesses in Mumbai or Hong Kong, for example, are managed and owned by elderly women!

Which change do you want the most OP? Maybe focus on one at a time. I'm not one of those super successful people (and not that interested in it 😂) but those I know who are focus on what they want. Not a jumble of different things .

FloatingOutOnTheTide is absolutely right -- divorce is a huge catalyst for change (and frankly its probably the best thing I've ever done).

People can really change their lives dramatically within a fairly short period of time but there needs to be some very major (usually external) driver. Such as a marriage breakdown, a death, loss of a job or equivalent. These things are difficult, unsettling and often traumatic so people tend to avoid them unless they really need to happen. If your life is basically satisfactory you aren't going to want to upset the applecart. If one really major thing needs to change you are more likely to look across at other thins.

And when one things changes it can become a catalyst to appraise your entire life and often change a lot of other stuff.

When my marriage broke down I found that because my life was changing in a number of ways I was much more open to things that I wouldn't have considered: I changed my career and lost a lot of weight and started socialising with people quite a lot younger than me. I started travelling again (with my daughter) which I hadn't done before because my husband didn't want to, and doing things like going to art galleries and eating out.

Part of that was mid-life crisis but it was also just being open to possibilities which you would previously not have entertained.

I'm not saying I'm an advocate for divorce or for very dramatic changes in life for the sake of it but I do think when they happen and if you use them positively can really open you up to things in a whole range of areas.

I certainly think bumbling along your whole life without really ever questioning why you are doing things and just taking the path of least resistance and fuss all the time is quite unhealthy.

@firesong you make an excellent point. By wanting "it all" perhaps it does create a jumble that negates the ability to have anything!! Um, if I could have anything I think I would like to have a high up position in a role that I looked at and felt I would be remembered for having made an impact on an industry in some way. But that's no easy task is it!! To achieve that would probably bring increased wealth. But here's the rub...I don't really want to sell my soul to working 24/7 to have that. The more I think about it, the more I see individual character plays a significant part. Not only in the choices you make which tie you in knots to begin with, but then to how you perceive your situation and what you decide to do about it.

An interesting point about divorce being a catalyst. For me it wasi think. Although I was lucky to have some solid foundations of good degrees and work experience behind me. With separation looming (the realisation my ex was abusive) I took a big risk on a new job when my youngest was a baby.
Newly single I poured my energies into my because it was all on my shoulders to have the life I wanted. I have more than doubled my salary while my children have been at primary more opportunities for career advancement are beckoning. Being single gave me the drive to seize every opportunity and throw my weight into progression.
But that doesn't mean you have to be divorced to progress. It must means you have to find your "why".

My mum only started training to be a nurse in her early 40s,. Her career has gone from strength to strength and she now lectures on her.specialism to hundreds of people.

Agree about the breakups too! I have found I have far less fun, and my life moves further away from the way I want it to look, when I live with a man. I'm a single parent of two children, and not anti relationships. I choose quite a different type of man these days. I don't want to be all settled and live someone else's life.

OP, if you don't mind my saying so, there is something both vague and rather passive about the way you talk about your dreams. You want wealth and a career, but you don't seem to specify what your wealth is going to do or how you would set up a career. It sounds somehow less like your own individual dream than a vague generic princess-and-half-my-kingdom dream.

Now I don't know much about those women in China and India (and we should probably add several Africa contries to the list) who set up their own businesses in their 60s but something makes me suspect they are probably rather focused.

So focus! What is it you want? What do you want most? How would you work towards it?

I do think you have a point. I had DC young so they were adults by the time I was 40. I've also not had a long marriage (been married once but it didn't last). I have to a point been able to do some things I wanted to do, have travelled a lot, decent career etc. But DS went and taught English in Japan prior to Covid. I would have loved to do that. But realistically I'm 51 now and they are super ageist there. No one would hire me at my age in Japan and even if I struck lucky and got a job, I couldn't manage the long hours DS had to do. I've had to accept that particular dream is over for me. However, I am focusing on expanding my work online with the idea of being a more toned down version of a digital nomad. So some months in the UK but some in other countries. So I suppose you can maybe adapt your dreams a little to your circumstances.

I think reframing how you think about it can be valuable OP. It's not that you can't travel the world in a van and live the life of Reilly, it's that you choose not to abandon your family to do so. Society might not look kindly on you for running off and leaving your kids, but it is still a choice to stay.

You don't have to stick with the path you're on - it's often worth reassessing which choices aren't serving us well. Going through that mental exercise of saying 'actually I'm choosing to stay with my DH and kids because life is better with them in it, even if it's limited in other ways' can help you feel less stuck and like life is happening to you.

Change 'I can't' to 'I won't' in how you talk about what's making you feel stuck. It might highlight some areas where you can actually improve things, like your job or where you live, but haven't due to passivity or fear or lack of self belief.

I think, sometimes, life has a way of giving you surprises whether you're actively looking or not. But I also agree it's often a of making small changes that lead to bigger ones - prioritising what your important dreams actually are.

Examples? I divorced my ex at 38 years old. I had a great couple of years then a friend at work told me about a nationally run organisation set up for people who just wanted to get out and about.
I joined for something to do to be honest. I made some very good friends in the process. One evening I met a lovely man who became my second husband. We married when I was 41 and I had our child when I was 44 years old. When I divorced I never thought I'd have a child - wasn't particularly worried either.

One of the people I met through this organisation was 50 when his mum died. He'd been living at home as her carer for years. He had work, a few hobbies and caring for his mum. That was it. His friends at work suggested he join the organisation as he was showing signs of depression. They thought he may enjoy some of the events the organisation ran. So he gave it a whirl. The year before DH and I got married he was at an event run by the group and he met a lovely woman, 20 years his junior. He's quite young for his age, she's the more mature in her outlook - they meet in the middle! They've been together for 17 years now - his life is transformed by her being in it. Totally devoted to each other and share the same hobbies.

My sister and her ex husband took the plunge to move to the USA she was 45 years old and he was 52 - they had two primary school age children. They had 8 lovely years out there but moved back because of family - his parents were having health issues, our mum had dementia.

The USA move was obviously planned. But my meeting DH and our friend meeting his partner wouldn't have happened but for a chance conversation and a bit of action on our parts.

So I wouldn't give up on dreams yet. Strange things can often happen - you just have to be ready and brave enough to embrace them

@corythatwas you're probably quite right. For me personally, I was told all the way through school that I was exceptional academically but I never really figured out what that was actually meant to equate to so, a handful of incredible grades later, I sort of bumbled into marriage, children and a mid-senior level corporate role but it isn't The Dream. I can't ever shake the niggling feeling that I could have been so much more if I'd figured out my focus, aimed for it before having kids and a husband. But now all those things are decades established, I can't turn back.

There are essentially 2 threads running in parallel here though- my own personal situation/ feeling (which I'm truly grateful for the insight on!) and a broader AIBU topic on whether we're sold the promise of a life that can be anything we want it to be and change at any point along the way, when that may or may not be really true. It seems there are others who maybe feel the same way - or at least, it's prompting some interesting discussion, which is always good.

It doesn't matter what way the wind blows, what matters is how you set your sail.

Cross-posted with you, OP. I think you do have to accept that there is a price to pay and you have to decide whether you want to pay it.

I'm in my late 50s and have been restarting my career after 15 years of caring for a disabled child. Like you said in your last post, I thought about what I wanted most and decided it was being respected in my career. So I went for that. Decided to put all other interests on the back burner to focus on what I needed for that (in my case, write a book), had just got to the stage where I had reinvented myself for a new role, got promotion, and been offered a fulltime contract when Covid struck and the full time contract was rescinded (back to part time). But I'm not giving up. I'm trying again, I'm trying other ways.

I agree with curiouslypacific that we’re making choices, even if not consciously.

I’ve complained in the past about my lack of freedom as a single mum, but in reality I could go out every night but I’d bankrupt myself with babysitters and I don’t actually want that insecurity for them dc. So in fact I’m choosing a stable home for them for these few years while they’re small.

Then you let go of both resentment and indecision. Live deliberately, I’d say, if I was into cheesy slogans.

I’m also a big fan of working stuff out in a journal. However I have had the feeling recently that I’m building up to something big, but I don’t know what it is yet

can I just say thank you to all who have replied so far - I expected a bit of a bashing for moaning but these posts are really helpful and insightful so thank you :)

What do you call late middle age? 45~50yo?.

I’m changing career completely incl doing a post grad etc... I’m 50 in a couple of months.

It's never to let to change your perception of your own life as it is, appreciate the things you have & enjoy them to the max.

a broader AIBU topic on whether we're sold the promise of a life that can be anything we want it to be and change at any point along the way, when that may or may not be really true

Interesting question. I do think it depends partly on where you come from. Looking at my own dd- brought up in a relatively poor demographic, attended not terribly aspirational state schools, knowing she is going to be disabled for life, and now preparing for an acting career- I think she is probably as pragmatic and hard-headed as it gets.

I grew up abroad, where I was certainly told I was clever, but didn't have many role models for a high-flying career. On the other hand, it didn't seem to matter as much: it was a less competitive society. If people pushed themselves hard (my brother and my nephew both went to conservatoire), it was out of love for the work.

I think wealth is the same. You need focus and determination.
The problem is that we often bumble along in the comfort of what we know. Changing career, creating wealth or any other life you want for yourself (you might prefer a commune or joining a religious community etc..) needs you to know what you want AND to get up and get it. That means taking risks and making yourself vulnerable.
It also means looking at your beliefs about what you can and can’t do.

TonMoulin makes a good point about the risk-taking. In the past, that is something that has held me back, not being willing to make the extra effort in case it didn't pay off, in case I didn't get anything for it. The older I get the more I realise that I haven't got the luxury of just sitting there waiting until I know that something is going to be worthwhile: the rewards go to the people who go out and do things anyway.

To be exact, I won't take risks with money or my family's safety, but I will totally take risks with my own labour, with my own reinventing myself.

The problem isn't because your "old", married, have children, in a career etc. Your problem is that your comfortable. You have become accustomed to your lifestyle and therefore feel uncomfortable to venture into the unknown. As my uncle use to say, as long as your alive you can do anything.

I understand that commitments make things difficult. But you can dream and wish or you can dream and do. Feel the fear and do it anyway.