To ask what was your 'sliding doors' moment?

[Fairyicecream]

For those that haven't seen the film Sliding Doors, it basically showed how different her life turned out if she caught the train/didn't catch the train.

What was one decision, one moment that could have changed your whole life?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. A few years ago my marriage went through a bad patch (understatement to say the least). DH talked about leaving. It was the worst time of my life and I honestly don't know how I got through it.

Anyway, i often wonder, what if I had just told him to go? We would now all be living separately and we and our beautiful DC would have a completely different life.

Instead, we are all now happier than we have ever been. But it could have all been so different with that one decision...

I love this thread! I'm still young and this thread has given me hope that my sliding doors moment of meeting 'the one' may still be yet to come. I've also just rejoined tinder with a more open mind after reading this thread. Maybe this thread will be part of my sliding doors moment 😂

I love this thread too! Here's a few SD stories from my family:

Dad: DF had diverticulitis (a gut inflammation problem) and his doc booked a scan. DF refused, insisting he could get by with fibre tablets and laxatives for the rest of his life. DM was so fed up with his moaning, she colluded with doc to force DF to go. The scan picked up something interesting -- advanced kidney cancer. Hospital kept DF in and operated the next day. They saved his life.

Cousin: She is a good driver but was crap the day she tried to reverse park in a busy city street. A man crossed the road, got in the parked car in front, then got out and came over to her. She graciously accepted his help of directions by the centimetre. Once parked, she said, "After all that hard work, I need a coffee." Man laughed and said "Let's go then." They're still together two years later.

Me: I hate beat-up, boozy old bores, so was carefully avoiding such at a pre-Xmas party. As the sun rose, however, we all mellowed and I was feeding Vitamin B tablets to one loud-mouth as he sobered up. "You," he said, "would make a f-ing good journalist." As it happened, I'd been trying and failing to get a newspaper cadetship. "I do want to be a journalist," I said, and he told me to write to him at the newspaper where he was a senior writer. I did, he passed my letter to the boss and I was invited to sit the entry exam. That was 35 years ago, and though I'm now changing tracks I've had the most awesome media career and an education money could not buy. Sometimes it pays to lend those seemingly obnoxious people your ears for a few minutes.

I have loved this thread. It has got me thinking how life is full of sliding door moments.
My biggest one was of I had just walked with my friends when I was younger rather than finish what I was doing and catch them up.

I wouldnt have been attacked by a stranger. I was very young (13) . I gave up the hobby where it happened and isolated myself from my friends. It sent me on a mental health spiral that lasted well into my 20's. I lost my sensible girl head and put myself in many dangerous situations throughout my teens. I hung out with terrible people.

Years later and I have a great dh, children and still went on to achieve an education in my 30's and secure a great job. I still have many regrets though and always think "if I had just gone with them".

I am very happy now,

Me too, @MissMissICantDoThis.
In my student days a German student joined our university for a term and came home to stay with me and my family one weekend.
We were sitting in the crowded local pub (oh, remember those days?!) when he commented on how many people must be potential 'the one's for each of us. All those people paired up with people they had mostly met in our small town, many of whom already had or would go on to have families etc. But if you lifted any of them out of that situation and put them somewhere else there must be other people they could meet and get together with. What he said has always stuck with me. So many possibilities in life.

@picklecustard that's so true, life is all about the repercussions from decisions we or someone else has made which then affect our lives.

Some small, some enormous.

Bit late to this but wanted to add mine!

It was 2002, I was temping in London and had broken up with an arsehole boyfriend! One day I was sitting on the DLR and noticed a torn out bit of paper next to me, on one side was two horoscopes (one of which was mine) and on the other side a job advert for a permanent secretarial job which sounded great. I kept the piece of paper and applied. 4 weeks later I started the job, was there for 5 years and met my now husband who also worked there. If I had sat on a different seat on that train I would never had seen that advert, never applied for the job, met my husband or had my two children!!

@PumpkinCheater

I accepted one university offer and not another.

Basically my entire life would be different. Career, friends, DH, kids, town/country of residence.

At the time I made the decision, I remember knowing that all of this stuff might be hanging on it... and also realising that I had no way of telling what either choice would bring.

Exactly the same as me! Could have accepted an offer closer to home, but went to Uni the furthest place possible from my hometown and subsequently now live on the other side of the world. Had I stayed closer to home I am pretty sure I would still be there now.

@JustDavesWife

Bit late to this but wanted to add mine!

It was 2002, I was temping in London and had broken up with an arsehole boyfriend! One day I was sitting on the DLR and noticed a torn out bit of paper next to me, on one side was two horoscopes (one of which was mine) and on the other side a job advert for a permanent secretarial job which sounded great. I kept the piece of paper and applied. 4 weeks later I started the job, was there for 5 years and met my now husband who also worked there. If I had sat on a different seat on that train I would never had seen that advert, never applied for the job, met my husband or had my two children!!

Aww that's lovely @JustDavesWife.. worthy of a romance novel

@ShinyHappyPeopleHoldingHaands It was all pretty boring after that though, not sure people would buy the book 😂

If I hadn't dropped a £2 coin on the floor of a nightclub then the guy stood next to me wouldn't have picked it up and given it back to me then offered to buy me a drink... 12 years later we're married with 2 kids! We could so easily have never met.

@JustDavesWife you could always embellish Make it "based on a true story"

As I was too tight to pay the Christmas supplement for a room in a beach front hotel, we ended up in a hotel 3 roads back from where everything was destroyed when the tsunami hit Phuket on boxing day 2004...am still teased about my tightfistedness saving my life today!

In Daily Mail now

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8970409/People-reveal-single-decision-changed-lives-forever.html

I went to Uni in wales and one of my flatmates in first year had a rather annoying boyfriend from dorset (I was from northumberland). Bumped into him randomly again in my final year as his newer girlfriend (who i knew from my course) had just split up with him and he was handing her back some textbooks. So i did her a favour and collected them from him to pass on. He and I went for a coffee and he was actually quite chatty (and less annoying), we got talking and gradually things went from there. We married 7 years later (15 years ago).
I've always been interested in genealogy and 2 years ago registered with a site and found some relatives and connections. I finally convinced DH to do the same test and when it came back we're 4-6th cousins! Still trying to work out the fine details out but it looks like somewhere in the mists of time 2 brothers with apprenticeships moved around the country and one ended up on the south coast. And 2 of their descendants from opposite ends of the country met by coincidence and married. If i hadn't have helped my fellow student with her books we would never have struck up the friendship all those years later that led eventually to our marriage!

Being mugged at knifepoint on a bright sunny Christmas Eve. I left the country I love and have had a gaping hole in my heart ever since.

I've just seen it in the DM too. The shame!

I was scheduled to fly from Leeds Airport and decided to catch a later flight. The plane I was supposed to catch crashed killing everyone on board. My wife did not know that I had changed my flight, got one hell of a telling off for not letting her know

If I had realised that the Daily Mail was full of shite I wouldn't have bought a copy.

bet they won't print that on their website

A little over 40 years ago, I was a chemistry major in college and was given special permission by the head of the department to make "smoke powder" for a laser project. For some reason, he thought I was much more knowledgeable than I was and allowed me to mix ammonium nitrate and zinc dust together unsupervised. I was supposed to bake both ingredients overnight to get all the moisture out before mixing them or the concoction would explode...which I didn't know. I was in a hurry so I didn't bake the ingredients, and worse yet, I put the mixture into a glass jar that I was about to carry back to my dorm room. As I was walking out the door, one of the girls who worked in the chemistry storeroom yelled at me to clean my stirring utensil first, so I put the jar down on a table and walked back into the room where the sink was. At that instant, I heard a hissing sound and then an explosion, which set the table on fire, splattered molten zinc up to the ceiling, and filled the entire storeroom with the thickest white smoke you could imagine. If I hadn't stepped out of that room at the exact instant that I did, I would have been killed in that explosion.

I dropped my phone down a toilet in a bus/train station. Can't exactly remember which.

I was on my way to visit a friend for a couple of nights.

I'd not long finished college and I'd been seeing this guy. He was kind, sweet, romantic , and not after just one thing, he actually talked to me, didnt need alcohol to do so, and he was someone I thought ( ok so I was only 20) so we are talking 20 yrs ago I could get to really really like. But that fall down the toilet broke my phone. Wouldn't even turn on. Lost all my numbers and no way could I afford a new phone.

I mean obviously I wouldn't have my exact kids if I hadn't been unable to see him again. We hadn't exchanged house numbers as I was living with parents and didnt want them to know

So I never saw him again after that day..

If I hadn't broken my toe, I would probably be dead, and I doubt I would have my daughter.

Had been trying TTC unsuccessfully for a fair while, and put lack of conception down to stress at work. Really, should have gone for tests but was stalling.
One evening we were meant to be going shopping and racing around I slammed my foot into a heavy piece of furniture, breaking my toe.
To keep this (reasonably) short, I couldn't walk in it and was signed off to WFH. Weeks passed and I was still in a lot of pain so GP prescribed me some calcium tablets. The migraines I had been having - which I had attributed to stress seemed to be becoming more frequent and my toe still wouldn't heal.
Fortunately I had health insurance through work and ended up having some further tests which showed excessive calcium in my blood and a tumour on my thyroid.
Turns out that if I hadn't had the tumour removed I would have ended up having a stroke because of the saturation of calcium.
Work kept hounding me about going back and in the end I threw caution to the wind and resigned, opting for some time to reassess. Then discovered I was pregnant.

So glad I broke that toe.

Does anyone when something significant happens find the world slowing down around you and the world becoming silent.

Yes!!! @Oliversmumsarmy - I was trying to explain that exact feeling to my brother the other day. That stillness and silence and whoosh of calm and certainty. Got that 15 mins after meeting DH for the first time. Looked at him chatting to our friend and thought, 'Oh, it's you. That's why I've been single for so long.' I just knew I would marry him and I'd never wanted to get married to any previous boyfriend.

My sliding door moment is easy to pick. I'd been on a couple of dates with this girl and whilst lying on my bed thought, "I can do better, I'm going to call her and tell her it hasn't worked out".

I grabbed my mobile and realised I'd left her number downstairs. Feeling lazy, I thought I'd give it a few minutes before going downstairs.

In those minutes she called and asked if I wanted to go out for pizza. You can probably guess the rest. About a month after that call I proposed and we've now been married almost 20 years.

Labobo Glad I am not the only one.

It happens so rarely and so randomly, it takes you by surprise.

Do you ever get the feeling that you have lived the moment before and it is like your future self telling you to take note of this moment.

I have only once actually taken notice of these moments and even though it looked like I had taken leave of my senses it worked out better than if I had hung onto what I had.

The other times I have ignored the feelings and hung on instead of letting go and it turned out to have been a disaster
I wish I could go back to that day in 2004 and changed my destiny.

I was seeing someone for over two years and our relationship had become long distance. Things weren’t going well. I was living with my parents in my hometown and my parents asked me to go with them to a wedding. Reluctantly, I decided to be a third wheel. The night was going ok but then during the reception an old friend that I dated in High School walked through the door of the reception hall. We locked eyes and he immediately walked over and sat down with me and my parents. He didn’t leave my side the entire night. The feelings were irresistible.
Long story short, he waited for me. And now 12 years later and having 3 beautiful boys together, I realize if I hadn’t gone to that wedding, my whole life would be so different.