To ask if you’d consider me a failure? Be honest.

[Ladybirdshere]

I met with friends on Saturday I’ve been friends with for around 10 years. We are very close, meeting up twice a month on average and share things about our life.

Well Saturday turned out to be a sort of intervention for me by my two friends. They said that they wanted to speak to me as they’d been talking and they felt that life was passing me by and that they felt I wasn’t doing much with my life.

l I think this was mainly focused around around boyfriends and living situation as we are all 29, I am single but my friends are both engaged and both have children.

Anyway, would you consider me a failure?

1. I work in advertising for 32k a year
2. I’m well travelled, last year I went travelling around America on my own
3. I can drive and have my own car
4. I have a degree and a masters
5. Ive lived in 4 different cities in the past ten years

but I don’t have

1. a partner, I’ve been single around a three years. I had a really bad breakup and simply haven’t found a new person
2. i recently moved back in with my mum as my finances changed and it meant I couldn’t afford living alone.
3. I don’t have any children

Am I a failure? We sort of agreed to disagree and they said they wanted to just make sure I stayed on the right track :(

Life takes unexpected paths constantly. I was married once, living in a big house with lots of debt. Now I’m single, live with my parents and we jointly own the house and I’ve no debt. I never expected my life to go like this, but it did. There’s no such thing as a set path sand what is success for one person is another’s failure. Your friends could end up single at any time. They might end up never having kids. Who knows? The point is, are you happy? Do you feel successful? If you do, then you are. What other people think matters not one bit.

I thought interventions were reserved for concerns of alcoholism, drug addiction or dating someone terrible - not because you’re single 😅

You need new friends OP

No I'd say you're pretty sensible. You are well educated, drive your own car, are confident enough to go on holidays on your own and you have a job. If you were my dd I'd be happy with you. Everyone is feeling the pinch ATM with the COL crisis. So, you live with Mum and Dad for a while, that will enable you to save more. Your friends sound horrible and not supportive of you at all. I'd be looking to make nicer friends.

You have a different life to them. Who says they are on the right track and you are on the wrong one? You do what’s right for you.

I did all that house/baby stuff in my mid- twenties, my best friend is doing that all now in her late thirties. I’ve never thought she should hurry up and she’s never said anything about my timing either. Besides even if I thought she should have been married by thirty, I didn’t have the ability to conjure a husband for her so I’m not sure what your friends are expecting you to do as a result of their comments.

Your 'friends' sound like complete bitches who discuss you behind your back and love to put you down to your face under the guise that they are 'concerned'.

Life isn't a competition or a comparison as everyone makes different choices and has a different set of cards dealt.

Sending love 💕

Your life sounds fabulous! Well, apart from your friends. I don't know if they are well meaning or jealous, but either way they are most definitely wrong!

Absolute nonsense! Life is long and it’s not a race. You sound like you’re doing absolutely fine.

The only thing you failed at is choosing friends!

If you can successfully provide for yourself as an adult*, you haven’t failed at all! You’re doing what everyone else is doing - surviving. That’s the hardest thing of all!

(*adult without additional needs that require support. Obviously if you are an adult with disabilities and require help to provide for yourself, you’re not a failure either. No one is a failure)

I don't think you are a failure.

I think most people on here have missed OP's subsequent drip feed that part of the 'concern' from her friends was that they knew about her having PCOs and the difficulty of conceiving the later she left it in life. Without this the OP original message lacks the context. Unless you expressed to them that you would like to have children and that their genuine concern comes from this, maybe? Maybe they weren't very tactful about how they conveyed it to you?

The positive is that they had a conversation with you face to face. It shows they care about you. Not commonly reported on MN.

We all have times in our lives where we pause and regroup.
Our ambitions at school changed at Uni, then again mine changed when I got to my second job. Now at 40 home of my own I am thinking of a higher degree.
Are you developing a new ambition now?
I understand the difference between long term and short term goals. Perhaps your mates don't?
Enlighten them.

Op need new friends. Sounds like your at very different stages in life, neither is right or wrong just different.

Must admit I was 29 and feeling panicked at being left on the shelf. But honestly you just never know how life will turn out.

I did OLD met DH when I was 32, married quickly and 2 kids.

Buying on you own is hard, very hard, so makes perfect sense to stay with your mum to help her out and to safe money yourself.

You sound good to me. Be proud of yourself x

Hang on. This thread has been very hard on your friends and it’s impossible to know whether that is fair. Did they actually allude to concerns around you being single or is that your projection because they hit a nerve? It’s the job of good friends to check in with a friend who has left an emotionally abusive relationship and a lot of people would find it hard to move back in with parents.

Based on what you have said I’m not sure they are the raging bitches that pp have declared; equally if you feel that you are growing apart then there is no expectation on you to maintain dying friendships.

Go girl. Take any path you like. Change path if you feel like it.

No way OP, you're not a failure. Your friends are being rude. Being engaged/married with kids does NOT mean that someone is more successful than you, hell no.

So everyone who can't have kids is a failure? Flawed logic.

Having kids and partners is not the be all and end all.

Is the advertising job the career that makes you happy? If so, well done, because many people work in jobs they hate.

If they are your friends and are worried you may find aspects of your current situation difficult, why on earth would they need to make an intervention based on their 'concerns', rather than trying to make space for you to open up to them and share how YOU feel? Even then they would need to accept that this may not be something you choose to discuss with married friends.

Talking honestly about being single and childless can so difficult, especially if you may want to change these things and are wrestling with how you feel about them. You deserve not to be patronised for having a status they wrongly perceive as inferior but are also allowed to have fears about the future - it's such a shame society is terrible at handling those fears. It's like it's an awful taboo, possibly because not having their family is the worst thing married parents could imagine - or sometimes the opposite, they daren't acknowledge they'd rather have aspects of your life - and for some reason these women think it warrants their 'intervention'.

Instead of sensitively making space for this in your friendship, they have ambushed you and made you feel inadequate. I hope you have a lovely friend, perhaps in a similar situation, that you can talk this through with.

I hate the phrase left on the shelf. Suggests a woman’s sole purpose in life is to be “chosen” by a man.

I'm the opposite to you, 36, married, 2 kids, no career, just a part time job and I feel like people view me as a failure because I'm a waitress working for minimum wage. Sometimes it gets to me but I like my job, it's no stress and I wouldn't earn that much more in a full time job because I would need to pay for childcare.

I do envy your freedom and age though! You can go wherever you like and you have a "proper" job.

The grass isn't always greener, sometimes it's just a different colour green, some days the grass on the other side is in full sun whilst you are in the shadows looking at it enviously but some days you are in the sun looking around you thinking actually things are pretty good.

Your friends sound horrible, they should never make you feel like a failure and like you need some help (unless you are living in a crack den) They obviously have their insecurities about the choices they made and want to see you make the same ones to make them feel better.

Just remember you are you and you now have the ability to try change parts of your life you aren't happy with a lot easier than they can!

Of course you aren’t a bloody failure.

Even if you never meet someone or have kids, you still aren’t a failure. There are many lifestyles. They don’t all have to look the same to be successful.

Tell them you're looking to get married first and then have kids. Meow!

😂

I'm guessing you and your friends don't live in London?

You are not a failure. Even if you were on half that wage and never stepped foot out of your hometown you still wouldn't be one. How awful to imply such a thing.
The person that said ....'as long as your planning and saving to move out of your parents your not a failure.' Are you saying if that was the case then she would be??? How judgmental. Life has it's ups and downs, twist and turns. Thankfully it's different for everyone and no one should be judged as a failure for not following a set timeline.

Being honest here, you sound great and you have lots of time to settle down, if that is what you want, but It can be the case that friendships drift a bit when some friends get married and have small kids and some don't. I think that your friends are probably starting to appreciate, perhaps with some nervousness, that their lives may change soon and want to take you with them. That's not really how life works, though and they've really mishandled this.

If I were you and you wanted to stay friends, I would explain that I'd had to do quite a lot of work being happy in my own skin after the abusive relationship and you're really proud of what you have achieved, but you are proud of them both too. In the end, it doesn't matter if you achieve the same things to the same timetable, or at all.