To dread getting even unhappier as I head towards 50?

[Edwardandtubbs]

I heard the Hannah Fry programme on R4 yesterday and I can’t stop thinking about it. She investigated the happiness curve, which researchers have shown starts high in life at teenage years, then drops steadily til around 47-50yrs, then bottoms out and begins to climb again into old age. It is roughly the same for everybody alive, regardless of other indicators like sex, geography, race, wealth etc. Basically everybody gets unhappier until they hit an all time low at 50 then they climb out of it slowly.

I’m 40. I wasn’t a happy child, hated my University years, briefly enjoyed my 20s but then have had a difficult time of things for the last ten years. I genuinely thought things would look up for me from now as I’m in better health, have grieved for losses and DCs are getting older.

The thought that I will feel EVEN WORSE for another ten years is actually freaking me out!

AIBU: yes, chill out and/or deal with it

no, you should have a reasonable expectation to feel happier as circumstances improve!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001r2wr?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

It doesn't apply to me. I learnt to find joy in the small things in life early on, recognised the value of gratitude from having a rough start in life, never had a big plan. I have loved being a mum to 3 ( youngest 15, oldest 18). I'm 50 next year and am pretty happy. I'm looking forward to my next stage of life (shed the husband nearly 4 years ago now but even that was a relatively low-drama process). Statistics do not determine the path of your life. Fearing being miserable will only make you miserable.

What do you think would make you happier?

I am 49 - 50 in 2 months its has been the worst 2 years, unfortunately there is no end in site!

Childhood was a mixed bag, I have lots of very happy and very sad memories.

Same with teen years but in the main, pretty crappy period

Twenties hard, don’t remember ever feeling happy (anxious and lacking confidence)

Thirties pretty dire (depression and toxic relationships)

Early Forties getting better

Mid forties utterly fantastic

V late forties outstanding. Life is incredible

Just because something is true for a significant proportion of the population doesn't make it true for everyone.

I also listened to the programme, and it said that people are happiest at 16. It doesn't sound as though you were (and I wasn't either).

I am in my mid 40s and am probably at the happiest I've ever been. I went back to university to do an MSc at 40 and subsequently career changed. My career is now really taking off. At the same time my DC (I had my first at 24, which is younger than average) were off to university, giving me more freedom than I've had for a long time.

I'm an outlier - my experience does not match the findings of the study. Perhaps yours don't either?

I wouldn’t worry about that kind of statistics, I had a fairly shitty childhood, followed by almost worst teenage years, my 20´s have been fun and yet my life is probably at its absolute best now (at nearing 30). I haven’t gone through my 30’s and 40’s yet, so there is a chance my « happiness» might plummet but very honestly, I doubt so.

I am actually really looking forward to my 30’s and later years (if they come) as I feel I am where I am at in life, finally, and heading in the right direction and finally having full ownership of my life + I don’t think many things in life can make my happiness plummet as badly as my childhood and teenage years did.

In the end you do have a say and part in how your life and future pans out, personally I am choosing to continuing to invest in building the life I want to have and in being the person I want to be.

Not gonna lie, my 20’s have been so great (despite the many ups and downs) that I sometimes objectively find it hard to imagine any decade could top them BUT, for the first time ever, I am actually positive that my best years are ahead of me and not behind me and I am determined to ensure this statement to be true.

I’m late 40s and never been happier. I’ve two abusive marriages behind me, a full time job, 2 kids with SN and I’ve been to hell and back more times than I care to admit but I’m still an eternal optimist and while I’m not exactly delighted at the thoughts of turning 50 and Eminem never being my husband, I am gonna make the most of it, see the world, walk my DDog, go out with friends, see as many live acts as I can manage and eat that ice-cream! Even after two god awful marriages I still believe in love! Maybe I’m actually deluded and need professional help 😃

I really like my life now, at 67, despite regular spats with DH over our catering arrangements (I like to cook and he likes boarding school bland). They are not serious, but they are heated. He's not interested, and as of tomorrow, he will be eating the same food as us, without any seasoning at all, with Bisto. I cannot imagine a worse fate. Personally, I would stop eating.

No advice, but your subject title reminded me of Roy: A Life Well Lived.

I have, mostly, been happy-ish for most of my life, but that doesn't mean I am saying it has all been wonderfully Pollyanna. Some of the highs have come when the really bad bits ended. And some bad bits went on for a long time and could reduce me to tears and terrors. I didn't enjoy DH's cardiac arrest or the 17 years of follow up, still continuing, or breast cancer or the auto-immune eczema that followed it. But we're still chugging along. Friends are enduring similar, and the best thing is that most of us are more open about what is going well and what's not.

There is an honesty that comes when you admit you are getting older (and frailer). You stop having to pretend that the dream is still within reach. Good enough to be enjoyable is just enough.

I was happy over my 50th, under lockdown. Then around 51 I plummeted somewhat and had a really hard time. I had some treatment (antidepressants and talking therapies) and had to get up off my bum and start to rebuild my life, mainly for the sake of the children, but actually there was no alternative. Mental Health Services were involved (it took time for them to identify how ill I was, but after that they were great). All much better now, happy again. Menopause done (although I’m not sure that was the cause …). I just want to say to you, nothing is permanent. Things can (and do) change. Hang on in there Honey. You got this.

That’s really interesting as over past month or so I’ve suddenly had a complete confidence crisis and got quite anxious which is unlike me.

I did see the doctor who suggested similar to you, I’ve had lots of talking therapies when younger so not keen on more nor antidepressants but might try latter if no improvement.

I'm 43 and I've been getting gradually happier for about the last five to ten years. I was miserable in my 20s.

You're not just going to become sad because some stats say so.

It is roughly the same for everybody alive, regardless of other indicators like sex, geography, race, wealth etc. Basically everybody gets unhappier until they hit an all time low at 50 then they climb out of it slowly.

That didn't happen to me.

If I plotted my happiness curve it has had peaks & troughs and am definitely on a sustained peak in my mid 50s. I was about as happy 5-6 yrs ago. My lovely great-gran reached her peak happiness after she became a widow, met a new wonderful man she stayed married to for 20 years; he died when she was about 70.

My lowest point was age 7-13.

I think what Fry plotted was a population trend, it tells you nothing about individuals.

I e just hit 50 and my own mortality hit hard, very hard! My SM dies at 69 and all I can think of is that I've got 19 years left - which is a very depressing thought.

But I'm hoping I'm coming out of it and there's nothing like knowing you've limited time to make ordinary things seem special

The trend is a curve, of similar shape for “everyone”. So if you start very happy, you’ll get less happy but you probably wouldn’t hit the low levels of happiness that someone else, who started at a much lower point might hit.

But what do you think, OP, about the PP who have responded to say that this is categorically NOT true for them as individuals?

It isn't true for me, either - I had a happy childhood but was very unhappy in my teens and twenties, that was the low point for me and since then I've got happier and happier! It really ISN'T true for "everyone".

You're not doomed to experience it, either. You might benefit from some CBT, which works specifically to change patterns of thinking. Your thoughts on this seem a) very negative, b) very inflexible and c) very incorrect, given that you have lots of people here telling you it's not been like that for them :-)

I am 49 and have found the last 3 years very tough mentally and definitely don't get as many feelings of happiness as I did even 5 years ago. I can't decide whether that's hormones, ageing, Covid, life events or something more existential, a bit of all no doubt. I can definitely envisage happier more content times ahead from my mid 50s onwards when my time will be more my own and whatever is, is. Things still very fluid at the moment, I have a relationship that might or might not become a life long connection (its complicated), ageing parents and two teenagers struggling in various ways.

Perimenopause and menopause certainly don’t help in my and my friends’ experiences.

Strangely, my severe PMT got better over peri menopause/menopause.

Agreed that other things you mention do have an effect. When I met with friends at the weekend, we were reviewing our lives but trying to be calmer and happier generally. My career hopes are on the back burner or certainly not what they were or are different from when I was younger.

It's a generalisation though. My life hasn't been like that. I was miserable as a kid and teen because of my life situation, and I'm really happy now in my forties.

I think the trend in interesting, but this isn't saying that that is the experience everyone will have.

My early 40s were hard for me. My husband had cancer, I was made redundant and had to work two jobs, I started the menopause early and didn't realize what was happening to me physically or emotionally, I was also ditched by two friends and took a long long time to get over it. It was a really bad time and I was very unhappy. I'm 50 now and doing a job I love, I appreciate my husband and my kids and my family and my friends. I'm happy with what I've got. The things that have happened have given me a sense of gratitude. I am always a bit of frightened of things going wrong again though because I know how quickly it can all turn. I don't doubt the research and I can totally appreciate the joy of being older and the pressure being off, but for me it's more wiggly than a U.

Hi @Edwardandtubbs , I recommend the book Happy by Derren Brown. I found it really thought provoking.

A bit of pedantic response from a scientist but here it goes:
There are different levels of evidence. At the highest level we have systematic reviews and randomised control trials, at the lower level we have ethnographic studies, case studies and similar. Most qualitative studies lie at the bottom of the evidence pyramid. This doesn't mean they can be totally dismissed but they also cannot be taken as the ultimate truth in isolation. The extent to which we are able to generalise the results to wider population will depend on the sample size. The bigger the sample size, the more reliable the evidence.
Next issue is measuring outcome used in a study. How would they objectively measure happiness? Likely they used self-reported questionnaires. But what they qualified as being happy? Did they independently assess components of happiness whatever they may be (health, wealth, sense of wellbeing etc.) or did they simply ask to rate from 1-10 the levels of happiness throughout the decades?
Likert scale is an unreliable measure because what is happy level 2 as opposed to happy level 5?
Finally, statistical data falls into a bell curve with 68% of population falling in the middle of the bell curve within 1 standard deviation. This means that just under half of population will have been more or less happy compared to the majority.

What this means pragmatically? Just because a study shows something, doesn't mean it is reliable data which applies to every individual on the planet earth. So I would not make an assumption that you will have 10 years of bad luck before things start to look up for you based on what you heard in a podcast.

Oh what nonsense! I've been at pretty much the same level of happiness throughout my whole life, bar sad situations, and certainly didn't slide into unhappiness as I approached 50.

I'm 53. I had my unhappiest time at 40/41. I'd say that I became unhappier through my 30s and then started on an upward trajectory after the lowest point at 40 or 41 (and it was pretty low!). So it is possible to buck the trend. For me life gets better all the time, I hope it continues.

(I haven't listened to the podcast yet but will do).