To wonder if DINKs will be more lonely when older?

[Aintbaint]

Ok, so hear me out. This isn’t an US v Them thread …
I have a lot of Double Income No Kids friends - for various reasons, mostly choice.
So for most career has been their main focus, followed by their partner… Most have been very financially comfortable, travelled a lot, able to afford holiday homes, successful work wise etc basically all the benefits of no kids!

But now we’re all in our late 40s and 50s and slowed down a bit, retired early, separated or divorced, Quite a few just seem to to have lost focus, seem a bit depressed or unhappy, and don’t have the same focal point that having kids can bring.
I stupidly thought that kids would get older and we’d have our independence back but obvs kids are always there in someways - you never stop worrying or thinking about them or doing stuff with them. So still that focal point in many ways and Indaynthat as someone who does have a FT job they like and hobbies…

YABU - of course DINKs are just as happy and not lonely etc

YANBU - it’s harder as you get older when it’s just you or you+partner and work isn’t as important or you retire

That is your experience though and it doesn't follow that it is everyone's experience.

Many people have told you and others on this thread alone how they've maintained and built friendship groups, yet you keep trotting out the same nonsense that adults don't do that.

Just because you are insular and stuck in your own world-doesn't mean everyone else is. Go out there. Try and make friends-it's easier than you think.

I genuinely don’t realise how much this would put the cat amongst the pigeons, just goes to show.

Sure you didn't.

I do agree though that it's harder to make good deep friendships when you are older. I think people make good friendships when they are young.
Older people tend to be a bit closed off. I know a lot of people and I go to a lot of groups. But I'm not close to any of them. There is always a distance between us.

Actually I listened to an interesting radio phone in the other day about immigrants and integration....a person who had emigrated here called in and said that they found British people were really closed off to new friendships. These boards are full of women who go along to baby groups and no one talks to them or who want to make new friends but find people really difficult and flakey.

I think people should question more about

Why TO have children.
Then
Why NOT to have children.

Children are a long and hard commitment. A lot of adults are not able to raise them well.

I find these questions insulting and condescending, whether that's your intent or not. Producing a child, or more than one, doesn't give you a guarantee of anything or than having produced a child. To say that without one, getting older and life automatically becomes sadder, is juts not true. You sound a tad condescending to those who don't have children, for whatever their reasons.

I think everyone is different, and will be happy or lonely with different things. And at different stages of their life.

I'm not talking specifically about grief. I'm talking about just living your life without much family combined with no children. Not a situation I could be happy in.

I have a really amazing husband. I'm so glad that we are just the two of us and can fully prioritise each other and be each other's most important person and top priority. What's not to be happy in with that?

Goes to show that you didn’t expect to be told you are rather mean.

That’s the rest of the sentence.

I have never given childfree people much thought. I have kids but when out with childfree friends I don’t talk about them much. There is plenty of stuff to them talk about. I have never envied or pitied them.

I have enjoyed parenting mostly.

But I hate the perimenopause and worrying about my kids at university. Seeing their struggles, which are pretty ‘low level’ compared to many, still eats me up and gives me sleepless nights. I for the first time, genuinely wonder if life would have been easier without having kids. Maybe it’s just a phase.

When I look at the future, I hope I will be busy with friends. There is no knowing what the future holds with kids.

Come on. It was a bit of a smug and goady thread.

I think a lot of people start these threads from both sides to feel superior.

as a single childless person I find a lot of people tell me I will be lonely. It makes them feel superior. I have the big house and fancy career, but I will die alone😂.

I am happy with my life choices, I don’t try and blow out anyone else’s candle - it won’t make mine burn brighter.

you have made your life choices - I assume you are happy. Why do you care if someone else either regrets of delights in the different path they have chosen?

Everything in life has its advantages and disadvantages. There are advantages to having kids and to not having kids... likewise disadvantages. It's really about deciding which is more appealing to you. There's not necessarily a right or wrong answer.

I'm a mid 40s dink OP. Right now , me and my partner are on hols in Spain having a great time.
Not a drop of loneliness here.

All the DINKS I know (some are in their 60s) are very happy with their lifestyle.
In contrast, I know people who sorely regret having children and say it has ruined their lives. There will always be some people who regret their life decisions, regardless of what those are.

P.s. Having kids is no guarantee that you won't be lonely, I know quite a few people who have no contact at all with their parents, and even more who see them a couple of times a year at most. We see our parents 3-4 times a year at most.

So in the last few days on here we have had “there is no other purpose to get married than to have kids” and now this

Not sure if people are rude, ignorant, thick or all three

Bollocks you didn’t realise. Your opening sentence in your very first post was asking people to hear you out. Almost as if you knew that you were trying to create the ‘us versus them’ thread you deny you were going for.

Not having children can be wonderful and it can be shit. It strikes me that having children can also be wonderful and shit. Women have it hard enough without being criticised by other women for something that you don’t even know if they’ve chosen, or whether they’ve had it foisted upon them and have just had to deal with it.

And if they have chosen one particular path, then what sort of viciousness do you have to have inside you to so openly gloat that they may have been enjoying exotic holidays while you spent a week in a tent in the New Forest, but that’s ok because you still have a focus in life and they’ve lost theirs?

I've made and kept friendships from every decade of my life.
School friends (met my DH at school!), college friends, work friends, then I went to college again to learn a new trade and made two very close friends in my 50s Just entering my 60s and I really hope I'm not done yet.

My experience is that we have something in common with most people, then you get a hint with some that a deeper friendship will follow and from then on it's just a pleasure to spend time with that person and it grows. If anything age makes a person more experienced at making friends as you've had a lifetime of practice.

I can't say I've found immigrants more or less open to starting a friendship. People are just people.

I wonder how many people in your local old folks' home with children have those children visiting them regularly? Experience suggests not many. Having children won't stop you from being lonely and miserable. HTH.

The least lonely person I know is a sink (is that a thing - single income no kids?) whereas the loneliest is probably someone who is in a rapidly deteriorating relationship, her kids have flown the nest and her DH is more interested in various hobbies than he is spending time with her. There’s no formula for these things, people are impacted in different ways which aren’t always driven by whether they have children or not

The truth is that it put the pigeon amongst the pigeons as the vast majority of posters on here are agreeing that the OP was unreasonable.

The lonely cat is the OP.

Gosh that is so sad. Some people find making friends easy and some people don’t. The key is to make effort and not to be judgemental about “family” and “friends”.

You specifically asked if people without children are lonely. What did you expect? 😂

Imagine if someone asked if people who are always “doing stuff with and thinking about” their adult children are boring?

I am happy with my life choices, I don’t try and blow out anyone else’s candle - it won’t make mine burn brighter.

That’s such a wonderful way of putting it, @Bellyblueboy , you sound like a lovely person. I’ve realized that the nicest people I know are like that.