Did anyone else become an adult late in the game?

[OneSeriousPerson]

40 is around the corner, and I don't have kids, property, investments or a viable profession (freelance my whole life and my industry is getting slaughtered by tech).

I also happen to come from a family of settled white collar professionals who all have their shit together and essentially see me as a lost cause.

Is there anyone else here who came to "grown up life" late in the game who can share their experience of becoming a respectable adult despite having delayed? I'm feeling like a fuck up here and am starting to look at retraining options/have applied for jobs, but starting to feel deflated and slightly depressed.

100% me! I see myself as a free spirit. My family think I'm a mess.

There are lots of ways of being an 'adult' and it's a bit of a bug bear of mine when people say they 'can't adult' etc. You are an adult. You've been one since you were 18.

It's an interesting definition you have of 'having your shit together' and just because you don't own a house or have investments does not mean you are not a valid person .

It sounds like you've had certain messaging from your family (I had it too) that has really made you question your whole sense of self worth based on whether or not you have children, own a house, are in a certain career pathway.

Why are you allowing these messages to make you question your validity to be in the world?

'Why the fuck is my life so convoluted?'

Because you were born into a family who had certain expectations of what you would be, and you're not that.

Mate, in the nicest possible way, you need some therapy to focus on accepting and valuing the person that you are. You've travelled, you actually sound like a really nice person. There is value in things other than having kids and having a certain type of career.

And no one who is not 'an adult' can cope with work as a freelancer. You are mature, resilient and well rounded. You're a fucking adult, you're just not in the small box that is your family's definition of what they think you should be. And you are letting that rule you.

No career is going to make you accept yourself and the fact that you are different to your family (and that is actually OK).

If it helps… I’m early 30s and tick all of your boxes of being an “adult” (house only owned because DH already had one when I met him) and I STILL wake up on many a morning and feel like I’m in my early 20s tumbling from one day to the next. I most definitely don’t have my shit together. I manage professional teams on multi-million pound projects and often have terrifying moments of wondering how I ended up in this position because my personal life is so chaotic!

I never yearned for them or anything, but at least having a kid or two is like a "see, I can do something adult" badge!

Reproducing is not any kind of 'badge'. Some of the most immature people I know are parents (and probably shouldn't be). The fact that they slept with someone which resulted in the birth of a child does not mean anything. It often simply means they were incapable of thinking through the consequences of their actions.

OTOH, some of the most mature people I know have made a conscious decision that they do not want children, because they've reflected on their lives, their personalities and what they want.

You decided you didn't want children for a reason - frankly it is messed up that you are beating yourself up for not having them. You made the decision because you knew yourself and what you wanted.

Who wants to be an adult?
In your situation i'd retrsin or go off travelling ( probably the latter followed by the former).
Once you have a mortgage and a family it's not so fun. More secure? .yes...more fun? No.

I followed a very traditional route. Work is a bit more unusual in that it took me a while to find something 'steady' but I graduated, did a masters, met a bloke, bought a house, married the bloke, got a dog, bought another house, had a baby... and here I am at 34.

My good friend is 52, she did a degree, including a year abroad. She then worked for a year or two, but decided she had itchy feet. She then spent the next 10-15 years bouncing between countries around the world, doing whatever job suited her at the time. She's had relationships, but none that have stood the test of time. She did a masters in her 40s (where we met!) to 'retrain". She ended up spending the next 10years living in 3 different countries.
She's been settled for a couple of years now. But I know it won't last!
She is THE most interesting, competent and able person I know. I watch her with awe, and a lot of jealousy. She has lived a thousand lives, and whilst at times she says she's been lonely, she also can't regret any of the choices she's made. To be able to organise packing up and moving to a foreign country, often non English speaking, find a job, make friends etc, and then do it all over again 3 years later, is far more grown up than me managing to produce offspring and keep my dog alive day to day.

Keep living your life the way it suits you. If you want to settle down, do it. But if you want to keep wandering and not be tied down by property and a salaried job, then don't be guilted into it. There are plenty of us who feel those things are shackles. People who judge you for not having that are just scared by your freedom.

You don’t sound like you’re not an adult. You sound like you’re no longer happy with elements of your life and need a change.

adulthood isn’t just about kids, houses, mortgages, and finances. It’s more that ability to take responsibility for yourself and your life, which it sounds like you do.

You are independent, have your own business, have travelled. You sound great. But if you’re ready for a change in some way then sit down and actually think about what you want.

don’t just launch into something in a panic. Do you want to do hotel management, or is it just a course that happens to be available?

i hope you find whatever comes next!

OP, I hate that you see being an 'adult' as having ticked the right boxes.
I know what you mean, but there is more than one way to live and none is the 'right' or 'wrong' way - so long as you can support yourself financially and aren't committing crime!

Try bring me.
38, living with stepdad, single , no kids, low paying job.

You are fine .

If you'd locked yourself into the mortgage and career path in your twenties, you might be on here agonize that you'd never travelled and done the things you really wanted to. Turning forty does that. It's good to think about what you want to do next - it doesn't mean you need to criticize your younger self. It's not a race to the finish line.

Yes. Name changed for this one. When I turned 35 I was living in a crappy rented flat and going out 5-6 nights a week, drinking a lot, dabbling in drugs at the weekend. My husband and I had an open marriage. We did however have good and highly paid jobs. But almost everyone we knew from university was at a completely different life stage.

Both of us lost a parent a few months later (for different reasons, but four weeks apart and both very sudden) and this led to a complete reassessment. We stopped seeing other people, I stopped smoking and drinking, we bought a house just after I was 36 and had our first child a month after that. We had another one a couple of years later.

(In fact, adulthood might have been short lived. Typing this in bed as my kids play computer games downstairs. My husband is off playing poker with some friends for the weekend. I have a hangover after having some girlfriends round last night. We do have a nice house, though, and kids are happy and settled.)

No...we all became adults at 18, the issue is how you personally view what an adult is supposed to be like.
You don't need to follow the herd ...just adapt a mature attitude and personality.

Thanks so much for sharing your experiences and cheering me up, all!

Deep down i know what you say is true, I have internalised a lot of what my family say and despite raising this in therapy I can't seem to shake their voices/views (although clearly not so intensely that I actually do anything about it 🤣).

I love my family, they're great people and I'm in touch with them every day, we've always shared a lot but I'm beginning to think it night be a good idea to start withholding all my thoughts/attempts as I've increasingly been coming away from conversations with them feeling slightly depressed.

I got offered a marketing job and my mum's reaction was "it would be better if you had a profession which is why I was urging you to go into teaching, but if you want to do this marketing job then do it". I felt bloody depressed! Like wait a minute, is marketing not a profession? Then I thought wait a minute, you're 39....Maybe you need to start making decisions without b9uncing ideas off everyone first?

I don't own my own home, no children (by choice) no investments other than a workplace pension (crap) Not married, but i do have an amazing DP and a good well paid career.

I also have 3 horses and we have a garage full of cars - none of which i'll ever give up to become "an adult" 😂

You have a public sector job offer - that ticks off the career and pension boxes in one fell swoop. So why are you still chasing something else - the hotel management course (why?! Terrible sector if you want 'adult stability').

Perhaps you don't actually WANT those things, you just think you OUGHT to have them. You could embrace your free living, all over the place self if you wanted, it's your life.

I’ve lived my whole life with a 25-year time lag
I felt just about ready to take GCSE’s at age 40 (I added one then)
Felt I was ready for children and finally competent - at age 60 🤣…

I hear what you're saying, and as for your "Why?!", I know, I don't get it either!!!

I guess my line of thought is that one good quality I have is I'm a real people person, i like people and people like me, I also have a proven track record of setting up alone, and I know I will always have itchy feet and want to he moving around, so hotel management struck me (naively?!) as a good way of pulling those things together. Out of all the jobs I've done in my life prior to being self employed, being a hotel receptionist was my favourite, it didn't actually feel like work even when it was hellish busy and chaotic - shame the pay is absolutely shit.

I guess with the public sector job I see it as meaning I have to stick around in the UK and that depresses me, which then conflicts with the idea that I was supposed to be looking for stability, and before I know it I'm back on the merry go round again.

It really sucks how biology works! 🤣 it's like we only have a 20 year window to make that happen, and yet a 50 year window of adult living

Can I be nosy, and feel free to decline to answer!

If you have a well paid job and the geographical stability, why don't you want to own your own home?

Because to be able to save up for the mortgage i'd need in this area, i would have to stop competing and sell all my horses, stop track days, sell the fun cars and just have my daily car (you dont want to know my monthly outgoing on all that...)

I'd rather have the horses than a house.

No wonder you felt depressed. I've family members like that too, and it's very demoralising and draining. If you want to work in Marketing, go for it! It's you who's going to doing the job, not your Mum. Some relatives like to keep treating us like little kids, and telling us how to run our lives. Maybe step back from telling her as much

Yes, this. I rent, don't have children, and I work freelance to pay bills. Still an adult.

I echo what @TrappedDaisy has said. How dare your mum speak to you like this? No wonder you're feeling so rubbish and if there's a pattern of this going back decades then no wonder you feel less than "successful" and are going mad about it. Success isn't defined by material success - it is defined by if you're happy enough, healthy enough, and have the wisdom to follow your own heart - be that marketing or working in a supermarket if you so wish, retraining in something completely wild and off the beaten track. I may be poor and not have a pension and live in a rented flat, but at least my time and mind and creativity is more my own than all my friends who followed the money and the regular "dream". I like to live on a shoestring to an extent and believe this is as much as an achievement vs those who have a bigger income - in fact it is much harder to live on less in some ways, so you are doing better in some terms! And no doubt very resourceful with it.

That may be about to change. Virtually every magazine and newspaper seems to include an article on how we’re going to halt or reverse the ageing process. Billions are now being invested in this research. I’ve even heard one expert say that by the 2030s there will be 70-somethings who look like they’re in their early 30s. So much money is now going into this research, and so much hype and noise is beginning to build, that it’s hard to believe nothing will come of it.

Exactly. Not everyone judges people by the same standards. Personally, I have zero interest in what people do for a living or how much money they have. It doesn’t interest or impress me. I’m far more impressed by someone who can read Russian or play the violin. Most jobs are boring, and many of them are utterly futile. Unless you’re in the SAS, or professor of poetry at Oxford, or a five star Michelin chef, I’d rather not hear about it. I’m more interested in people’s hobbies than their job. And I’m infinitely more interested in their favourite books, favourite music, favourite paintings, etc.