AIBU to grieve the life I feel I might have had?

[OnceMoreIntoTheBreachDearFriends]

Just looking for some advice on how to get over mourning the life I feel I should have had.

For context, I had an awful childhood, including an alcoholic abusive father who died when I was young, and an emotionally unavailable mother who liked to throw material things at me to make up for it. I was bullied all my life including in first jobs, I suspect due to being autistic which I didn’t know until I was 35. Despite all of this I was the classic overachiever, identified for a glittering career from when I was a small child (suggestions as far back as primary school included a brain surgeon or the prime minister 😂)

But sadly an abusive relationship in my 20s and significant mental health issues due to life events put paid to that. I’m 40 now, I have an NHS middle management role, my own home, nice holidays etc but I put in an incredible amount of hours over two jobs to be able to afford it. Single after a string of failed relationships, no kids. I just feel like I’ve missed the boat in terms of potential…

I’m on holiday at the moment in a fairly upmarket resort and spent the evening a few nights ago talking/drinking with a group in their late 20s who all worked in the city, flats in Chelsea, etc. Oxbridge educated (I have a degree and masters from an RG uni but I could have gotten into either of them). I just now look back and think - I could have done that - but my circumstances held me back, I wanted to do a grad scheme and move to London but my ex held me back and I got a mortgage instead.

I know it’s too late to change it all now - I don’t have the transferable skills and certainly couldn’t afford more than a house share in the south (and that’s impossible for me to do). I know comparison is the thief of joy but I could just do with some advice on how to get over it. I just feel like I’ve missed out so much
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And going to Oxbridge doesn't make that much difference, compared with someone who's gone to another good university.

Dear OP, I get it, I feel the same about my life, except my uni chances were dashed by my own abusive parents who refused to fill out the form for the means-tested maintenance grant. So I wrote to the uni and just said I couldn't come due to financial reasons, and left home straight into a dead-end secretarial job, but I had rent to pay etc.

The late 20s people you have met are lucky. Lucky their parents supported them through uni. Lucky to be where they are. Life is 50% luck and that means the hand you are dealt.

I frame it like this when I feel ashamed of how my life turned out - I was dealt a pretty poor hand, but I have handled it with grace. My own child is about to go to uni and I am proud to say that the comparison between her life at 18 and the mess that mine was is stark.

I also have fragile personal peace, and like a poster upthread, @Kizmet1, I'm not sure how well my fragility (which I have learnt to my cost over the years that I must carefully protect) would have stood up to a high-flying, competitive career, although I do wish I had worked in a more interesting job.

I think the reframing here is for your self talk to totally switch - you should be congratulating yourself on how amazingly you’ve done given the horrendous challenges you’ve had

I’m also someone who also did not reach my potential due to circumstances (I got into the top uni and top course in the country and my abusive parents prevented me going). So many further obstacles through my 20’s and early 30’s.

Lots of therapy (and I retrained as a therapist more than 20 years ago) and I’ve reframed my life to be really happy with it.

The poster who wrote beautifully about radical acceptance reminded me of a book called Radical Acceptance which I love and have found really helpful. It is by Tara Brach. She also has a lot of content on YouTube which I've found really helpful.

Regarding therapy, I've had the works and 90% was unhelpful, whereas reading Tara Brach and Jon Kabat-Zin really helped me. Going for a run is free and much better for my mood than £160 an hour therapy. I feel such a sense of relief having made the decision never to darken the doors of a therapy room again.

They either had family money or they don't own their homes. What's so great about living in Chelsea? The nightlife there is diabolical.

You've done great things and achieved more than many others could. And you've escaped abusive relationships which takes immense strength and determination.

Those young Chelsea city lot just sound like they're carefree because they're spoilt and posh. I bet they would crumble if they had to deal with some of the stuff you did when you were that age.

Don't look back. Don't have regrets. Look forwards. What do you want now? What do you want to work towards in the future short term and long term. Your life is not over. You are doing great, but don't look for external validation/ status symbols. What brings you joy? What makes you excited? xxx

Woulda coulda shoulda. How far do you want to take it? Yeah, you could have got a degree in some sort after career. But you might not have. It's utterly meaningless.
What do you want to do now? That's the question. You're only 40. You've got time.

I’ve just read this. It’s great and very relevant here 👍

All of us could have taken a different route at points in our lives. Your situation is not unique but you seem to be saying you could have taken superior routes if it wasn't for pesky other people. Stop blaming others and take responsibility for your life choices. Sounds like you are actually doing ok.

Watch the fim Sliding Doors. Read "The Names" by Florence Knapp. These are both about what if.

Good luck

I get it op - I sent you a DM.

I also had a tough upbringing with poverty, undiagnosed mentally ill parent, absent father, bullying. Had no role models or help in early adulthood so just muddled through. I was internally fuming in my 20s.
I didn't realise how easy most middle class peoples lives were compared to me being dragged from the underclass only because I did well in school and went to uni, so I met better off people and had more opportunities than the people of where I was born.

It is very hard letting the anger go. Between just life generally getting easier since childhood, going no contact with toxic family, having ok jobs and being good at saving did my life improve. I've achieved a lot considering my background. Half my family are unemployed on benefits so I was lucky I had better outcomes in comparison.

It's true that people present a front. No one except my husband knows fully about my background. No one at work would never guess or know because I don't talk about it. So really we are presenting something better than reality too.

I think accepting a smaller life, appreciating the smalls things and having joy in life really helps. I wish I could be a jetsetting career woman but in reality the social aspect of it would absolutely exhaust me. So I've settled for being a big fish in a small pond and I'm happy with my place in life. I'm not money motivated, I live in a quiet detached house (defo not going back to sharing). Life compared to most people in the world and in the past is pretty damn good now. Wish you all the best.

"I was actively encouraged to apply but chose not to"

You are still choosing not to do things for reasons that seem just as insurmountable as I'm sure "I didn’t want to be judged" did at the time. You have decades left in the workplace. The job market might be tight now but it is not going to be tight forever. Do something to put yourself in the best possible position for the future.

Or wait around for 25 years and complain about how you could have tried for different careers but you chose not to.

@OnceMoreIntoTheBreachDearFriends
Could you study now? You are not too young at 40 - in 4 years time you will be 44, but with a degree! Go for it!!

its absolutely relevant to count one's blessings. Mourning things in your life which didn't happen for you is also relevant and normal. My objection was that the poster I replied to posted as though the OP wasn't allowed to feel sadness or regret because they were "privileged" Privilege doen't stop people regretting things they couldn't have and not should it.

If I hadn’t been bullied , if I had the confidence, knowledge and contacts that my middle class friends had , if I had been male ..

i choose to enjoy what I have not be envious of others. I have a roof over my head , food on the t ale , clean clothes and money enough for holidays ( mostly camping but I really enjoy my holidays) , time to do my hobbies

I don’t have the big detached house on a nice plot , multiple ( any!) foreign and exotic or long haul holidays , designer anything. I don’t have TV subscriptions and fancy hair and nails. I don’t have the money to do big concerts. Or buy a yacht. I don’t worry about what I don’t have. I enjoy what I do have

because you only have one life you might as well try and enjoy it and that starts with not comparing yourself to others

It sounds like you’ve done very well considering your awful childhood and undiagnosed ND. You should be proud of what you achieved. Most people never really reach their true potential. I had a very privileged childhood and was fairly bright, but I coasted through school and uni, never truly applied myself. I then made career limiting decisions in order to stay with partner. I sometimes look at peers with more high flying careers and wonder what could have been, but I’m happy with where I am in life. Obviously you can’t turn back time, but think about things you can do or change to make your life more how you want it to be.

Not to nit pick, but I can’t agree with the assumption that you could have got into oxbridge, the selection criteria is insanely high - merely having top grades across the board is in no way enough. You have to absolutely shine at all the interviews, and have a lot more to offer besides academics. I say this having previously been on the admissions board at Cambridge.

I get it, I have a number of extremely wealthy and influential friends and after being in their company my self-esteem can take a bashing sometimes, but if it helps try to remember that you have no idea how these young people’s lives are going to turn out. And even now their lives may not be as charmed as they appear on the surface. As you say, comparison is the thief of joy.

If you want something different for your life do it. We get one chance and you are learning a steep lesson about time here. You still have time to look back without any lasting regret.

If you want it get up tomorrow and start making the changes.

Comparison is the thief of joy

Of course not @OnceMoreIntoTheBreachDearFriends

But my point is that if you really want to make changes for this next chapter of your life then you absolutely could.

You earn well, own your own house, have hols… maybe talk to someone how you reframe things. You’ve done really well for yourself inspite of a really tough start. And instead of lamenting what could have been, focus on what could be.

Wishing you the very best. I can totally understand you feel but as it’s not a good way to feel, I hope you find a way to change your thought patterns.

I have a very similar background OP - single and emotionally distant/highly critical mother, my father was a drunk who wanted nothing to do with me after age 3 and was on his fifth marriage when he overdid the vodka and pills, resulting in his not-entirely-tragic death.

I shook off the poverty I grew up in, scored that job in the city and married a talented doctor. We bought a big house, took five holidays a year and managed our property portfolio in our spare time. I had the perfect life.

Then I had DS and he has multiple neurological disabilities, attends specialist school, is violent towards us both and will never live independently. We are spending a fortune on therapy to plug the gaps in the crappy NHS provision and I am a whisker from giving up my career.

The “life you could have had” is a fantasy. Most people don’t get everything they aspire to, want, or think they deserve. It’s certainly a waste of your actual life to dwell on it.

What might be more helpful to dwell on is the possible connection between the abusive childhood and your tolerance of an abusive partner. That is not an uncommon pattern, and recognizing why it happens may help you swerve the mentalist abusers next time.

Some harsh and unsympathetic responses on this thread

I think you've done really well to triumph over adversity. Perhaps some counselling / therapy would help, to learn to (1) be grateful for what you have (2) come to terms with what you don't have

I think it's common to feel flat when we come to terms with our dreams not materialising. I had a notion to work in New York for a while. Thought it would be a big adventure. But it didn't happen. I'm OK with that now, but I remember feeling a bit sad / deflated when I realised that it definitely wouldn't happen

You're not being unreasonable to grieve this. What you're describing isn't petty comparison-itis, it's a pretty coherent picture: a childhood that gave you every reason to expect more, real talent and ability that other people recognized in you from early on, and then a series of things that weren't your fault, an abusive father, an abusive partner, undiagnosed autism that probably made bullying and burnout more likely, that knocked you off the track you were clearly capable of being on. Grieving a life you could plausibly have had, with real evidence for it, is different from grieving a fantasy. It makes sense that sitting with a group of confident twenty-somethings who got the easier version of the path you were aimed at would bring it up sharply.
A few things that might help you carry this rather than just trying to "get over it":
The achievements you do have weren't handed to you. Two jobs, your own home, a master's degree, all while dealing with the aftermath of an abusive childhood and an abusive relationship and an undiagnosed disability, is not a small life. It's just a harder-won and less glamorous one than brain surgeon or PM, and those comparisons were always going to be unfair benchmarks set by people who didn't know what they were asking a child to carry later in life.
It's worth separating two different griefs that are probably tangled together here: grief for the specific outcomes (the City job, the Oxbridge cohort, the flat in Chelsea), and grief for the sense of agency you lost when other people's harm shaped your choices for you. The second one is the heavier one, and it doesn't actually require you to want their specific life. You can fully believe you'd have ended up somewhere impressive and still not want their 60-hour-week, no-kids-either, twenty-eight-and-already-burnt-out version of "made it." Letting go of the specific imagined CV is easier than letting go of the feeling that you should have gotten to choose.
The "too late" framing is doing a lot of work in your message, and I'd gently question it rather than accept it outright. You're 40, not 70. Career pivots, further study, new directions, these aren't closed off, they're just harder and slower than they would have been at 25, which is a real loss worth grieving, but not the same as the door being shut.
You mention this is something you've been managing for a while and you're looking for a way to process it. Given everything you've come through, especially the abuse and the late autism diagnosis, it might be worth finding a therapist who has specific experience with both complex/childhood trauma and autistic adults, since grief like this often loosens with someone trained in untangling "what happened to me" from "who I am as a result," rather than through willpower alone. That's not a sign you're failing at managing it, it's a fairly specialised mix and most generalist counselling doesn't dig into both well.

Eh? Very few people have faced your adversity? First of all you are an employed, educated home owner in a developed western country. Don’t be ridiculous.

Secondly, you don’t know what other people have faced. It’s not a competition. Being comparative is holding you back and has got you into this funk. Let go of it.

I am not sure yet more therapy will help

therepy and the idea that you need it may be allowing you to revisit and wallow rather than move forward

it’s your life and your choices now that matter not what’s been and gone

@OnceMoreIntoTheBreachDearFriends I have read all your posts, but not necessarily the whole thread of everyone else's input.

What stands out to me are some of the positives you don't seem to recognise as positives. Sure, you appear to have been dealt a hand (maybe several hands) that haven't enable you to play strongly, but you have the tenacity to work two jobs to give you the things you need / want. Many don't do that. You don't appear to have let your autism hold you back. It shouldn't. Many people have it. You appear to recognise it, and just get on anyway. Oddly, I am a dog trainer, and people with autism make fantastic dog trainers as they understand the need for detail, consistency and understanding. If only everyone else did.

It is very easy to compare up. Every time that happens, it should be balanced by comparing down too. Yes, there are shitloads of people who earn more, have nicer houses, families etc. Reality is often different though. Also, there are many people worse off. People who live in war zones, poverty etc. Life doesn't have to be a 1 or a 6. It can be a 3 or a 4.

I do sometimes wander down the path of what would have happened if I'd turned left instead of right at whatever juncture I was at, but a) that is irrelevant as I didn't and b) I wouldn't have experienced the things I did.

I can't offer you anything other than a hug from a total stranger out here in the ether. Look for the good things in your life, smell the roses, look at the sunsets. Many don't get to even do that. Even recently in the news a young man had his life cut short. Life is full of tragedy as well as people who appear to have been born with the Midas touch. If all else fails, just think of Elon Musk. All that money, and he is still a c**t.

The thing is, you might have been actively encouraged to apply because you were bright, but you may STILL not have gotten in. They didn’t used to only want booksmart kids (no idea now). They used to like confident, outspoken people with lots of extra curricular hobbies. Maybe that was you, maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe you’d have got through the interview and wowed them all, maybe you feared the rejection that was coming your way.

By deciding it was yours for the taking and you didn’t take it, you’re picking the passive option which gives you control. You chose no, not them.

That was years ago and now you’re full of regrets. So if it’s important to you to know whether or not you’d have gotten in there, why not apply for a postgraduate study now?

I think your problem in all aspects of life sounds a bit like you didn’t want to be rejected so you hid. Understandable given you had a tough childhood.

But that doesn’t feel good either.

So now is the time to try?

Or you could stay as you are. It really is up to you.