I hope it’s appropriate to post this personal problem here? My apologies if not - very happy to move / delete etc.
I am a man in my 40s. Recently I’ve been waking up feeling depressed. It doesn’t always happen and by and large the feeling goes once I’ve got up - but it happens most mornings. It started roughly from the time a good friend of mine announced he and partner were having a child. I had never wanted children and up to this point have been unaffected when my friends had them. But I increasingly feel the “last childless one” and am asking myself if I’ve got this wrong. I’m genuinely not clear if I want children or if this is just some sort of mid life crisis. I feel the various lockdowns have had some effect on this - partly because it feels people in general are moving away (I live in a big city). How do I resolve this “morning dread” - and/or is it simply something that comes to many people in middle age?