Heartbroken I will never have a 25 year wedding anniversary or a young marriage

[User444441]

My life is fine. I do things I enjoy. I have interests and hobbies and friends.

I haven’t met the right one and at 36 I feel like it’s all over.

I watched my friends marry in their twenties and most are still together now. They have all that to look back on as a couple. Even if I met someone now, we’d barely have a long history to our relationship even if we were lucky enough to have kids.

Life feels so meaningless.

I’m not sure what I’m asking. Just feeling low. Anyone else in the same boat or anyone felt differently as they got older?

It's absolutely not over. Definitely still time to meet someone. And I bet at least some of your friends envy what you've done that's different to their lives, whether or not they say so.

I married at 20. We made it to our 15 year anniversary, then we split.

If it wasn't for our kids, I would have preferred for it to have never have happened.

I met DP at 36 in my best friends kitchen. We actually worked together when I was 17 and he was 20. I sometimes feel a bit gutted that I never paid enough attention to him, or him to me back then. I hate we wasted all this time. But it is what it is.

Getting married when young isn't always the most amazing thing. I would much preferred to have been single and met DP at 36.

Having exh causing trouble all the time is exhausting.

The most common saying 'the grass isn't always greener' just because they met someone in their 20s it doesn't mean they've spent the last 15 years besotted and having the perfect life (whatever that is).

I think you should look into some CBT it's a useful tool to view the world differently to be grateful for what you have? Maybe a job, home, heath and most definitely your youth!!!

Think of how to go about changing what makes you sad.

It's ok to feel sad but don't compare - you don't know what goes on behind closed doors - neither can you think about what hasn't happened and how happy that would be! My parents married in early life and they didn't get to celebrate many anniversaries because Dad died young.

But they had plenty of love between them and now mum lives another life without Dad.

Try to do something good for you everyday - be kind to you. Mediate on all you have. Think about what you want for the future and plan good luck OP

From a different perspective, I got married in my very very early twenties. Now in my early thirties I'm divorced albeit with children, so
I'm not going to have that long-standing wedding anniversary either.

I don't think anniversaries or long marriages matter, and your worrying unnecessarily.

Is it that you're unhappy being single?

How would you not have a 25 year anniversary? If you marry at 40 you’d be 65 on your 25th anniversary?

I married the man i met when young. Divorced mid 30's. Merry the man of my dreams mid 30's. Yes i think it's a shame the things we missed out on but I'm happy. Keep your hand in the game!

It's not meaningless, I bet you've done stuff so far in life that you have happy memories of. You don't have to have a partner/shared experiences to be happy together.

I married when I was in my late 30s but I still look back happily (& talk about) things I did before this.

And a long marriage doesn't always mean a happy one either

I so understand.

Why in the world wouldn't you have a 25-year anniversary?

If you met someone late this year, got to know them for 18 months, proposal, an engagement of a year, honeymoon period of a year before starting to try for a baby, you'd be trying at age 41.

Not easy for all women, but not at all impossible, as many will attest. You could probably have two children, even on this rather lackadaisical timeline. Keep the engagement short - or start trying for a baby while engaged, as my husband and I did, and you can shorten the timeline so you're still pregnant with your first in your 30s and celebrating your 25th anniversary before you're collecting a pension.

If you lived to 90, which is not so uncommon anymore, you could conceivably have a 50th wedding anniversary to look forward to in something like 2072.

My mum had me when she was 30, but she didn’t meet the love of her life until she was nearly 60. She’s happy as can be, just survived stage 3 cancer, and at 70 is looking forward to many happy years together still. No one can know what will happen in the future, but even she is still hoping for a 25th anniversary (she’ll be a bit past 80 then!). Hang in there. I know easier said than done.

All those at 40 who have been married 15 years and are feeling bored and thinking gawd is this it will be supreme Ely jealous when you fall head over heels at 40 and have the excitement and buzz just at an age when you can really enjoy it

Falling in love at 20 is very different to doing it when you truly know yourself at 40.

If anything OP many people will be really envious of you about to have the best bits of a relationship and will be watching you longingly.

Learn to love yourself and then go and find someone to share yourself with

Thank you for all the really helpful posts.

I think I’m mostly worried because I’ve done all the enjoying life and loving yourself etc. I’ve had so many free evenings to go and get drunk or fly off somewhere on a whim.
I’ve had loads of weekend lie ins with no disturbance. I’ve spent time at the gym, I’ve read a lot and travelled.

I’d trade it all for a family.

I met DH when I was 36 when we were 'mature students' and we were each as poor as f**k then . ..

But we are just about to celebrate 25 years together. ( ok only 14 of those married, but that was for our own reasons) but we became a committed partnership from pretty much go.. and have had such a great time since together . We have raised 2 great kids (both of us were parents to one each beforehand) and now have 3 young grandchildren..

Our next (leaving work, traveling), adventure beckons! We reckon that as long as we keep going nothing will change ..

Its not too late!!

No way is anything ever too late! I married at 21 and divorced at 22 so clearly that was a mistake. Then I had 10 years with the wrong man - nothing he did he just wasn't my zing. Finally met dh at 35 we were married and had 2 kids by the time I was 40 and will celebrate our 10 year anniversary this year. But you know what, a man is not a necessity and you don't need one to be happy. Surround yourself with things that spark joy and everything else will fall into place.

Our kids were quite young (DD5 & DS3) when we met, but we could have had more! (just decided not to ...)

I'm in my mid 40s. Of my group of four uni friends, three have divorced in the last 10 years. All three have remarried in the last 5 years. One has had a baby, another is actively trying (his wife is a few years younger than us). In every case, the relationships have got serious quickly - as they knew what they wanted and knew when they found it.

I do understand - it's easy to look at other people's lives from the outside and think it they've got it all sorted, but things can change quickly...

I got married abroad to the love of my life, in my 20s and we always planned on celebrating our 25th anniversary back in that country. I lost him to cancer before our 21st. Being married young is no guarantee of reaching your 25th anniversary. I’ll miss him until my last breath.

i haven't met the right one but it doesn't faze me at all. Take the pressure off yourself. You may be looking at someone's family enviously but you don't know what they are wishing for - maybe they wished they had't had a family and would love travel, freedom etc. Some people have met 'the one' only to find that they split or in one perosn's case was a widow at 29 years old!!

Relax and enjoy and stop looking...because that's just when you'll find him.

I got together with my DP at 37 and we had our first baby a few years later.
I have no idea what life will throw at us- whether we will weather the storms of relationship ups and downs (or whether I might strangle him and end up doing a stretch in prison) or less jokingly, whether we will end up having to deal with the tragic loss of one another through circumstances outside our control. You make quite a lot of assumptions about what must tick the boxes for 'happiness' to be true.
There is no race to find a long term partner (unless you are very keen to have a child/ children before a certain age of course but even then you do not need a long term partner for that), and once you find that person, you cannot take anything for granted. Most of my friends who are very happily married are with a second or third husband, so also do not make the mistake of assuming that everybody gets it right first time.
You are still a very young person- and I mean this kindly, but get a grip and chill out a bit!

My DH is 18 years older than me, we can't have children and I don't have any other family. I'm going to end up completely alone. In a way, I think it will make it less hard for me to die.

My parents married in their 20s and my dad died after 16 years. Age is no barrier to a long, successful marriage.

I have to say it, you are 36 not 76, you still have your whole life ahead of you,.
I met my husband after a long relationship with someone else, we have two children, 25 years is a very good possibility but who cares!
I'd rather have a few gloriously happy years than 25 sad ones.

Several of my friends were single until their late thirties. 1 now happily married with a kid. Another had a child through sperm donation, then found a great partner and together they have a complicated (but rewarding) merged family. A third happily child-free with a lovely husband, a part time job and lots of time for cool hobbies. Lives pan out in so many different ways, but it is absolutely and categorically not all over at 36!

Meh. I am 54 and have never married or lived with a partner. I have an amicable, friendly relationship with my DS' dad - I had DS at 40.

I'm happy that I've stayed single. I see few advantages in couplehood. I'd much rather have had my enjoyable single life than wasted years trying to keep some man happy by putting myself second all the time. Almost all heterosexual relationships involve the woman giving in to the man and 'pleasing' him so he doesn't run away.