I’m 33 and life hasn’t gone the way I expected it. True for a lot of folks in my generation but I think others have done a much better job adapting to life’s challenges than I have. My career is stagnant and unfulfilling; COVID derailed every plan I had and, after that, I fell into a long period of depression that I’m only just now clawing my way out of. I have a romantic relationship but it’s complicated. My savings are microscopic. I worry that it’s too late for me to live a long and happy life. I worry that I’m fated to grow old alone, unaccomplished, and impoverished.
I know that lots of people turn things around at my age and sometimes older but the issue I’m having is this: what direction do I want to go? I’m convinced (largely due to anxiety) that I have a binary choice before me. I work hard towards doing all the things I want to do now—travel, have an active social life, and chase a creatively fulfilling career—and be happy in the short term. But I worry that this will come at long term expense. I always knew that I wanted to get married eventually and that I might want kids one day in the distant future… but now the future doesn’t seem so different. And I’m terrified of being in my 80s or 90s with my health failing and no one to advocate for me. So I’m worried that I have to make a choice NOW to settle down into a family life that I don’t feel ready for, can’t financially support, and that may never make me happy. I’m worried that I would regret the choice to settle down and that my hypothetical wife and hypothetical child would suffer.
But I don’t NOT want kids. I WANT a wife. And if I have them I want to actually be a good father and a husband. But I’m worried that I don’t have enough time left to grow into the type of man they’d need cause I know for a fact that I’m not that man now. Honestly, I’m still fundamentally the same man I was in 2020 in a lot of ways; it’s like my life has been on pause for 6 years but obviously it hasn’t been. The clock kept ticking.
I just don’t know what to do.