Children fill this void
Part of maturing is realizing that you are but a link in a chain; and all the potential futures in which you saw yourself as the protagonist fade into a fuzzier (and less direct) set of potential futures which your children will shape and navigate through.
Meanwhile, we are also becoming captive to the stories that we tell ourselves about ours lives and the stories that our culture tells us about our value. But though it's not easy, you can change the story you tell yourself at any time... and watch your life fill-in with possibilities again.
learn
create
teach
consult
each has its time
I have three. No regrets, but I didn’t do it to give my life meaning. They are their own people and I am responsible for giving my life meaning, no one else.
At some point, you are back with yourself and own thoughts. This is neither good nor bad. It simply is.
Well now I do get it that I have a son, but I'll never say that to him. He is only 4.5 so we will see. I just don't want him to feel that he owes me anything. He doesn't owe me anything. Whatever I do for him, I do so willingly and the result is all mine to take, good or bad.
Not only that, but there are several different modes of meaning in a life. Family is one aspect, career/community is another, building yourself and heath is another. Thinking of the "one" thing that gives life meaning is very limiting.
Especially as what is meaningful to you may change as time goes on.
Just maybe, fight for your passion and forget about family and kid. You might find them on the road that you avoid them.
Not at all in relation to dating (rather to something related to age) that was exactly what I needed to read today :)
Who you marry is the most important decision of your life and ending up with someone you don't even like that much because she's the best you can do is a terrible idea. Who would want to be the woman in this situation?
The women you meet in online dating are much lower quality than the ones you meet in real life, and a part of you is aware of that. The answer is to meet people in real life.
I met her when I was 35 and she was 36. Totally unreal human who is the best person I have ever met. She settled on her ex-husband and after 5 years they split amicably, both understanding their mistake. She was "too old" so she figured she would just live a solo life. After a few years her friends made a profile for her and put it up. Its been two years and people are still jealous of our intense bond. Currently I'm looking for a ring.
Hold out hope, it's not totally over. I was you for many years.
I believe I will find the same eventually, it's just the search and the waiting that's running me ragged.
Happy for you, brother!
That said, as I've entered my 30s things seem more strategic. I want love more than ever and after re-locating to the SF Bay Area women seem more sparse than ever.
Idk if modern women in america "stick around" anymore.
I think a lot of women use it as a hookup app but women often take their time and are more cautious when trying to hook up.
Women who aren't just looking for a hook-up often filter out because they meet a lot of guys who just want that.
The longer the adventure, the more disconnected and odd home would feel upon return.
My family/friend situation is most likely a bit different though, for reasons that would make this comment far too long. It's time for a reset (~40ish).
Laughing at the world for letting me exist.
I am 36. This captures my greatest fears. That finding one woman anything less than immediately perfect will cut me off from all the small, lovely moments I have had with women across the world in my life. That if I buy a house in my imperfect city, that that's the ball game. I'm here for a decade or more (even though let's face it, I probably am anyway).
I had a similar interaction with a 31 year old friend who has a beautiful wife, love of his life, and two daughters, a PhD and a position at a startup. He said "What are my goals supposed to be now?" The answer is clearly to be a good father and husband, and I think he knew and was happy with that. But it represented the sea change between youth, singleness and research vs. middle age, familial responsibility and work.
"He wants his home and security, he wants to live like a sailor at sea. Beautiful loser, where will you fall, when you find out you just can't have it all?"
as you note you're already probably living in some imperfect city. you might consider buying a house more of a commitment to it, but how much more than coasting along in apartments thinking of where to buy the house, for example? you'll live somewhere in that time either way. you might as well commit to things.
You had those moments. You could keep trying to chase that bouncing between different partners going forward, but consider: a) more women exit the dating market with age (especially the good ones), b) there is a richness of experience also to be found with a devoted lifelong partner which can't be had with a mere fling.
As time goes on, your odds of success are harsher either way, risking being alone much of the time. But in particular, good long-term prospects more rapidly diminish.
Opportunity-cost goes both ways. Speaking from my own bias and experience, investing and relishing in a life-long relationship with a flawed-but-loving partner is worth it, having had the non-committal phase when I was younger.
It's difficult to maximize for some characteristics in a partner. Beauty, sure, you know what you like so you can ball-park. Many traits/qualities are difficult to discern and luck-of-the-draw: reliability and trust, compatibility and love, capacity to raise children well, etc.
No one is perfect and there is no unicorn, novelty is attractive in itself. My heuristic is if a partner can be assessed as "good", holding on is the right move.
I think about Voltaire's Candide often, and the lesson applies here.
I think it's important to remember we're happily compatible with many people, many houses, and many entire existences.
Have you considered what's said in "Why you will marry the wrong person"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EvvPZFdjyk
Indeed. I'm at 40+ and is in this stage exactly. Nothing seems to be really meaningful. Work, family, kid, OK, then? I think it is ultimately a lone road as no one can help me to answer questions that only I myself can answer. I guess it's totally possible to not find an answer for the rest of the life.
But some possibility has to become actual at some point. Otherwise you aren't living at all. Life is making choices and living with the consequences. Dreaming is nice, but it's not the same as living. And if you spend all of your present imagining possible futures, you never have an actual life.
In other words, what fills the void where possibility once lived is actual living.
At your age, I left Philadelphia and ended up living in a tiny village in rural New Mexico. I had lived almost entirely in large cities since I was 10 years old. Since that move, I became a (volunteer) firefighter, and joined the boards of 3 village organizations. I learned how to shop for a week rather than a day. I've had to reassess my own landscape aesthetics, now that green is no longer the signifier of beauty (at least, not below 9000'). My construction skills have had to expand to encompass a house built of dried mud.
I would say that this has been as much "a new life" as any that I started when I was younger.
I say this gently, but it sounds like you're trying to find reasons why you can't move anymore, none of which are very convincing.
Of course you can't move to everywhere exotic and different—that was never possible even when you were young. Of course you can't start a new life there in the same way that a young person would—even as a young adult it's often impossible to integrate as deeply as someone born there.
If that didn't stop you before, why does it stop you now? Do you perhaps simply like your current life enough that the incentive to move is much lower? If so, that's a great problem to have and should be celebrated.
In his youth, he vacationed differently. Everywhere he went was a place he could live, a potential future life. He could live here, he’d tell himself. Or he could meet a woman there, and start a family there, and become a citizen of that place. Mexico, Hong Kong, France, Italy, Western Indiana, etc.
Eventually, he met a woman and chose a place – the best woman and the best place – and his future was fixed. The world was good, but the world was no longer full of all these possibilities. What, then, fills the void where possibility once lived?
Much of middle age (and beyond) is a struggle to find meaning in the face of the realization of the finiteness of your remaining days. I think that, by and large, I'm doing a fair job at that, but I still struggle a bit with travel, for the very reason above. I used to imagine myself living in whatever place I visited, and those imaginings were plausibly something more than fantasy.
Now, not so much. It would be a huge undertaking for my wife and me to uproot our lives and move to someplace exotic and different, but even if we were to do so, we couldn't move to everywhere exotic and different. And anyway, we wouldn't be "starting a new life" there in the same way that a young person would.