Reply to Specific midlife crisis issue: playing "what if" with your life?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]That’s not an age thing so much as a mindset thing. It’s common to think that the grass is always greener.

For me, it comes back to self acceptance. I accept that I’ve done the best I can with what I have and others haven’t had to live my life, so comparing myself to them is a purposeless activity.[/quote]

For me it's an age thing. When I was 25 or even 35, I didn't think "what if I did this for living" or "what if I lived in that city" or "what if I had another kid." I contemplated those things as real options because they were.

[b]By 45, many avenues in life are closed off to you.[/b] I think for women, in particular, the end of your fertility is such a firm closure on an era of life where you are making choices about the kind of life you will live. In some ways this is reassuring. But it's also scary. There's no going back.

Oh sure, you could move to another city or go back to school for a new degree or find a new spouse. But these changes cost more the older you are. I have always been someone who embraced the challenge of a new city or a new job, but the older I get, the more obstacles there are. And being a parent changes the math on everything. The degree to which my options are prescribed by how they would impact my children is dramatic.

So midlife "grass is greener" is different in quality than what you might experience when you are younger. It's less about envying what someone else has and more about realizing you are far less free in your choices than you once were, and that can make it harder to make a big change even when it's clearly what is needed. Very different in quality than the way people might envy friend's lives in earlier stages of life.[/quote]

I agree. I can’t stop asking how I got here or why I thought this is what I wanted. And I got everything I wanted, but what I want at 45 is not what I thought I wanted at 30.[/quote]

This so resonates.  My high school self would have been AMAZED at where I am now, my amazing spouse, nice home, fun and comfortable job.

But I realize how limited my understanding of the world was when younger, and choices I made had impact on impact on my spouse and children (mostly that I followed a passion job rather than maximizing income, which means my spouse is stuck in a job they really don't like, and my kids likely will need loans for college).

I think when you are younger, you think you have time to pivot or improve things, but now at 48 my options for changing my life are so limited or would be extremely disruptive for my family.  And I have had health scares, and mortality seems even closer (and to be honest my parents died in my 30s, and I already started thinking about how to ensure my children would thrive without me -- but in my 40s it feels even more immediate), and that drains my motivation for somethings, like "why learn to play piano now if I'm going to be dead soon anyways"...

OP's original post really resonated, I think many of us have these "what ifs"/near regrets at this age when the die is cast.  The PP who says nothing is set in stone hasn't tried entering a new career field in their 50s or contemplated moving a teenager in the middle of high school just because the parent has midlife malaise?[/quote]

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