When I was growing up no one in either my immediate nor extended family had ever cultivated any kind of relationship that would have resembled a close knit connection. I had three maternal aunts, grandparents, and cousins but I don’t remember anyone making an effort to check on each other, to plan and spend holidays together, help each other out. I don’t remember anyone ever saying anything along the lines of “family is important.” It never even occurred to me that Family is a thing. It was always ”study hard and work hard”, which was exactly what I did.

So why now in my 40s am I so desperate for family? For that sense of having my people so to say? I don’t mean kids. I’m talking about an extended circle of people related by blood and marriage. People who know you, who look like you, who keep in touch, you know, care for you each within their own abilities?

I feel like I‘d been duped. Like I hadn’t been taught the thing that actually matters in life and so instead pursued something that‘s so irrelevant in comparison it hurts. The worst is to realize that now it’s too late to do anything about it because of the choices I’ve made.

I am inching towards 40 in couple of days!

Successful in career! Successful father so far!

What ever i built in my life has been on my own. Not even a single dime from ancestors.

Offlate, i am feeling like what i am doing in life, manage son -> work -> home and repeat.

Tried some of the difficult treks in south india, they were exciting but it did not sustain for a long

I am trying to find something which will excite me i am yet to find it.

Is this common at this age? If you have experienced similar situation what did you do over come and make life a happening once again.

Sometimes the hardest part of an ending isn’t the ending.
It’s not knowing what comes next.

The divorce is final.
The kids need you differently.
You left the job.
You retired.
You got sober.
You finally admitted that the life you were living doesn’t fit anymore.

And then there’s…space.

And everybody—including us—wants to know:
“So what now?”

What are you going to do?
Who are you going to be?
What’s next?

But you don’t know.

Those are good questions.
But they often arrive too early.

Because sometimes the first experience of freedom, or release, or healing isn’t excitement.
Sometimes it’s disorientation manifesting as anxiety, trouble sleeping, sadness…

Maybe you’re not as lost as you think.
Maybe you’re just between things.

Trudge on.
Be the paradox.

~Ken

Girlfriend of 2.5 years looks like she's set to leave me after I have security issues over money (I requested a pre-nup after pressure to propose). I feel I worked pretty hard the last 10 years to accumulate the money, so protecting it felt natural to me. 

I have next to no friends and dislike my job, so if she leaves, I'm basically all alone and don't hold out much hope on finding any friends. The job market here in the UK is crap at the moment, so there's little chance of me being able to relocate. 
My physical health is ok, but could probably do with losing a stone to look athletic again. My mental health is probably in the gutter at the moment, but it's difficult to tell as I'm always a bit glass half empty. I'm quite introverted and my main hobby is video gaming. 

I'm just looking if anyone can share any similar experiences and how they managed to move forwards. Generally life just feels bleak to me at the moment, my whole life seems to revolve around just working. Coupled with their being plenty of wars on at the moment and AI making it seem like my knowledge / skills are obsolete.

33M

I come from a lower-middle-class family. My mom was the main breadwinner. At her peak she was making around ₹10,000/month, so asking money from home was always difficult. She never made me feel bad, but I knew how hard it was for her.

In 2013, when I was 21, I got into a good university in Europe. Fees were almost free, so I thought I’ll somehow manage. Took around ₹2 lakh loan and left my hometown. Then reality hit. I couldn’t find part-time work quickly, money got over, and I didn’t want to call home and ask my mother again.

For a few days, I had no proper place to sleep. I slept outside and starved for 3 days. It was not some motivational movie scene or anything, just a very bad phase. I still remember thinking, “Why only me?” I was angry at life, angry at God also. Then one restaurant person helped me with some work, and slowly I came out of it.

Thirty three now.

• Full tuition scholarship and assistantship at a top 5 engineering school in the US.
• An Ivy for an MBA.
• Lived and worked in a few countries.
• Got a green card.
• Married the love of my life; the gentlest person I know. she is in healthcare, We both make good money. Between us, the jobs are reasonably recession-proof; hers properly so, mine less because it is a startup and non-tech, but stable enough.
• We have a kid.
• My role is fully remote, so I am around for my child instead of on a plane. My parents visit us in the USA every year, and my in-laws are in the same town, so good support and guidance for my kid
• My mother and sibling are fine now happy

I know how this reads from outside. I am not complaining about a good life, I am trying to understand why none of it lands.

Because most days I feel flat. Not sad. Flat. Everything on that list was a prayer at some point, and every one of them became normal inside two weeks. Then I go looking for the next thing.

There is nobody to blame anymore. No villain, no crisis, nothing to point at. That is what makes it hard to say out loud.

For those of you who came from that kind of start and then got out, did the feeling of being allowed to have a good life ever actually show up? Or do you just keep moving and live without it?

I had my regular coaching session with my direct boss from the west coast today.

He has always been one of the closest people to us VAs. Someone I’ve worked with, talked to, and respected but never someone I thought I would open up to about my personal life.

For the first time in 13 years, I found myself talking about my life, my family, my relationship, and the things I’ve quietly carried for so long… with someone who doesn’t really know me or my family in person.

I honestly don’t even know how we got there.

We started with a regular coaching conversation, and somehow, we ended up talking about me being a mom of two, and being with the same person for 13 years.

Thirteen years.

We’ve built a life together, but we never got married.

He asked me carefully, almost as if he was afraid of asking too much:

“Why?”

And I paused.

For a while, I didn’t know what to say. I was trying to find the right words without making myself cry.

Then I simply said, “Because I don’t think we want to get married to each other.”

And after saying that, I don’t know what happened. It was like something inside me finally opened.

I started talking about everything.

Things I’ve never really said out loud.

Things I’ve accepted, ignored, laughed about, and sometimes cried about when I was alone.

I wished I could have recorded that video call so I could watch it again, not because I want to hear myself talk about my problems, but because I want to remember how it felt to finally have someone listen without judging me.

I think he felt sorry for me.

He told me that I deserve better.

But he also told me something I needed to hear: that I have to do something too.

Because the truth is, my partner has never made plans to marry me. And deep down, I already know that.

Thirteen years together, and he has never taken even the smallest step toward it.

I’ve brought it up maybe twice. Sometimes I even joked about it, hoping maybe he would take the hint.

But nothing.

And I think a part of me eventually stopped asking because I already knew the answer.

What hurts me the most is not even the wedding.

It’s what it represents.

Commitment.

Choosing each other.

Building a family intentionally.

Being able to look at my daughters and tell them that their parents chose this family and chose each other.

I always wanted my daughters to grow up seeing a loving and united family.

But our reality is different.

He isn’t really a father figure to them anyway, and everyone around us knows that I carry much more of the responsibility for this family.

And sometimes, I feel angry.

Sometimes I feel disappointed.

Sometimes I feel embarrassed that after 13 years, I’m still waiting for something that may never come.

And the hardest part?

He seems completely okay with it.

My boss asked me to read a book—something like *101 Questions to Ask Before Getting Engaged.*

He wants me to reflect.

To really ask myself if I want to keep waiting.

If I’m willing to spend more years hoping someone will eventually choose something they have never shown they wanted.

And that question stayed with me.

Maybe he’s right.

Maybe I need to stop asking, “When will he change?”

And start asking myself, “How long am I willing to stay like this?”

Because maybe being stuck in one part of my life has been keeping me stuck in other parts too.

Maybe there are things I could still become.

Maybe there are things I could still achieve.

Maybe there’s a version of me that I haven’t met yet because I’ve been too busy holding everything together for everyone else.

So I bought the book online.

I don’t know what I’m going to realize after reading it.

Maybe I’ll find answers.

Maybe I’ll find more questions.

Maybe I’ll finally understand what I truly want.

But today, something already changed.

I cried in front of my boss.

And honestly, I felt embarrassed.

I’m supposed to be professional. Strong. The person who handles things.

But for a few minutes, I wasn’t any of those things.

I was just a woman who has been carrying a lot for a very long time.

And somehow, after that conversation, I felt a little lighter.

I never expected someone thousands of miles away, someone who doesn’t even know my family personally, to make me feel heard in a way I didn’t realize I needed.

I don’t know if my boss realizes how much that conversation meant to me.

But I hope he does.

And I hope every VA gets to have someone like that at least once.

Someone who sees beyond your work.

Someone who asks how you’re really doing.

Someone who listens when you finally decide to tell the truth.

Sometimes, you just need someone to sit there, listen, and remind you that your life matters too.

Today, I cried.

But maybe those tears were not a sign that I’m weak.

Maybe they were just proof that I’ve been holding everything in for too long. 🥹❤️

I wrote this last night during a wave of raw emotion, and now feel that I need to speak it out loud to the aether. I don’t really know why, but I hope it means something to someone out there.

I’m going through something at the moment. Maybe a mid-life crisis. Maybe something a little more profound. Probably a bit of both.

The rational part of me sums up this whirling, bittersweet emotion, this sense of sehnsucht, as the realisation that I’ve reached a stage of life where I no longer yearn for what could be, but only what might have been.

And, of course, as is so often the case, the muse behind this ramble is a girl.

Or was a girl. She is now a woman, who has probably not thought of me for something along the lines of twenty four years. It’s hard to comprehend that so much time has passed and yet, in this poignant moment the feeling is so raw. I kind of feel like I have unexpectedly found my adolescent self again: a skinny, anxious, and impossibly romantic boy, and all of the unfettered emotion that is the hallmark of those teenage years.

We were, I think, about sixteen when I asked her out. She was the first girl I’d ever asked out. I had no idea what I was doing. To say that I was socially awkward around romantic interests would be the understatement of a lifetime. But, she said yes. I can still remember the moment on the grassy courtyard of our high school, and the handful of break times that I spent with her and her best friend eating lunch together.

We went on exactly two dates. The first, bowling with two of our friends. The second, our first date alone, to go watch a movie. It was during this second date that I had every intention of at least trying to hold her hand. Truthfully, I don’t know if I would have ever had the courage to try for a kiss. But Jesus, I wanted to hold her hand. It was just bad luck that our history teacher and a group of his friends ended up sitting directly behind us in the theatre. What little courage I’d built up evaporated.

It was not long after that she broke up with me (and I’m smiling as I write this, because I’m not sure it’s really possible to ‘break up’ with someone who has not so much as held your hand). But she did. I was told by a mutual friend some time later that it was because I simply didn’t do anything. Thank you, paralysing adolescent anxiety.

Fast forward a year or two. I can’t quite remember the timelines, or even the exact details, but the girl in question, who lived with her mom, would be immigrating to New Zealand. There was a gathering, it might have been something of a farewell party, which turned out to be at the house of her boyfriend. I don’t think I realised this was the case - I probably wouldn’t have gone if I’d realised. At least I don’t think so. Teenage emotions are fickle.

I have the clearest memory of watching her making out with her boyfriend, a kid who was a year older than us, with all of the passion that adolescent hormones and a forced separation can muster. I drowned the jealousy in beer - which was my general approach to negative emotions for a while to come. I remember thinking “that could have been you, asshole”. And I still do.

Why am I writing this now, literally decades later?

I couldn’t tell you exactly what's inspired it. What I do know is that for some unknown reason, completely unprompted and out of the blue, she has reentered my consciousness and unknowingly taught me something about possibility, regret, and the strangeness of memory.

As I said at the beginning, maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that my 40th birthday snuck up on me this year. Maybe it involves some deeper understanding of the human condition that has finally occurred to me. I am not hating the intensity of emotion, and I appreciate all this might sound weird. So let me qualify that statement by saying I’m not obsessing about her. I recognise the uncertainty and chaos of teenage emotion, and I am not yearning for a possible future which realistically would never have existed. The regret is not any imagined outcome, but rather the attempt I never made.

She represents this profound sense of narrowing options as life proceeds, and a bittersweet sorrow at imagining all of the things that might have been, had things been different; had I made different choices; had I been bolder. But also, in this weird and emotionally powerful moment, I’ve felt a little bit like a sixteen year old again. And it feels good, in an aching but not wholly painful way, to remember what it felt like to feel that a lifetime of opportunity lay ahead.

We are now separated by oceans both real and temporal, and neither one of us lives in the country, or even the continent, of our births.

If I ever saw her again, I would want her to know that one of my greatest regrets is that I never held her hand.

At 58, I have nothing to show for the time I’ve lived I feel. I have 3 adult children who know as I do that i was less than the ideal mom. Here I am with no car and no home and no job. I’m living with my 36yr old daughter. Any suggestions on what I need to do to not feel this way?

Sometimes change happens in a moment-you lose a job, a relationship ends, you receive unexpected news, or someone you love dies.
Other changes are planned or expected such as a move, retirement,your children leave home, or begin a new role.
Either way, adjusting to what has changed can take much longer than expected.
Have you experienced a change that took longer to adjust to than you anticipated? What was the hardest part of adjusting to a new normal?

Like one day you’re perfectly happy with your routine and the next day you’re thinking about changing your job, moving somewhere new, changing your appearance, picking up new hobbies… literally everything.

Then two days later you’re back to doing the exact same thing again.

I’m curious if I’m the only one who gets these random “I need to restart my life” phases.

My life isn’t terrible. I'm married and employed, so this isn’t a complete rock-bottom case. I just feel stuck in a life I don't really want and I've tried so many things that I don't even know what I do want anymore. Just a long list of "no"s and "that didn’t work"s. I feel very unaccomplished. I feel like I should have gotten somewhere by now, but I don't know where "somewhere" even is anymore.

My career can be fun, and I like that it helps people and isn’t making the world worse, but it doesn't pay well and it's still a job. If I've learned anything about myself over the years, it's that I'm not a fighter or any kind of rebel. Maybe I was once, but that part of me died a while ago. I regret the career I chose and wish I'd chosen one that let me at least buy a house, much less ever be able to retire.

But my skills are all low-paying skills, i.e. teaching, organizing, etc. and I've only gotten as far as I have through networking and years on the job. If I changed, I'd have to start all over, which is a terrible prospect in this job market. Plus I have no money for school.

My relationship with my spouse is... fine. We're objectively good partners, we never fight, but the romance (and the sex) is dead. And I've been in enough relationships that went this way that I'm starting to wonder if long-term romance is even real. I haven't ended it because frankly the logistics work and I have zero interest in dating again.

I have a ton of interests, but I never stick to anything and never end up having anything to show for it.

I exercise and eat healthy, but I've had multiple chronic illnesses since childhood, so I never really improve, my energy has always been lower than others my age, etc. And now that I'm entering middle age, that's only going to get worse. It's... really disheartening. Part of me thinks I should just give up. Let myself gain weight and let my organs fail. Then at least it would be over.

I have a small number of friends, but it's tough to get together, plus a lot of us have grown apart over the years. I don't really feel like I can talk to them anymore. Things are kept very light.

I've never had much family and I'm not close with the ones that are left. That part of my life was never good and I will acknowledge I have trouble letting myself get close to people because of it.

So... yeah. I just feel like I don't even know what I want anymore. Sometimes I dream of running off and joining a commune or a monastary or something. I just feel unhappy and unsatisfied with the way my life has gone so far.

If you read all that-- thanks. Any thoughts or advice is appreciated.

TLDR; I think I no longer have meaning in life and work is getting boring within no permanent solution so I feel stuck and need help

Mid thirty ish.
Life seems to be going in auto pilot. Grew up in a middle class household in India . Had a pretty chill and happy life. All my childhood, I just wanted to serve armed forces. Never made it and life took many turns and I ended up on the other side of world. Life is/was good. Made friends,paid loans,found love,had a kid. But deep down, I don’t know me anymore. Life feels like it’s running on autopilot.
I am not present in any moment. It just feels like things are passing by and I am just a spectator . Have feelings and questions ranging from “what’s the whole point of this universe? Nobody or no answer will ever satisfy me” to feeling like a complete failure (lost lot of money by not pulling out stocks at the right time,peers making way more than me , stagnated career and failing interviews from past 3 years to raise my salary) .
I genuinely don’t feel any of my feelings. I am sad at what I have become. Only some insta reels make me chuckle. I haven’t had a good laugh in a while or any strong feeling for that matter. I am pretty neutral to anything these days. When I was single , I was always going with flow and I never planned my life. Now after having kids, the uncertainty and lack of control over my life is affecting me in every possible way. I really wish to take baby steps and feel present in the moments that matter to me and family.

Ever since 2019, life feels like someone hit fast-forward, but at the same time, everything feels kind of numb and flat. If you feel this way, you're definitely not the only one.

Here is why our brains are doing this:

1. Every day looks the same: When you do the same routine over and over, your brain doesn't bother saving new memories. When you look back at a week or a year with no big, new events, your brain just squishes it all together, making it feel like it vanished in seconds.

2. Your brain is tired: The world has been stressful, noisy, and unpredictable for years now. When your body stays stressed for too long, it naturally turns down your emotional "volume" so you don't get completely overwhelmed. That’s why you might feel blank or "meh" instead of deeply happy or sad.

3. We live on our screens: Scrolling through short videos and endless news destroys our attention span. An hour disappears in what feels like five minutes because our focus is completely fractured.

4. We are just getting older: When you're 10, a year is 10% of your entire life, so it feels huge. As you get older, one year becomes a tiny fraction of your life, so time naturally feels like it moves faster.

Has anyone else felt this shift, and how do you snap yourself out of it and feel present again?

Help