There are times when I look at my sister’s life and wonder where exactly I went wrong.
There are less than two years between us, which somehow makes the comparison harder to avoid. We grew up at roughly the same time, in the same family, with many of the same expectations about what adulthood would eventually look like.
Today, she has a husband, two children, a mortgage and a business. I don’t have a husband or children. And although I know life isn’t a competition between siblings, sometimes it’s difficult not to look at those two lives side by side and feel as though one of us did adulthood properly.
It isn’t necessarily that anybody has told me I’ve failed. Nobody has sat me down and produced a checklist. But I think many of us grew up with one anyway. You grow up assuming you’ll meet someone, get married, perhaps buy a home and have children. Eventually, you’ll build a family of your own.
It was usually when, rather than if.
So what happens when you reach your 40s and realise that some of the things you always assumed would happen simply didn’t?
I don’t remember choosing a different life
There are women who knew they didn’t want to marry. There are women who made a conscious decision not to have children and are very happy with that decision. Their stories are important, but they aren’t quite mine.
I don’t remember sitting down and deciding that I wanted a life without a partner or children. But I didn’t make a concerted effort to find those things either. I was quiet when I was younger and not particularly outgoing. The idea of going on dates with strangers was far more intimidating than exciting. And while films are very fond of the idea that you’ll unexpectedly bump into the love of your life, real relationships quite often require considerably more effort.
People go on dates. They join dating sites. They put themselves in situations where they might meet someone. They keep trying when one person isn’t right. I didn’t do very much of that.
And when there wasn’t a partner, children didn’t naturally follow. For most people, becoming a parent is something they imagine doing with somebody else. So one thing didn’t happen, and then another thing didn’t happen, without there necessarily being a dramatic moment when any of it was decided.
Sometimes life makes certain decisions quietly.
That’s one of the reasons I find the language around women without children difficult sometimes. Childfree can suggest a deliberate choice and a freedom that someone actively wanted. Childless can sound as though a woman’s life is defined by something missing. There are women who strongly identify with either description. I’m not sure my own experience fits comfortably into either.
My life wasn’t a grand rejection of the conventional timeline. I just didn’t follow it.
It’s difficult not to keep score
I know perfectly well that marriage and children don’t guarantee happiness. I’ve lived long enough to know that the lovely family photograph doesn’t tell you what happened five minutes before it was taken or five minutes afterwards. A Sunday spent at home with the family can look wholesome and fulfilling from the outside while the people living it may be exhausted, irritated with one another and desperate for Monday morning.
Social media doesn’t exactly help. A family day out looks like a life well lived. A weekend filled with children’s activities, Sunday lunch and everyone piled onto the sofa has a kind of built-in significance. “I went to the pub” doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.
Yet I know that comparison isn’t entirely fair either. There are probably people dealing with the noise and responsibility of family life who would look at the freedom to go out when I want and feel a little envious themselves. That’s the strange thing about comparing lives. We tend to compare the best parts of somebody else’s with the parts of our own we’re least certain about.
There are things about my life I genuinely value. I’m comfortable on my own. I like having my own space and being able to decide how I spend my time without negotiating it with anyone. I can make plans, change them, go out, stay in or spend an entire day doing very little without considering how that affects a household full of other people. Those are real freedoms.
But sometimes I find it difficult to separate enjoying those things from the reason I have them. Would I value my independence quite so fiercely if life had gone differently? Would I be this comfortable alone if I hadn’t spent so much time alone? At what point does adapting to your circumstances become choosing them? I don’t know.
What I do know is that there are things about family life I envy. I envy the idea of having your person. Someone for whom the details of your life aren’t something you have to decide whether to share because they’re already there, living them alongside you. Someone who notices when you’re worried. Someone who knows when money is tight or work is difficult or you’re simply not yourself.
I was once ill at home for several days. When I eventually went out and tried to speak to someone, I discovered I’d more or less lost my voice. I hadn’t realised. It’s a small example, but I sometimes think about it. There hadn’t been anyone at home to hear it disappearing.
I envy the idea of a busy house too. Children coming and going. Family meals. Holidays. Christmas mornings. Lazy Sundays that still feel as though you’re doing something simply because you’re doing nothing together.
Would I enjoy every minute of that? Of course not. In fact, after living alone for so long, I’m not entirely sure what I’d do with it. If I could somehow go back and give my younger self another opportunity to work towards a relationship and family, I think I’d take it. But if you asked me to step straight into that life tomorrow, the answer becomes much harder.
I’ve spent too many years making my own decisions. I’m used to quiet, my own space and being able to withdraw when my social battery has run out. The family home I can picture so fondly would also be noisy, demanding and full of people who couldn’t simply be switched off when I’d had enough.
Perhaps that’s one of the stranger parts of getting older outside the expected timeline. You can miss a life you never had while simultaneously becoming increasingly adapted to the life you do.
Maybe I’m using the wrong scorecard
Never marrying or having children isn’t particularly unusual anymore. In the United States, a quarter of 40-year-olds had never married in 2021, up dramatically from previous generations. Similar changes can be seen elsewhere. I’m clearly not the only person reaching midlife with a life that doesn’t resemble the one we were taught to expect.
But knowing you’re not unusual doesn’t necessarily stop you feeling as though you are. There can still be an assumption that marriage and children demonstrate that life has progressed. Without them, it can sometimes feel as though you’re expected to have something else impressive to show for the years, as though there should be an answer to the unspoken question: what did you do instead?
That’s the question I think I’m trying to stop asking myself. Because if I continue measuring my life only by the things that didn’t happen, there isn’t really anywhere for that thinking to go. I can keep looking at the husband I don’t have, the children I didn’t have and the family unit I didn’t build, but none of that tells me what to do with the life in front of me.
What I can change is what I build now.
There are parts of my life that aren’t yet where I want them to be. I want to feel successful in my work. I want greater financial security. I want a social life that feels full rather than one that simply fills time. I want more holidays, more experiences and more of the things that being single actually gives me the freedom to do. Perhaps when those parts of my life feel richer, I won’t spend quite as much time looking at somebody else’s and wondering what I’m missing. I don’t know that yet.
And I don’t want to turn this into one of those declarations about how being single is actually the greatest gift imaginable and I’ve finally realised I have everything I ever wanted. I haven’t. There are still days when I look at family life and feel jealous. There are still times when I compare myself with people who followed the expected path and feel as though I’m behind. There are still things I wish had happened differently.
But I’m beginning to think there comes a point when I have to stop building for the life I thought I was going to have and start building for the life I actually have. Not because I’ve suddenly decided this is exactly how I wanted everything to turn out, but because this life deserves to be more than the list of things that didn’t happen.
I can’t go back and build the life I thought I would have. But I can decide what I build from here.
Maybe that’s the part of the timeline nobody told us about.
