Life Choices and Singlehood Perspectives

If you're in your 20s or 30s and you're currently single

and you're thinking about

what you should be doing with your life and you feel as though staying in one

place and dating until you find a good enough guy and

settling down is the best path forward, I'm just gonna give you a little bit of

perspective about my life. I'm 40 and single.

The decisions that I've made putting myself first rather than choosing a

man and how that's worked out for me and my thoughts about it,

if that's helpful.

I don't have any kids. I've never been engaged.

I've never even lived with a guy.

I had a high school sweetheart who I really, really loved, um,

and then we broke up

and then I just wanted to be like single and make girlfriends in college.

And then after college, my college sweetheart moved to Austin so

that like we could

be together but I just like had bigger goals in life.

I always wanted to move to California. I wanted to explore. He didn't.

He just ...

He was on those Facebook messages just flirting away with his coworkers and I was

just like sick of it. So I moved to California

and having so much fun and

traveling and music festivals, dating.

And then I met a guy right when I was planning on quitting my job

and traveling

around the world. When I met him, I told him that was my plan.

The closer we got to the date that I was leaving, the more he told me that he

didn't trust me, um, to go off on my own this early on into a

relationship, even

though that had been my plan the whole time.

So then we were gonna travel together, but he like couldn't get his stuff

together

so I just booked the trip and then he told me

that I ended the relationship the day

that I booked the trip.

And so then I went on the trip.

And like two months later he'd knocked someone up and like they got married.

I moved back to Austin and there was like a couple years that I

was just dating and like kind of trying to figure out like what I wanted.

I entered into a long-term relationship at 35 and that guy ended

up being a con man. Yeah, that can put like ...

that can put dampers on things, you know? That can like create some issues.

So I kinda got swirled up into that.

Nowhere along the way do I feel like I, you know, messed

up or I chose the wrong path and like nowhere in my

life do I feel like, "Dang, I really shouldn't have gone to Bali

and traveled around Southeast Asia by myself at the age of 30.

I should have stuck with the guy that knocked up a girl two months later

and got

married. That, that was my man. That was my man." In no way do I

feel like, "Man, I really should have tried to make it

work, um, with my college

sweetheart who had a wandering eye.

Like dang,

shoot." These ideas that no one has chosen you

if you're 40 and

single is so

man focused. It's so misogynistic to think that like

men do all the choosing. No, my, my life path was a bunch of

decisions that I made to put myself first and I'm so thankful that I did.

Would it have been amazing if I had met the perfect man along the way

and we had

chased those dreams together and we had made those decisions together

and he was

amazing and perfect and didn't have a wandering eye

and wasn't a con man and like

... Yeah,

that would've been great. Can that still happen for me?

Also yes.