r/AskWomenOver30

I’ve seen a lot of posts asking how it worked out for those who “settled” for their partners but I rarely see how kids fit into the decision/outcome.

I’m 35F, single, and have always wanted kids for various reasons. That being said I think I would have a very hard time raising kids alone. Not to mention the significant career, financial, and lifestyle sacrifices I would have to make if I were to do it solo. I think I’ve come to the conclusion that I would rather have kids with a partner, even if they aren’t my soulmate, than do it alone.

I’ve been dating for a few years now and haven’t found the one. I always hear “never settle”, “it’s better to be alone than with the wrong person”, and I agree that I never want to settle for someone who makes my life worse or makes me unhappy. But I’m realistically at a point now where I don’t have much time to start a family, and I can’t help but think about if there are things I should compromise on with respect to a partner. Because in reality, holding off for someone who checks all my boxes is compromising in other ways if it means I can’t have biological kids.

I’m looking for those who committed to and had kids with that person who was “fine”. That guy who you like to spend time with, is a good person, makes you laugh, is stable, who would make a good parent and partner, but there isn’t that spark, attraction, or chemistry you would have hoped for. If you chose that guy for the sake of having kids, how did it work out? Do you have any regrets?

Going to start off by saying that I mean platonic people in my life. My dating profile saying either LTR or life partner and have never been questioned by men on that. They just ignore it lol.

So I (30F) have had several conversations where, when I tell people that I would like to be married one day, they give me a sort of... look. They seem surprised and I can tell that they don't think that's a good approach to dating or something. It makes me feel pathetic but isn't that the point for most people in society still? To build a life with one person?

I've suspected I may be on the spectrum but cannot afford the tests so if there is some secret where we all date casually and then, under the radar, try to lure someone into a relationship instead of just being honest then please do let me know!

Has anyone else experienced this? I was the girl that had her first boyfriend in grade 1 and basically never stopped dating until I was 25 when an abusive relationship changed my life for the worst. Now a lot of people in my life know me as the chronically single friend rather than the hopeless-romantic-loyal-banana-bread-baddie that I really am. I feel pathetic and tired. So so so tired.

My husband and my therapist have both recently established that I need hobbies. 35F, have a four month old, SAHM. Have never had any major passions or an important career. I suppose I have a bit of anhedonia these days because there’s not much out there that sounds fun or enjoyable. I read, watch tv, play piano, and exercise (walk/bike/weights/dance/pickleball/volleyball). Apparently I’m the problem in my marriage according to both of them because I spend too much time nagging my super social/extrovert husband about him being too busy all the time to nurture our relationship or help around the house. Taking any and all suggestions

I (36F) have just entered into a relationship with a wonderful, kind, principled man (42M) I met 2 months ago. We met in a pretty magical and serendipitous way and have been gradually getting closer since until we decided to “make it official” this week. We live several hours apart, and last night I arrived at his (shared) house for the first time.

I’m aware the early days of a new relationship can give you rose tinted glasses, but I feel like I can see and acknowledge his imperfections and flaws. Yet objectively, I feel this person has his life together in ways I just do not, and I find it all a little intimidating.

He has cool interesting job, lives in an amazing house in a beautiful place, has tonnes of hobbies (sports etc), LOTS of friendships both close and otherwise, is very capable and good at things generally, has travelled lots and had lots of wild, daring, spontaneous adventures, is surrounded by creative genius types, has creative inspiring decor everywhere, is a multi talented musician, and generally just a smart, great person.

I have no job right now, I have a chronic illness, I live in a tiny studio apartment in a city I don’t love, I don’t really have any hobbies and can’t really afford to (I have “interests” like watching films, live music, nature walks, etc, but not hobbies), I do not have the friendships I’d like to have and am struggling a bit socially and feel lonely, I’m generally fatigued and brain fogged and feel a bit dumb at times, I’ve travelled and had adventures but I feel like they pale in comparison to what he’s done, I’m no creative genius, can’t even really afford to decorate my place nice and certainly haven’t come up with any cool creative ideas for it, I’m a frustrated unfulfilled musician, and yeah… I just don’t really know how to feel about what I’m offering.

He has consistently told me that he likes that I am kind to strangers, that I’m self aware and open, that we get along effortlessly, our tastes align well, that I’m amazing, that i’m very sexy… but I don’t want to be sexy. I want to be inspiring and interesting. I just feel like I’m really falling short, in terms of what I can offer this relationship.

Have you ever felt not good enough for someone you’re dating? How do you get past this feeling?

[removed]

31F. Took about three years off from dating after my last relationship and finally decided I was open to flirting back when someone caught my attention.

It’s been two weeks and I already hate it here. I’m one more “wyd” away from going right back to minding my own business. 😭

ALL THAT TO SAY… I just had a man essentially say, fuck hearting your story, I wanna put a heart on your Flo calendar.

SIR?! We skipped flirting entirely and went straight to reproductive scheduling.

I AM DECEASED. (Also highly amused, but mostly deceased.)

WYD? LOL

Update: I did block him immediately cuz he sent that within 60 mins of his first hello. just FYI ~

Update 2: Not on the dating apps: I met him while waiting for my order at a coffeeshop and gave him my number as I left and he texted me immediately.

I'm 34F and I'm seeing a painful pattern in my own life. I have almost always chosen the wrong partners. Partners who ended up hurting me, devaluing me, and making me feel like I had to earn love. In the moment I thought it was passion and that I just needed to try harder to be loved.

Right now I'm single and for the first time I don't want to jump into a new relationship just to avoid being alone. I really don't want to make this mistake again.

My main question is: How did you break the pattern of choosing wrong partners, and learn to choose a life partner wisely without repeating the same mistakes?

So I'm asking women over 30 who are now in healthy, long-term relationships or who have done the inner work:

1. What red flags did you used to ignore that are now non-negotiable for you?
2. How did you learn to feel the difference between being truly valued and just being used for your kindness?
3. What actually helped you stop being attracted to people who hurt you? Was it therapy, books, something else?

I would be grateful for any honest experience and practical advice. Thank you so much for reading.

I’ve been dating a kind, respectful 34m for a few months, but there are some things getting in the way of deepening our connection, and I don’t know how long I should wait to know if it’s just not going to work.
The main thing seems to be his lack of relationship experience. At this stage I would expect to be spending more than one night a week with each other, but he doesn’t invite me to his place because at the current time his mom lives there. To be clear, he owns his own house and invited his mom to live there to help her out financially, it’s not that he never left home.

So I have to do all the hosting, and when we are not here, we are doing scheduled dates (3 hours or so) instead of normal day-to-day things or full day outings. I communicated my thoughts and expectations around this and how I would like it to change, and he was receptive, yet I can’t shake the feeling that he is keeping me at arms length for a reason. Even if it’s subconsciously.

*** NOT requesting medical advice***

Ok ladies, has anyone else experienced this?? Over the past several months I’ve noticed things are less fresh smelling down there. Sort of bathroom stinky for lack of a better way to describe it. My actual discharge seems a little musty, and the area in general just smells a little stinky to me, even shortly after showering.

My husband says he hasn’t noticed a change. I had a recent screening and no yeast, BV, or other infection.

But I don’t think I’m imagining it!!

I’m 47 so prime time for hormone changes.

Anyone else experience something like this? Any tips?? Thank you 🙏

I'm 36 and have been with my boyfriend for 8 months. He's 42.
He's genuinely one of the kindest, most caring men I've ever met and has so many wonderful qualities. The problem I'm struggling with is the relationship he has with his mum, and I'm increasingly unsure how to navigate it.
He's a mechanic and runs his own business, which was given to him by his brother when his brother retired. His mum used to do the occasional bit of paperwork for the business, but she's now retired too. The is based on a small holding and they all lived in once house. However-
My boyfriend only stopped living with his mum when he was 40.
The thing I'm finding difficult is that he seems to pass everything by her. I mean genuinely everything, like what he's eaten, what he's doing, decisions about his house, what furniture he has, how the cat went to the loo etc. It feels as though she still has a huge amount of influence over his day-to-day life.
I've always been nothing but nice to her. I've never given her any reason to dislike me, and as far as I know she has been perfectly pleasant towards me.
However, recently she came round for supper and, in front of me, started telling my boyfriend about the importance of having a prenup and that "you must have one."
This really upset me. We're not currently engaged or married, but hearing his mum tell him this in front of me felt quite pointed, particularly given that I've never done anything to suggest I would be financially irresponsible or try to take advantage of him.
He's also never had another serious relationship before me, so I think she has been used to being the most important woman in his life and having a very large say in his decisions.
I don't want to compete with his mum, and I don't want to come between them. I actually think it's lovely that they're close. But I'm struggling with what feels like a lack of independence on his part.
For those of you over 30 who have experienced something similar….how do you deal with a partner whose mother has this much influence over his life?
Am I being unreasonable, or is this something I should take seriously before the relationship gets more serious?

My teen just entered high school and he's begging me for Snapchat. I say no, dad says sure why not.

I've had Snapchat, I know it's reputation (at least back in the day) is used for sending nudes and disappearing messages. Ofc my son swears he won't use it for that, but I just think the temptation is too great.

He already has tiktok but he claoms everyone - the girls, specifically - are using Snap.

I monitor his TT use and probably won't be able to with Snap.

My husband says it's time to loosen the grip. Am I being too strict or paranoid?

Will try in keep this short but I’ve been friends with this guy for 10+ years and he’s always been so supportive of me, wonderful to my children and we have a ton in common. I have never thought of him as anything more than a great friend.

However a month ago we were out and ended up dancing and holding hands and just having fun. That next weekend, went out again and ended up making out, almost having sex and he confessed to loving me.

I’m so confused since this came out of nowhere for me. Do I explore this? I haven’t stopped thinking about it since it happened. I just don’t want to ruin the friendship but may have already crossed that line.

Do you have questions that you ask new people that depending on how they answer, tells you everything you need to know about them?

Disclaimer: No I have never stopped talking to someone because of how they answered one question and I'm not advocating for that. But more so looking to understand what are questions folks ask new people to learn more about them/their character.

I’m not going to go into too much detail on why I no longer trust this person anymore. I broke things off because they had some valid reasons why they couldn’t move forward with the relationship and I wanted more commitment. A few months later we tried a second time. I found out they hid things from me and they were deceptive. I didn’t really get the chance to discuss it because we ended things again due to his life circumstances.

I feel like such an idiot for still loving him, I still think about him sexually and I just want him to reach out to me. I feel like I’ll never move on. It’s been four months. I do want to put myself out there in dating again but the idea of sleeping next to another man I’m intimate with feels like it would give me a panic attack. I feel like this relationship left a deep scar but I’m still so attached to him. But I know I can never go back. How do you get over it?

A conversation with a good friend yesterday reminded me of my own story, and now I'm curious about what other women think of it.

My friend has been in a committed relationship for almost 1 year, and everything seems to be going alright. They have arguments sometimes, like any other couple. But... he's never said "I love you" to her. He's said "I like you," "you're sexy," "you're very attractive," "I like your body." Everything except "I love you." He's asking her to live together "to test if they're really a good fit," but still no "I love you." I find it so strange.

But it has happened to me too. This conversation reminded me of my own relationship of 3 years, when I was with a man, we lived together, and I've never heard these words from him. First, I have to add that we are from a culture where expressing emotions verbally isn't a big thing. For instance, the first time my parents told me they loved me was on my 30th birthday. I've never heard them say "I love you" to each other. It may be a factor, you know, a cultural one. I'm from an ex-Soviet country, where people are known to be very low on emotional expression.

However, I did have relationship where a man coming from a loving family with healthy dynamics told me that he loved me after about 5 months of our relationship. We started telling this to each other every evening, so I think there's more to that. Unfortunately, this relationship didn't last long because we were both very young. I left to study elsewhere, and our paths diverged.

But my ex of 3 years, with whom I lived together, told me at the end of our relationship that he liked me, but had never loved me. He said he had only been in love once, when he was at school, when he was 16 and really liked some girl. Mind you, this was coming from a 36-year-old man. I was in therapy, he wasn't. To him, love was never ending butterflies, and because after 3 years of a relationship there were fewer of those butterflies, he told me he'd never loved me.

I was trying to search here, but didn't find many threads similar to this. But what do you think of the "I love you" statement? When do you expect to hear it? At what point would you have an alarm starting to ring in your head if you never received these words? 6 months, a year, or maybe you're a believer that "actions speak louder than words," which is the norm in the culture where I grew up? And still, my take is that men who grew up in an emotionally healthy environment won't hesitate to say these words if they really feel that way.

What would you do if, after a year, you hadn't heard these words even once, like my friend, and then were invited to live together? How would you address it? Do you think men are getting more emotionally constipated?

If you're in a committed relationship or married, I'm still curious. Do you often express your love verbally to each other?

I'm almost 30, and over the last 2 years I've gone through a lot of life transitions: marriage, loss of a loved one, some health challenges, moving across cities and being away from family, transitioning from being employed to entrepreneurship, and so on.

I'm by nature a very adjusting person. I try to be flexible, meet people halfway, and make things work.

But lately, I feel like I've lost a major part of myself. My identity, my mojo, the spunk in my demeanour, the charisma I used to have.

I notice it in the way I meet people, both personally and professionally. I feel like a deflated version of myself. More vulnerable. Less spontaneous. Less sure of who I am.

Of course, I can technically point to everything that's happened and say, "You've been through a lot, of course you feel this way." But I'm not quite able to establish the connection myself.

I've embraced marriage with all my might. But somewhere along the way, I think I've been unknowingly adjusting a LOT. Right since the wedding day.

My spouse's family turned out to be quite traditional, and in an effort to keep the peace, I've repeatedly met them midway. But some of the expectations from me are now reaching a point where I feel like I'm going to burst.

My husband is very supportive, but I think what has shocked me is the traditional ecosystem around him, and the realisation that I am simply not be the person they want me to be (I don't identify with their culture although it is my technical ancestry/geographical origin).

And perhaps the hardest part is that I don't know how much of myself I've actually compromised until now.

I've also moved around in support of his career transitions. It was taken for granted that it's fine because I had a remote job at the time. But now I live in a place that does not have the client market I service for my business and I have to travel to a proper city for work, which means I live split between two cities and trying to show up for many people.

I feel disconnected. Wounded. And honestly, a little lost.

Has anyone else experienced something like this, especially around 28-30 or after marriage/life transitions?

I'd genuinely love to hear similar stories, what helped, and how you made sense of it.

I'm also open to the woo-woo interpretations. Identity shifts, astrology, spiritual transitions, whatever. At this point, I'm curious about all frameworks that might help me understand what is happening.

I'm a Virgo Sun, Scorpio Moon and apparently in my Saturn Return phase (not sure what it means though).

Hey everyone,

I’m (30F) getting married this December and after the wedding, I will be moving to another country to start our new life together. Right now, I’m at a massive crossroads regarding my job and really need some perspective from people who understand the wedding planning chaos.

To give some context: I work a regular desk job handling daily analysis and reporting requests. The work itself isn’t overwhelmingly complex or high-stakes, but being in the office 8 to 5 every day, waking up at 6:30 AM every morning, is completely draining me. I simply don’t have the mental space or energy to juggle a full-time corporate routine, plan a cross-border wedding and mentally prepare for moving abroad all at once.

I desperately want to resign now so I can spend these final months focusing on myself, quality time with my family before I leave and getting everything sorted for the big day without constant exhaustion.

Here’s the dilemma:

• My family and friends are strongly insisting that I keep working until the very end. They think leaving early is unnecessary since my job isn't overly stressful on paper.
• My fiancé is 100% supportive of me quitting. He tells me not to worry about finances at all and wants me to be stress-free. However, he has a much more demanding, high-responsibility role than mine and the last thing I want is to add any extra burden onto him while he handles everything.

I feel caught between trying to be practical and wanting to protect my peace during what should be a special, once-in-a-lifetime transition period.

Has anyone else quit their job a few months prior to their wedding/move abroad? Did you regret it, or was the extra time and mental relief worth it?

This is a silly and very autistic question but there’s just a lot about human behavior that I do not understand. I wonder if anyone understands this one, it’s kind of out left field.

I just broke up with my partner of 6 years.

Before him I had been married for another 6 years. I wasn’t super public about the divorce and new relationship at the time so there was really no time in social media etc that I was clearly “single,” there was just a hiatus and then me hard launching little date pics, so I haven’t been like visibly obviously single (on the internet) for about 13 years.

Anyway, all of a sudden I am. I’m very active on Facebook and Insta this time because I need to rebuild some adult friendships etc, and all of a sudden I keep having guys that I used to have really casual relationships reach out. They’re replying to my stories, telling me about their whole lives, just basic shit like that but I’m so confused??

I would understand if we lived in the same city and frankly for at least one of them I would probably be happy to go back to the comfortable, respectful but FWB relationship we had before but I am like a three day drive away, we are all in our 30s and 40s now, some of them have kids. What do they want? Are they just being friendly???

I am in a bit of a dilemma right now in the world of friendship. I am apart of a friend group of about 4 different couples. It is 4 women and 4 men. 3 of the 4 women are family (sisters & cousins). Which I know can make the dynamic tricky to begin with. I am the the 4th woman and was brought into the group through my partner three years ago. I am currently struggling with feeling like an outsider in this group, specifically with the women.

Firstly I want to say I am aware they are family, that is a life long relationship and bond. I do not expect someone who has only known them for 3 years to be as important to them as their family relations. I do however feel I am valid in being a little tired of constantly feeling like I am on the outside. Only one of these ladies reaches out to me consistently to plan hang outs outside of group functions, even though I know the 3 of them get together more consistently. When I do hang out with them a majority of their talking points are reminiscing on old stories of when they were growing up, or family members, or other things that I'm happy to sit and listen to for a time, but there's not much I can add to their family stories and they don't seem much interested in me sharing my own. I've also noticed that I really only feel "close" to some of these women when they're using me as a venting station about one another. Which I honestly don't love that being the only time I'm shown the closeness I want to feel with these women is when they are shit talking one another and then once the dust settles I feel like I'm right back to the outside of the pack. I'm 31 and honestly entering a phase in my life where I want friendships that are deep, reciprocal, and connective. Not ones where I'm only pulled close as a sounding board and then pushed away once my purpose is served.

Two of the men are life long best friends with my partner so I would never do anything to jeopardize those relationships for him, but I also worry about how I can continue moving through this dynamic without starting to feel bad about myself and why these ladies don't seem interested in forging a deeper bond with me.

I believe I asked this a few years ago and got some good responses, but thought I'd re-ask. My parents are both close to 80 and thankfully both fairly lucid, but I am conscious about the passing of time. I'm wondering what questions I should ask them while I still can? I am fortunate to know a fair amount about their lives before I came along and during my childhood, but I am sure I can always learn more! If you've been in this position, what did you ask? Or what did you wish you'd asked before it was too late?