Im 34 and honestly have nothing. I spent 8 years with someone that lead to nothing and after things ended I went on a spiral and just spent more then I should have tbh.
I had to file proposal just to get my head out of the water. Moved in with my family to try and save money but its been months and I have nothing. My credit is a mess so I cant even move out. I am scared to tell anyone about this situation and I found out to might not be able to have kids.
I just see everyone around me getting married, having children, buying homes and i keep thinking that this will never happen for me.
The only thing that I have which makes me happy is a new relationship with honestly a wonderful person. But I fear telling them about my situation when we havent been together that long.
I just dont know what to do or how to fix things. Do things get better? Has anyone had a similar situation
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I mean this kindly, but people go through breakups – even major ones – all the time. Unless you never pick yourself back up again, I tend to classify breakups as setbacks rather than failures – it would have been far worse if you’d actually married this person and then had to get divorced.
I’m very sorry things are so difficult now. It’s like they talk about in that Everything Everywhere All At Once movie, though – when you’re at rock bottom, there’s really no place left to go but back up. But, definitely, please take some time to heal – the dissolution of an eight-year relationship is a major shock to the system, and you should have adequate space to mourn that too.
In my early 30s I left a 7 year relationship with an immature at best and abusive at worst man, and then had to go through declaring bankruptcy and moving in with my parents to get my finances in order.
5 years later I am very happy, married to a wonderful amazing man and living in a different country.
I know it feels like things are falling apart for you right now, but I promise you will find your way through it. Rock bottom is a trampoline, and you will bounce back up to higher heights than you can imagine. Take it one day at a time, and take care of your self along the way. Best wishes to you đź©·
It sucks but you just have to keep moving forward.
Keep paying off your debt and saving. Figure out a timeline for moving out of your parent’s house. Even if you still have a little debt, moving out could help you mentally.
Find hobbies that give you a sense of community and fun. Become a regular at a local yoga studio. Journal, or if you’re not into journaling buy some art supplies and start doodling to ease your mind.
Sunk cost fallacy when it comes to your relationship. What would have been a failure is spending the remainder of your life with a person who isn’t right for you. Things ended because it was clear there wasn’t a good fit for whatever reason.
Your credit can and will get better over time. If you’re in such severe debt that you can’t see a path of repayment ever working you could consider bankruptcy if you’re in the US.
You’ll find a job again and you’ll have money again. Don’t let this setback destroy you mentally. You’ll get back up and figure things out.
Maybe now is a good time to set some goals for yourself and don’t beat yourself up if things outside of your control keep you from completing them. Make sure they’re generally achievable and get you back on the right path!
Everyone’s broke. Most people have debt. You haven’t failed, you’re normal.
One thing you say that makes my antenna raise… the only thing that makes you happy is your relationship? It’s great to have a relationship you enjoy, but I want you to have a positive view of yourself from your own personal lens, not just because you’re in a relationship. That can be dangerous.
When you’re single sometimes you look up the staircase of life to the happy couples in life, but if you look back there are unhappy couples like your last relationship. You’re actually closer to a happy relationship by no longer being in a relationship that was not leading to marriage (assuming that is goal) than you were being with your ex. That thought really helped when an ex left me on Christmas eve after living with each other for years. I thought it was end game BUT it wasn’t. Now I am with a great man someone I didn’t think I could land but turns out I am a catch too. A cornerstone of relationships is honesty though so maybe don’t dump it all out BUT you should let them know what’s happening.
In regards to financial goals make a budget, if in debt figure out how to pay it off (higher interest first vs smaller amounts are 2 options), and see how to make enough money. Figure out if there is a better path to take job wise any certification you can get, going back to school, working overtime or a side hustle. I personally found making a budget and following it the first step rather than just focusing on debt. I just saw what I was spending than made a budget based on it. Then I figured out what the issue was.
Also I think positive self talk is critical. Im going to be cheesy but it helps me. You are the writer of your life. Currently your main character is in a difficult character arc BUT your story isn’t over! You can write the next chapter differently. You can make your character do ANYTHING and improve your life. Think of the struggle as character development and how worth while it will be when you get more wins.
I feel like I slowly and painfully crawled out of a hole I dug myself, occasionally stumbling backwards, but didn’t stop climbing. Now I have a job I love, a husband, own a home, and have a cat.
THE STORY IS NOT OVER. YOU CAN’T FAIL WHEN LIFE IS ONGOING.
Good luck internet stranger! Make a plan and follow it!
At 28 I walked in to the welfare office pushing a Burberry stroller. I got out of my brand new car to go in. The car literally had less than a thousand miles on it.
My husband had just bailed after beating me up for a decade. Everything was shattered. He tanked my business and got kicked out of the military, we lost the house we were in and he got a teenager pregnant. All in the span of about 8 weeks. It was… Ugly.
I’m now 43, remarried and a homeowner. My daughter is 15, and she’s brilliant and well adjusted. Life’s not perfect but… It went on. It goes on.
You may not have biological kids. You may adopt or foster or be part of a family dynamic where you’re a mentor for kids who need someone who has the bandwidth to love them without being responsible for them. Life is what we make it. You can do this. But only if you keep on pushing. If you give up and lay down, you will get nowhere.
So sit down. Rest. Then get back up and keep moving forward.
Any man worth your energy will want to help you move forward, not belittle you for your past.
I spent six years with a man who did nothing but leech off me. I blew through all my savings, had multiple utilities and credit cards go to collections, my credit score was down to 519, I was incredibly depressed and developed anxiety, and I gained 80 pounds.
I left him when I was 36. I am 38 now, almost 39… so almost three years… and here is what’s changed:
I still don’t have much saved, only a couple thousand, but I am in no debt, and I have started putting money into an RRSP.
I paid off all collections except for one, which is falling off my credit report in less than one year.
My credit score is now 650, and it goes up by 7 points minimum each month. I started with a secured credit card before getting an actual one, and I keep my utilization low (30%). I pay it off in full every month.
I did intense therapy – group, individual, and finally, EMDR therapy (which was easily the most effective). The therapy was the best thing I have ever done for myself. I no longer take anxiety medication, and I am off the antidepressants I was on for 20 years.
Of the 80 pounds I gained, I only have 25 left to lose.
I have been in the most loving and healthy relationship of my life. This man is incredible to me, and I found him because the inner work I did in therapy allowed me to learn to forgive myself, accept my mistakes, love myself, set boundaries, and raise the bar for who I want to spend my time with.
None of this was easy, and it all took time. I had setbacks, and sometimes I felt like I didn’t want to be here anymore. But hard work pays off, and you just need to be consistent with all of it.
People who have gone through it, learned from it, and come out the other side are often the most interesting and compassionate individuals. Use all of these things you have gone through to your advantage, and do not be ashamed of anything. It is your story, and you should own it.
Not quite 30 but at 28 my husband killed himself. I found out after his death he had been cheating and using my SSN to take out loans I had no idea about. He had already been extremely financially abusive and ran up my credit cards. I had to declare bankruptcy. I remember looking at all the happy couples and feeling like a failure of a human. 2 years and some change later my life is completely different than I could have imagined it’d be 2 years ago, in the best way. Things can get way better than you think they will, in a very short amount of time.
I’ll share a few things that I have learned and a relative who has experienced similar.
First, you aren’t a failure. You’ve made mistakes and have the wisdom to see and admit to yourself that you have.
Yes, you should be up front and honest with this person about your situation sooner rather than later. If they are the kind person they will respect your honesty and feel respected that you let them know instead of hiding it. If they are the right person, they’ll encourage you to keep moving forward to make better choices and working on your emotional healing. It will be a lot worse if you hide it and let them know later on.
You should not compare yourself to others’ lives. I’ve done this in the past when gasp I wasn’t married by 30. As a teen I believed the lie that everyone who was “normal” and “desirable” was married in their early twenties and thought there must be something wrong with me when I reached mid 20s without a relationship. I was wrong. And I also wasn’t ready yet now that I look back. I had a lot of emotional issues to work through and things to learn that would have been a burden to my husband I got married to at 31. Marriage is not THE GOAL. Marriage is a blessing when you meet a great person you love and want to stay with for life. It’s not worth it to marry someone that’s not compatible with you just to have a relationship.
As far as starting over, it’s one step at a time. Set realistic goals and work on them in stages. Be kind to yourself like you would to someone who has fallen and you’re trying to help them get back up. Failure is choosing to stay down when you have the power to get back up. You can do this.đź©·
Failed at what?!
I’ve been there in my late 20s, being depressed and thinking I had nothing because it took me too long to finish university and get my bachelor’s degree and when I did, I didn’t want to work in that field (biology).
But why do you need to complete a checklist with “house”, “car”, “children”, etc in it? The onyl thing you really need to worry about is a retirement plan, as in, some money to support yourself and have health insurance when you’re too old to work. You still can clean up your credit and do this.
Don’t worry about everyone else, getting married, having kids, etc. I’ve seen way too many people staying married because they’re afraid of being on their own, having kids and not having/putting in the time to raise them decently, etc. So don’t compare yourself to other people. Figure out what you want and makes you happy and go after it.
I think too many people marry and buy houses and have kids simply because they can’t think of any other way to live. Even having kids is like that, in my opinion. Others have children because they also want someone to look after them in old age, but children are not supposed to be social security (it’s unfair to them, besides, lots of things can happen – they may cut ties with you for whatever reason, they may simply not care or they may even die before you). So, panicking about old age just because you have no children, as much as it’s ingrained in us by society, is a bit pointless.
Focus on cleaning your credit (look for people or companies that can help you do it) and making friends, no matter your age. Go to a dance class or whatever and meet people with similar interests than you and cultivate friendships.
You didn’t fail. Life is just an experience, and even the rich will turn to dust and be eaten by worms like all of us. Their house will be left behind, along with everything else. You’re just going through a rough patch. It will get better, you’ll see.
10 days loving the right person is worth more than a lifetime with the wrong person. And“failure” tends to be subjective to most people. It all depends on what you find most important in life. If you’re willing to put in the effort, money comes and goes. My partner was $40k in debt when I met him. He worked 80 hours a week for a couple of years. It wasn’t easy, but now he’s virtually debt free and has a savings. There’s a lot of good advice in the comments. Try not to be too hard on yourself. It WILL get better.
Also if your new partner is actually the right person for you, they may not care about your current financial situation. For me, I saw my partner working his ass off to change his life. That was actually one of his traits I initially fell for the most. He’s determined and hard working. If we were ever in a tough financial situation I know we could figure it out together.
I know it’s hard not to feel down about your situation, but the world is different and hard financially for a lot of people right now. One of the most valuable lessons I took from therapy is to value the things I do have and forget about the things I don’t, unless I’m setting active goals to get to those things. That tool has saved me a lot of grief in life.
I hope in a year from now you can turn around and say, “I can’t believe I was in that situation”. I think you will, be kind to yourself. 💕
You’re navigating situations and seeking new experiences. That’s great. At the end of the day it’s not about what you think you need to have achieved by now, it’s what you can do with your future.
i don’t know if this is helpful but i do think all the comments on here are so wonderful and encouraging and i want to add one more note here – it will sound woo and kind of insufferable, but there are two themes to my life lately that im holding onto really tightly:
60+ yr old woman here.
I was your age when I had to get a divorce.
I had 32 dollars in the bank, no job, no place to live, no child care for my toddler, no family within 2k miles, and had to get a restraining order against my ex because he threatened to kill me.
I will advise that you should work on yourself before you even think about dating. You need to learn the lesson from your last relationship so you don’t repeat it. Jumping into another relationship before you have cleaned up your life is usually not a great idea. If this one is a keeper, they will wait for you to figure out your life.
I did over a year of counseling. I went to my church (Catholic) and told them I was getting a divorce and wanted a counselor. They got me a PhD Psychologist (not a minister or preacher) for free for a full year. Never told me to go back to my ex. Never judged me for getting a divorce. Helped me when I started thinking that maybe he had changed (news flash, he hadn’t). Without that full year to figure out what went wrong with my relationship and my role in it, I would never have bee able to get the wonderful relationship of my dreams.
You can do this.
My advice is that everyone is going through their own shit. Don’t fear the person you’re seeing. If you want to be understood- let yourself. If you don’t let the truth out you’ll only find yourself feeling more alone. You have nothing to be embarrassed of. You’re just in a transitory state at the moment. You’ll catch your breath.
Just because a relationship failed doesn’t mean you did.