I am currently 17 years old, and like everyone of that age, I am afraid of the future. That is why I would like to know from you, a man over 40, what do you regret the most in your life? What things do you celebrate? Would you make the same mistakes? Do you feel that your life was not worth living?
Men over 40, what are your biggest regrets? What were your biggest accomplishments?
r/AskMen
Comments
I’m 39. I regret nothing. I trudged through high school as best I could, I didn’t go to college which for me was a good decision (no debt!), and I’ve worked in sales jobs for different companies and make an above average income and have a job I actually enjoy most days.
I spent my 20s living life to the fullest but not being an idiot – I went to parties, owned a motorcycle, golfed a ton and had a billion hobbies including indie game development that all sort of went to the wayside when I had my kids.
Got married in my mid 20s sold the bike and settled down on the bar scene, and was always faithful. I bet lots of guys regret being unfaithful.
I spent my early 30s traveling, learning to program better and making indie games since it was a hobby I’d always wanted pursue but I could walk away from for family needs any time.
At 39 I just released an indie game that had been successful enough where I can quit my sales jobs and do indie game dev full time. I’ve achieved a dream.
I’m married to a great woman who has always supported my nerdy hobbies, I have two kids, and I’ve just achieved a lifelong dream.
Regrets? Fuck man I’m the luckiest guy in the world and you can be too. Just be true to yourself.
Not enough pussy, and hard work really does pay off.
Biggest accomplishment- building an 1100-acre farming operation and a trucking company making 7 figures yearly.
Biggest regret- getting married, after I had bult a large net worth the tradwife started cheating and the divorce forced EVERYTHING to be sold at auction to give her half despite her never earning an income.
Not saving or putting into a pension. Didn’t get my shit together until a few years ago. Even if you only put 5% away, just do it and forget you have it and don’t spend it.
I regret marrying the wrong woman. I have achieved everything else I wanted other than that.
Turning down a 3-some in my early 20s
Biggest regret! Not taking my cholesterol seriously until I turned 40.
I didn’t take that more demanding hard job I was offered… I should have
Getting out of bed in the morning, counts for both
Well, this could be depressing to come back and read later.
Regrets: various silly stupid things, though mainly being really bad at reading the state of any relationship I ended up in and screwing one of them up. The other, the end of it was welcome.
Accomplishments: surviving years years of bullying and various forms of assault and not becoming another statistic.
What do i celebrate? Nothing, I’ve been described by many as suffering from Anhedonia.
Yet I count myself as lucky, I bought a house in my 20s, it’s not perfect and still needs work. I earn enough to be comfortable, but I despise my job.
Would I trade in how easy my life is in many respects to get a do over, sure.
A man in their 40s or 50s is not done.
As far as accomplishments go, I am incredibly proud to be a family man. Two kids, a wife and a lovely home. Means more to me than the concept of “career”. Nowadays careers don’t exist anymore anyway. You just do a bunch of things and sometimes they follow a pattern or a sector. There’s no loyalty so whenever you enter an organisation, learn and earn, but don’t expect it to last.
I’m also proud of some stuff I’ve created. Not a regret per se, but building your own assets/products is always better than “having a job”. Also, don’t debate/think/discuss, just do things. Most people get stuck due to analysis paralysis. The best way to do things is by doing things.
I suppose I could’ve ended a few relationships quicker. But I didn’t know better at the time. And I wouldn’t have the life I have, had I done that.
I suppose I could’ve taken better care of my body (no smoking, less alcohol, less fast food). But again, when you are young, you think you are immortal. And it seems dumb to say no to stuff that makes you feel all tingly in the moment.
Short story long, you don’t have a second life hidden away in a box somewhere. You are gonna fuck up plenty, mistakes are also part of life, do it for the plot. You won’t know if something is a mistake when you’re making a move/choice. The only way to live life is to live it.
College sucked. Life got a lot easier after graduating and becoming more independent.
Biggest regret is not being aligned with my wife on life goals. I thought we were mostly in agreement but didn’t spell things out before getting married. If I had known that having a career was only a phase for her and she wanted to be a stay at home mom then things would have gone very differently.
I’m 43. I regret partying too much in my 20s and 30s, doing too many drugs, and not working towards my dream job and or saving for retirement. I’m now putting away 15% of my paycheck towards retirement just so I can live at least semi above poverty when I’m older. I did briefly work in the field I dreamt of but I was an idiot and left because of a woman.
Wish I had more than 3 kids, staring down at 50, its reasonably too late.
I thought I’d have regrets but my biggest downfalls led me to my undiscovered strengths.
40 years + here.
Biggest accomplishment I can help my parents now, now that they lost their house.
I have gotten a place with them and help them get through life.
Biggest regret… I let my babysister get pushed over the edge by an abusif boyfriend and she took her own life “Apparently”.
I should of done more.
Regret partaking in copious amounts of drugs, alcohol and women. While I had the time of my life, the mo at and effort would have been better invested elsewhere. Looking back, these three things in moderation rather than excess would have put me in a better position today.
I’m 46m my only regret was not going away for 12 months travelling when I was younger.
Turning my life around for the better, going back to college retake subjects and learn a trade. Having two healthy kids
I regret getting into relationships. The women I have been with prefer me to be a safety net or husband/father rather than a lover.
My best and most focused times were when I was single. That’s when I was at my healthiest, fittest, and most inspired state.
I’m a father of 2 now. I love my kids and i do love and care for my wife but I am unhappy in my marriage. I push on for my kids.
Biggest regret – always money spent and money not saved. Biggest accomplishment has been my career. Shocker really given I was an underachiever in HS.
My biggest regret is not having enough courage, persistence, and grit to pursue the things I had most wanted to do. Instead, I thought I had to follow societal norms when it came to school and career, and I’ve found myself stuck doing work that I don’t care for and having to do it because I need income to get by.
Accomplishment is that in spite of the above, and because of the above, I found myself maturing exponentially in my 30s. I’m not quite where I want to be, but I’ve realized that success comes in different forms and now I have the mentality to pursue what I want, yet at the same time I’ve come to terms with having to play the “jobs” game to give me a stable platform to provide for myself and others. The maturation process also taught me that I need to be patient and persistent. My bad days are no longer as bad as they used to be, because I’ve learned that everything I do has a purpose. I’ve also learned that the people around me matter much more than I used to think. I also value my efforts and time much more and have l learned to say No to many things.
At 47 I regret not being more responsible in my 20’s and earning at least an AA for job opportunities… However at 25 I landed a Grocery job that turned into me earning a Journeyman Meat Cutter status that pays well… On top of that, because of said job, my retirement is set to hit $900k next month after distributions with super cheap insurance. Also buying a home and having 2 beautiful little girls in the last 10 years is pretty up there. Having a solid wife of 19 years really helps too. Overall, even though we struggle a bit, life is good.
Zero regrets.
Life hasn’t always been easy, but everything I’ve gone through both good and bad has led me to where I am today at age 41.
That said, I’ve lived a very lucky life all things considered and haven’t had any health or legal issues. My answer would likely change if I was in a worse place in life than I am.
Don’t keep searching for adulthood. It’s a shitty myth. Just live your life. Find someone special, if that’s your thing. Have kids, if that’s your thing. Work yourself to the bone, if that’s your thing. Smoke weed and play GTA, if that’s your thing.
Just make sure you’re doing “your things” and if you have a partner, support each other’s things.
Therapy. Everyone should get therapy and the sooner the better. A lot of the other regrets people have listed here very likely could have been solved by being more in touch with their own triggers and desires
I stuck my dick in crazy a couple of times in my 20’s, sometimes raw. It took a pregnancy scare with an older single mom intent on making me pay for her unresolved baby daddy issues to knock some sense into me. Fellas, control your impulses.
My biggest regrets are always over things I didn’t do, chances I didn’t take, opportunities I let pass by. Nothing major, just lots of little stuff. But it gnaws at you sometimes. When life presents you with an interesting opportunity, you should grab it. Interesting opportunities don’t really come along that often.
Accomplishments are raising a few great kids. Also some professional things I could brag about.
I don’t really have any regrets. I made mistakes and wish I didn’t do things/wish I did something different, but probably at the time, I thought what I did at the time was right. Biggest accomplishment was running a marathon when I was in my early 30s; I’m actually not much of a runner and have to put a lot of effort into exercise, but I committed to it, trainied for nearly 3 years for it. Over 10 years on, looking back at how much I trained is frightening, but I’m glad I did it.
M60 here, Biggest Regret? Not Getting Divorced Earlier. Greatest Accomplishment? My 3 Beautiful Children!
Biggest accomplishment is retiring before turning 40, i’ll be 42 this year. My biggest regret is not learning about finance and investing earlier on, I probably could have retired even earlier or with more money. I guess my non-finance regret is probably that i’m bad with going out and meeting new people, I just don’t like it. So i’m single right now. Although I’m childfree so I don’t regret not having a family.
Not investing early enough
Invest as soon as you turn 18 or before. Even if it’s just 10 bucks per week. Just do it consistently. Find some safe etfs, or other index funds. Just never stop
38 this year so I feel that’s close enough.
Biggest regret? Not prioritizing myself instead of my parents/brother. I was too apathetic and nihilistic in regards to my future and worked to make sure they were taken care of and it hobbled me. This isn’t to blame them because it was my choice but it’s something I do regret.
Biggest accomplishment? Finally wizened up too how the world works. Left a job to pursue a realistic career and more money. It’s hard and risky but the alternative was to become stagnant.
Best advice I can give you?
To me, it’s not worth thinking about regrets. I can’t change what’s happened, and even if I could, I wouldn’t be where I am now, and I wouldn’t change that for anything. It’s best to learn from experience and go forward.
My biggest accomplishment is helping raise two awesome kids.
Regretting not taking better care of my health; sleeping more and drinking less, and so on. Don’t get me wrong, it was a lot of fun, but I wish I had build better habits, so that, for instance, working out every day now wasn’t such a chore.
Other than that, no regrets, of course besides the fact that I brought the “wrong” apartment back in the 2000s. I had two options, and I went with the one that brought me about $50K in profit when sold it, instead of the other one that would’ve brought me $300K in profit. I couldn’t have known, but you know, it kinda sucked.
Save your money. Fuck everything that moves (condom!). Keep working on yourself. Always strive to be a better version of yourself.
I was very anxiously insecure. Really affected my dating life. I didn’t know or deal with it well till I was in my 40s. I wish I had been able to deal with it back in my 20s. It is what it is
Letting work/life stress me out, and not learning healthy stress coping mechanisms. My default is to just bottle up stress and not express it at all. I have zero outlets. None.
Long term this gave me a neurological disorder that is not curable. It won’t kill me either, but at this point I shake uncontrollably in social situations, even if I’m having fun.
In college, I took a major for a profession that required passing tests set by the industry’s guild. If the state sets a test, I can usually pass it by using test-taking tricks to figure out what they want to hear. But a private test that’s actually designed to weed out the people who don’t know their shit? That’ll break me every time. It took me several years to figure that out and move into an adjacent profession with no tests.
Wasting time worrying about what others think. Spending time with anyone you don’t intend to marry (for the right reasons). Wasting money on partying, trust me you’ll have your whole life.
I regret not going after the girl 😪. Young and dumb. I still think of her 35 yrs later, and I know that’s probably not healthy either. Hi Claire.
Do. Not. Smoke.
Set healthy routines early. When you’re young, you can create habits way easier. Just make sure”workout MWF” or whatever the norm now because forcing yourself to do it later is way harder.
Those are the big two that I scoffed at early and regret now. Everything else, I wouldn’t change. The scars and victories all blend together to make you who you are later.
Turning 37 this year and nervous I’ve messed my life up. Had my first child last year and my partner decided to leave me. Now I have to pay $1k CS and figure out how to raise our child with a high conflict co-parent.
I have about $400K in investment/retirement funds. No debt. No mortgage/property. Make $120k/year
Need to lock in and make the right moves going forward.
Paying close attention to the advice in this thread.
Had a couple of daughters before 25, finished 7/8ths of a university degree. In my final semester, I got divorced and lost my funding. Didn’t buy Bitcoin when it was a dollar. Did lots of drugs. Lost literally all of my friends, and a big chunk of my family wants nothing to do with me.
At 40, my health is trash—but I worked hard and saved a lot of money. I’m enjoying my freedom and don’t really regret anything. My close family is still around, and now there are a lot of kids running around. Life’s been a pretty good ride so far.
I’ve been in “go mode” since I was 10. If you can think of it, me or one of my brothers has probably done it. No regrets—though I do wish I hadn’t smoked or drank alcohol, had eaten healthier, gotten more exercise, and wasn’t so obsessed with chasing women. You get money, and all of that comes real easy.
Also the money is good, but construction work and things of that nature will cripple you after 5 to 10 years, I don’t recommend working that hard if you don’t have to.
Have a blessed day. A lot of us would kill to go back to 17!
Not spending enough time building me. I sacrificed too much helping others
Not taking more chances. This doesn’t mean “be reckless”. But, similarly, allow yourself the possibility of failure.
Ask her (or him if that’s your thing) out. In 20 years no one will remember or care that they shot you down. But there’s a chance they will say yes and then who knows.
Be smart with money. Whether you have a lot or a little, use it prudently.