I don't even really know why I'm writing this. Maybe I just need to get it out of my head. Maybe I need someone who doesn't know me to hear me because I'm so tired of carrying these feelings around like they don't exist.
I'm 31 years and I feel like I'm watching the life I wanted disappear right in front of me.
I always thought I'd have a family of my own someday. I thought I'd get married. I thought I'd have someone who loved me so much that choosing me would be easy. I thought I'd be a mother. I thought there would be a little person who had my eyes or my personality, someone I'd get to watch grow up, someone who would call me Mom. I thought there would be a home that felt like ours, holidays that belonged to us, traditions we created together, and a person who would still reach for my hand when we were old and gray.
I never imagined I'd be 31 and wondering whether any of those things are ever going to happen for me.
And the worst part is that I don't think I got here because I didn't want those things enough. I think I got here because I've spent so much of my life loving people who couldn't give me the future I was trying to build with them.
My first major relationship lasted ten years.
Ten years. An entire decade of my life.
Think about how much a person changes in ten years. Think about all the versions of yourself you become. The things you learn, the things you sacrifice, the things you convince yourself will eventually get better because you've already invested so much time and love into someone.
When you spend that long with someone, you don't just love them. You build an entire version of your future around them. Even if you don't consciously realize it, they become part of the picture in your head. You imagine the milestones, the next stages of life, and the possibility that all the time you've spent together is leading somewhere. We were engaged. We were intertwined in each other's lives. It was always me and him. I was 17 when we started dating. I had just turned 28 when I left.
And then one day, you're no longer that person in that relationship.
You have to start over.
After spending ten years with someone, you would think you'd at least have learned how to recognize what you need. You'd think you'd be better at choosing someone who could give you the kind of love you wanted. You'd think you'd be better equipped to protect your own heart.
But apparently, knowing how much something can hurt doesn't mean you know how to prevent it from happening again.
For roughly the last five years of that relationship, I had almost no interest in sex. I genuinely wondered if I was asexual. I questioned myself and my sexuality and whether something about me was fundamentally different from everyone else.
Looking back, I don't know how much of that was me and how much was the relationship I was in. I just know that I spent years trying to understand myself, and I carried those questions with me.
Eventually, that relationship ended, and I had to figure out who I was without someone who had been part of my life for so long.
I thought maybe the next chapter would be different.
I thought maybe I would get another chance.
And I did meet someone else and we've been together for about three years.
Three years might not sound like much compared to ten, but when you're already in your thirties and you desperately want a family, three years feels different. Time doesn't feel unlimited anymore. You become more aware of birthdays passing. You start noticing how quickly months disappear. You begin asking yourself questions you never thought you'd have to ask.
Is this the person I'm going to marry?
Are we going to have children?
Are we actually building a life together, or am I just waiting for a life that never comes?
I love him. I believe he loves me, too. That's part of what makes this so painful. It would almost be easier if I could just say he was a terrible person who never cared about me. It would be easier if everything were black and white.
But relationships aren't always that simple.
You can love someone and still feel desperately lonely beside them.
You can believe someone loves you and still wonder why they don't seem to want you in the ways you need to be wanted.
You can share a home with someone and still feel like you're waiting for them to actually build a life with you.
And you can spend years hoping things will change while quietly becoming more afraid that they never will.
One of the biggest problems in our relationship has been sex.
When we first got together, we had sex constantly. It was exciting. It felt natural. I felt wanted. I didn't have to wonder whether my partner desired me because I could feel it. I didn't have to beg myself to stop overthinking every little thing because there was reassurance in the way we touched each other.
Then, over time, that changed.
Now, we barely have sex.
Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person who even cares that this part of our relationship is disappearing. Sometimes we do have sex, but he doesn't finish, and I'm left trying to understand what that means. I wonder whether he's attracted to me anymore. I wonder whether my body has changed too much. I wonder whether I'm asking for something unreasonable by wanting to feel desired by the person I'm in love with.
I've heard explanations. I've tried to understand. I've tried to be patient.
But there is a particular kind of loneliness that comes from lying beside the person you love and feeling unwanted.
It's not just about sex. People always reduce it to that, as though someone who wants intimacy is shallow or selfish. But for me, it's about feeling connected. It's about feeling like my partner still looks at me and sees someone he wants. It's about feeling like I'm his girlfriend, not just the person who shares his living space, pays attention to his moods, and exists in the background of his life.
It's about wanting to be someone's person in every sense of the word.
And sometimes, I don't feel like that at all.
There have been nights when I've wanted us to spend time together, only for plans to fall apart because he'd rather play video games with his friends. There have been moments when I've tried to explain how unhappy I am, only to feel like I'm having the same conversation for the hundredth time.
I've had birthdays that hurt more than they should have. I've watched the person I love make time for the things he enjoys while wondering why making me feel special seems so difficult.
I've watched him spend money on things he wants while feeling like I'm asking for too much when I want effort, affection, or reassurance.
And every time something like that happens, it adds another little crack to the picture I had of our future.
It's never just one night of gaming. It's never just one birthday. It's never just one conversation about sex.
It's the accumulation of all of it.
It's realizing that the person you imagined growing old with might not be imagining the same future you are.
It's realizing that you can explain your pain as clearly as possible, and the person you're explaining it to can still choose not to change anything.
It's realizing that loving someone doesn't make them ready to be the partner you need.
And then there is the question of marriage.
I want to be a wife.
I don't mean I need a giant wedding or an expensive ring or a picture-perfect relationship that everyone envies. I don't need a fairytale. I know marriage isn't magic, and I know being someone's wife wouldn't automatically make my life perfect.
I just want to be chosen.
I want someone to look at me and know that I'm the person they want beside them. I want the commitment. I want the security of knowing that we're intentionally building something together. I want to make decisions as a team, plan our future, and know that when life gets difficult, we're both still showing up.
Marriage is important to me. It's something I've wanted, and I don't want to pretend it isn't just because wanting it makes me feel vulnerable.
But I can't force someone to want marriage with me.
I can't make someone ready to have a family.
I can't convince someone to want the future I want.
And I can't keep telling myself that if I just love someone enough, eventually they'll wake up and want all the same things I do.
That is such a heartbreaking thing to learn when you've spent so much of your life believing love is supposed to lead somewhere.
And then there's motherhood.
This is the part I don't know how to talk about without feeling like something inside me is breaking.
I'm 31. I know that isn't old. I know people have children later in life. I know people meet their spouses in their thirties and forties. I know there are different ways to build a family, and I know that life doesn't follow a schedule.
I've told myself all of those things.
I've repeated them until they sound like words I'm supposed to believe.
But knowing something is possible in the abstract doesn't mean you feel hopeful about it in your own life.
I don't want to just have a child someday.
I want to be a mother.
I want to experience the little things that people probably take for granted until they realize they might never get them. I want to decorate a nursery. I want to hold my baby against my chest and wonder how something so small could possibly be so important to me. I want to learn their personality. I want to hear their laugh. I want to be the person they run to when they're hurt, scared, or excited to tell me something. I want to give them the childhood that I never had.
I want to watch them grow up.
I want to make holidays special for them. I want to have traditions that continue for years. I want to take pictures on their first day of school and embarrass them when they're teenagers. I want to be there when they accomplish something, when they fail at something, when they need advice, and when they just need someone to sit beside them without saying a word.
I want to know what it feels like to love someone in that way.
I want to build a family that is ours.
And sometimes, when I think about those things, I feel like I'm grieving someone I've never even met.
A child who doesn't exist.
A future that hasn't happened.
A version of myself who might never get to become the person I've always imagined being.
You've seen Doctor Strange: Multiverse of madness? I feel like Wanda to a lesser extent.
How do you grieve something when nobody else understands why you're grieving it? How do you explain that you're mourning a life you haven't even lived? How do you stop yourself from imagining all the things you might miss when you don't even know whether they're truly out of reach?
I know nobody owes me a marriage or a baby. I know those things aren't guaranteed to anyone. I know that wanting something doesn't mean the universe has to give it to you.
I'm not saying I'm entitled to a husband or a child.
I'm saying I want them so badly that the possibility of never having them genuinely hurts.
And I am so tired of pretending that it doesn't.
I am tired of being told I'm still young when I don't feel young in the ways that matter to me. I am tired of hearing that everything happens for a reason when sometimes things just hurt and there is no satisfying explanation. I'm tired of people telling me that I need to love myself first, as if being lonely is proof that I haven't done enough personal growth.
I can work on myself and still want someone to love me.
I can be independent and still want a husband.
I can have a job, responsibilities, interests, and a life of my own and still cry because I want to be a mother.
Those things are not mutually exclusive.
I don't want a child because I'm bored. I don't want a husband because I'm incapable of being alone. I don't want a family because I think it will magically fix everything wrong with me.
I want those things because I want to share my life with people I love.
I want to nurture someone. I want to build something that lasts. I want to have a home where love feels like something we practice every day, not something I have to keep asking someone to demonstrate.
I want to wake up on a Saturday morning and have nowhere particularly important to be. I want to make breakfast for my family. I want a husband who kisses me while I'm standing in the kitchen, who asks about my day and actually listens to the answer. I want a child who wanders into our room because they had a bad dream. I want the noise, the mess, the ridiculous little arguments about what to eat for dinner, the memories, the photographs, the ordinary days that eventually become the things you miss most.
I want an ordinary life.
And somehow, that feels like the biggest thing in the world to ask for.
The thing that scares me most is that I have already spent so much of my life in relationships.
Ten years in one.
Three years in another.
Thirteen years of my life, give or take, spent trying to make romantic relationships work.
Thirteen years of loving people, compromising, hoping, questioning, trying to understand, and trying to figure out what it takes to make a relationship last.
And I still don't have the things I thought those relationships were supposed to lead to.
I'm not married.
I'm not a mother.
I don't have the family I always imagined I'd have by this point in my life.
And I don't know how much longer I can keep investing years of myself into relationships that leave me wondering whether I'm ever going to get there.
I feel embarrassed sometimes when I think about it.
I wonder what people assume about me. I wonder whether they think I'm difficult to love, whether there's something about me that makes people stop trying, whether I'm somehow the common denominator in every failed relationship.
Maybe I've made mistakes. Of course I have. I'm not pretending I've been a perfect partner. I've had my own shortcomings, my own insecurities, my own moments when I could have handled things better.
But I have loved people.
I've tried.
I've stayed.
I've hoped.
And I don't know how to make peace with the possibility that none of that will ever add up to the life I want.
I think one of the loneliest things about being a woman in your thirties is that the future can start to feel less like an open road and more like a series of doors closing.
When you're younger, you imagine you have endless time. You tell yourself there's no rush. You think you'll figure it out eventually. You believe there will always be another opportunity, another relationship, another chance to start over.
And then suddenly you're 31, and you realize that starting over isn't just about getting over someone.
It's about starting over with your hopes.
It's about meeting someone new and wondering how many years it will take to know whether they're serious about you.
It's about wondering whether you'll waste another three years, or five, or ten.
It's about wondering whether you'll ever be able to trust that someone wants the same things you do.
It's about trying to imagine dating again, explaining what you want, opening yourself up to someone new, and risking the possibility of being disappointed all over again.
I don't want to spend the rest of my life auditioning for the role of someone's wife.
I don't want to keep proving that I'm worth choosing.
I don't want to keep having conversations about things that should matter to both people in a relationship.
I don't want to be the person who begs for quality time, who feels guilty for wanting intimacy, who has to explain why birthdays matter, who wonders whether her partner is excited about the prospect of a future with her.
I want someone who wants to build a life with me because that is what they genuinely want.
And I want to feel safe enough in that relationship that I don't have to constantly wonder whether I'm wasting my time.
Sometimes I look at other people and feel an awful kind of envy.
I see people announcing engagements. People complaining about their husbands leaving dishes in the sink. People posting pictures of their newborns. People talking about how exhausted they are because their kids won't sleep.
And I know their lives aren't perfect. I know marriage can be difficult, parenthood can be overwhelming, and social media only shows a fraction of what people experience.
But I would give so much to have some of those ordinary problems.
I would give so much to have a husband who annoyed me by leaving his socks on the floor.
I would give so much to be exhausted because a baby had kept me awake all night.
I would give so much to complain about packing school lunches or trying to get a toddler to put on their shoes.
I want to have something to come home to that feels like mine in a way that goes beyond the walls of a house.
And when I see other people living the things I want, I feel this horrible combination of happiness for them and sadness for myself.
I don't want to resent anyone for having what I want.
I don't want to become bitter.
I don't want to be the person who can't be happy for her friends because their lives are moving forward while hers feels stuck.
But sometimes it hurts to watch everyone else reach milestones you've been dreaming about for years.
Ah idk. Is it time for me to check out? It may be.