Lost In Your 30s: Inside A Decade In Crisis
'Baby is ready for visitors,' my friend Lily texts. My weekend is shaping up in a way that may be all too familiar for some people in their thirties: I’m meeting a newborn on the same day my other mates are planning to go to an all-night rave. I hoist my tote bag of pastries – a gift for the new mum – and ponder how surreal it all is. This is not how I imagined growing up.
You know that period between Christmas and New Year, when the world is holding its breath and waiting for life to restart? That’s how I feel at 35. Call it ‘Millennial betwixtmas’, where people in their late twenties and thirties are trapped between the carefree younger years and looming adulthood. It’s a disorienting state of affairs summed up in a viral TikTok by British comedian Ali Woods, which describes the confusion of having two distinct friendship groups in your thirties: one that monologues about house deposits and baby scans and another contemplating dramatic life decisions (getting into a throuple, doing ayahuasca, moving to Argentina – you get the gist). ‘I have never related so much to something,’ one viewer commented. ‘What a ride [your] thirties are.’
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‘At 30, a lot of us thought we would have a checklist of life accomplishments,’ Woods, who is currently prepping for his Edinburgh Fringe show At The Moment, tells me over email. ‘For most people who follow me, that just isn’t the case. So I guess a lot of us feel trapped between two options – to settle down, despite that sounding boring, or to continue living spontaneously, despite that sounding scary.’
If the transition from the yuletide season to a new year feels flush with melancholy, Millennial betwixtmas has the same whiff of ennui about it. I feel as if I’m in a holding pattern, stuck between my younger self and an as-yet-unseen future. ‘It’s a confusing headspin, watching a toddler on the swings while nursing a hazy hangover,’ a single friend, also in her thirties, tells me. ‘Some of your friends become so distant to you in this new phase, but then partying for your entire life also feels hollow.’
It’s not just millennials who feel this way. ‘I was born in 1998, and I definitely feel some of this,’ muses Leanne Yau (@polyphiliablog), a LGBTQ+ and relationship educator who counts herself as a Zillennial, ie born between my generation and Gen Z. ‘Among the few straight friends I have, I definitely feel a disconnect – they’ve progressed further on the relationship escalator, with cohabitation, marriage and kids. We’re just having less and less in common, as our lives and life- styles are really different now.’
Life coach Gemma Perlin provides counselling to many women in their late twenties and thirties who describe feeling inexplicably stuck on life’s conveyer belt, watching their peers disappear into the distance. She points out that some sense of dislocation is normal, as this may be the first time that our lives truly begin to diverge from those of our friends. ‘Everyone goes to university, if they want to; everyone starts working and renting – but now it feels like people are actually having totally different experiences. Even if you both live in London, your friends with kids may be having a totally different experience of the city to you.’
‘I feel being in the middle is probably harder in some ways, because you’re not committed to one option or the other,’ Perlin adds. ‘As humans, we’re always looking for sameness – that’s how we feel safe. It can be really discombobulating if you are in the middle of something. You don’t know which tribe you’re part of.’
For women, this disconnect can feel even more jarring and isolating. While we are living longer – life expectancy in the UK hovers at around 81, compared with 77 in the US – women are cursed to live under the shadow of their biological clock. The decision to have a child, one that men can easily put off until their forties (despite experts warning of a ‘crisis’ in male fertility), becomes fraught with tension for women in their late twenties and thirties. Social media, too, is a comparison mine- field – you’re just as likely to get FOMO from a mate’s jaunt across South America as you are watching another friend lovingly document their toddler’s first steps.
‘When the period between being young and becoming more of an adult is extended, all the options that we have now – much more than our mothers and grandmothers in previous generations – opens up this space in which people take a lot of different paths,’ explains existential therapist and author Eloise Skinner. ‘The diversity of paths can actually present an anxiety in itself, because we think: “Are we making the right choice?”
‘Now that we don’t have strong social structures telling us exactly what we should do, we have a lot more freedom. But with freedom, there’s obviously also a huge amount of responsibility to choose the path that matters to you.’
That’s not to say, of course, that society should turn the clock back on women’s rights. (I, for one, believe my ennui would only worsen if I became a tradwife.) But my pensiveness is tinged with guilt – obviously, my options would look very different if I wasn’t living a relatively privileged 21st-century existence in a developed country. In fact, I wouldn’t have very many options at all – so why can’t I decide what I want out of life?
Perlin reassures me that it’s perfectly fine to rest in my not-knowingness. ‘Society wants to know whether we want to have kids and settle down, or if we’re not interested in that. It doesn’t really like the grey area,’ she says. ‘Give yourself permission to say, “I actually don’t know what I want at the moment.”’
Though Yau feels a pressure to settle down from her conservative parents, she has been able to navigate the siren call of the white-picket fence thanks to being polyamorous. ‘Non-monogamy is all about flexibility and questioning things, and making sure that you’re doing something because you want to,’ she explains, ‘not because you feel you should.’
These new modes of relationships might even point the way forward out of that glum betwixtmas feeling, argues anthropologist Roanne van Voorst, whose book Six in a Bed documents the changing trends in intimacy. With close to a quarter of Brits open to non-monogamy, according to a YouGov survey, you might still be able to sow your wild oats while married (with the consent of your partner, obviously). These days, you can even enjoy the security of cohabitation while being single by co-buying property with friends – something 44% of 18 to 24-year-olds would consider, according to a survey by Fairview New Homes. ‘There are also women who have decided to raise children together without being in a romantic relationship,’ van Voorst adds. ‘We have this freedom to see which relationship pattern fits us and how we want to live.’
‘We’re trained to believe either you [either] have a wild life or you have a very settled life,’ she tells me. ‘I know plenty of people who have families and relation- ships, and they love going to techno parties. They have poetry slams in their living rooms. I always find the mantra, “yes, you can have it all,” very liberating, because it makes me realise that I can actually design my own life.’
Still can’t shake the gloom? While it’s easy to question your life choices when doomscrolling Instagram, Skinner explains it’s only natural to feel sorrowful – even grief-stricken – by all the things you might never get to do. ‘We have to let go of some possibilities in order to choose the path that we do want,’ she acknowledges. The key, she adds, is blocking out the noise to determine exactly what that is. ‘A lot of it is figuring out what you care about,’ she says. ‘If I were in isolation, and I wasn’t looking at another person’s life [on social media], what would I actually want for myself? What are my values? What are my priorities in life?’
The answers will differ from person to person. Yours might be to spend quality time with your family, in which case you probably should postpone your move to Australia. Perhaps you only feel truly alive while climbing the corporate ladder, so children might not figure in your plans right now. Whatever you decide, van Voorst adds, remember that nothing is set in stone (even kids go off to university one day, after all). ‘Fluidity is the word,’ she says. ‘Allow yourself to see it in that way and it no longer becomes a choice for the rest of your life, but a question of, “What do I feel suits me best now?”’
And if you do still find your head spinning over the split in your friendship group, Woods has a good way of looking at it: ‘The mad people are great for a party or holiday, and the settled ones are terrific for a Sunday roast or a lift. Ideal for me.’
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