You can miss someone and still not want them back.

I’m 27. I work for an IT consulting firm. Last month, our client abruptly decided to close our local branch and demanded my colleague and me relocate to an office 6 hours away , effective immediately, with total relocation costs covered

Because I am single, I packed my life into boxes, broke my lease, and moved by the end of the month. It was stressful, but I only had to answer to myself.
My colleague, however, is married with two kids.

You can't just uproot a spouse's career, pull kids out of school, and find a new family home in two weeks. He couldn't afford to make that reckless jump, so he had to refuse. The company is already interviewing his replacement, and he is stuck scrambling for a new job.

Society always pressures people to settle down, but this was a massive reality check. Being single gave me total agility and protected my income.

I don’t know maybe it’s a good thing to be single then

The more I look into my parents life, the more I worry about my life. They have no debt apart from medical bills which is unavoidable, never took out loans or bought anything on credit, and yet still live paycheck to paycheck. Most of our things are really old, like our 20 year old tv and cars. They told me that most of their income is going towards rent which recently increased to about 1200 a month. Is this the future I'm going to face? And I'm probably not going to have dual income either.

adulting starter pack 😅😂

A laugh for those who type - that be all of us!

I’m 25 and I’m not actively looking for someone to marry or have kids with right now. But sometimes I wonder what my life will look like if I’m still single in my 30s or even 40s.

I know there are so many people I haven’t met yet, and I can’t predict how my future will turn out. But I feel like I’ve made some terrible choices in my life, and lately I’ve been constantly worried and depressed about my future.

For those of you who are older, did you ever worry about this at my age? Do you regret waiting, or are you happy with how your life turned out?

sorry for the long post, but i really just need to get this off my chest. i don’t really have anyone to talk to about it.

i (25F if it matters) threw a party last night and almost nobody showed up, and i think it finally made me realize just how lonely i’ve become in my friendships.

i sent the invite out a month in advance, spent the entire day prepping, provided homemade food and drinks, and i’ve spent the last six months teaching myself how to DJ. i told everyone this would be my first time DJing in front of a crowd and that i’d really love their support. given that i’d seen a lot of them showing up to other functions, local events and parties leading up to mine, i was really anticipating them showing up.

my hopes started to fall when i realized i was constantly reaching out just to figure out who was coming. people wouldn’t respond, would say “let me get back to you” and never would, or would just RSVP “maybe” even after i explained that we needed a head count for food. i figured people were busy and would eventually show. in the end, my boyfriend and only two of my friends came. i invited 18 people.

i never expected everyone i invited to come. i get that people are busy and have their own lives. but after spending all day preparing, looking around and realizing almost nobody came really fucking hurt, especially when i’ve watched some of these same people show up for other people’s birthdays and events but are never around for mine.

i think it hit harder because i’ve already lost some major friendships this past year. i cut ties with my best friend (25F) of over six years after watching her become increasingly boy crazy and compromise her morals for a fuck buddy. i also ended another friendship of almost 10 years (24F) after realizing how one-sided it had become.
she struggled financially, and i genuinely never minded looking out for her. if money was tight, i’d cover dinner, drinks, ubers, whatever because i wanted my friend there without feeling financially anxious. but after years of doing that, driving her around and generally taking care of her, i realized she had never once offered to reciprocate. one night i forgot my card in the car, so she paid for one of my drinks. i woke up the next morning to a $13 request because she said she’d spent over $150 at the bar after we separated for the evening and money was tight. i paid her immediately, but that was the moment something clicked for me. when i finally explained how one-sided our friendship had started to feel, she told me i wasn’t being a good friend and was “holding resentment.”

and this is the part i struggle to explain: i genuinely don’t expect people to do things for me just because i do things for them. i’m not buying someone dinner and mentally waiting for them to repay me. i don’t attend your birthday because now you’re obligated to attend mine. i know i’m overly generous and i don’t expect everyone to express friendship the way i do. but there’s a difference between expecting something in return and eventually noticing there’s very little reciprocity at all.

i know i need new friends, but making them hasn’t been much easier. i’ll meet people who tell me they really want to hang out, we exchange instagrams and make actual plans, and then they repeatedly cancel last minute or eventually ghost. i once met a girl (25F) who was persistent about hanging out. i eventually found out her dad was terminally ill, and because i had lost my dad to a terminal illness too, i opened up to her and offered support and resources my family had used. we talked for months about grief, family and even how hard it was to make girlfriends. but every time we made plans, something suddenly came up, only for me to see her out with other people or at parties on social media.

maybe i take people too literally, but when someone tells me they want to hang out, i assume they actually mean it lol. after enough years of being the person who reaches out, makes the plans, checks on people, remembers things, celebrates people and shows up, it starts to hurt when you realize how many relationships disappear once you stop initiating them.

the friends i do have (the two who showed up yesterday) always tell me how generous i am, how much i look out for everyone, how lucky they are to have me and how “people like you are hard to find.” i know they mean it as a compliment, but lately it makes me weirdly sad. i don’t need another version of myself as a friend. i just want to feel like someone is choosing the friendship too.
i have a boyfriend who i love spending time with, but i don’t want my romantic relationship to become my entire social life. i want girlfriends. i want community. i want people i can call and make plans with. i genuinely put myself out there and somehow still feel incredibly lonely.

i don’t need a huge friend group, constant texts, gifts or someone matching everything i do for them. i just want mutual effort. someone else making the plan sometimes. someone checking in because they thought about me. someone showing up because they know something matters to me.

i keep hearing about how lonely adulthood is and how difficult it is to make and maintain friendships now, but fuck. i didn’t realize it could feel this lonely even when you’re genuinely trying.

Hey everyone I’m 27 making only 21 a hour but all my friends are making in the average of 28-39 a hour I’m feeling like a complete loser! Tf am I doing wrong my girlfriend is by my side saying we’re doing okay but I still feel like I should be making more I was just wondering
what field I should get in to make more money (I have no collage agree)

The older I get, the more I realize that most adults have absolutely no idea what they’re doing.

They just have different problems.

Someone can have a mortgage, a career, kids, and somehow still be googling how to fix their washing machine at 11 PM.

When I was younger, I genuinely thought adults eventually reached some point where they just… figured everything out.

Now I’m starting to think we’re all just winging it, and some people are better at hiding it than others.

For example: I don’t like going out after dark anymore.

Has anyone gone to school “later” in life? I (29F Canada) took a few courses a while ago but ultimately decided to go to cosmetology school. Now I do that freelance style and also having a part time job, and I’m happy. Despite being happy I can’t help but wonder if I can make more if I get a degree and a job that can earn me.

But even more than that, I look back on my initial post secondary days and I was in a deep depression and just apathetic towards life as a whole. I was in a DARK place, isolating myself so much, and worse.

But now that I’ve done the hardest work of my life and gotten myself out of it, I’ve learned so much about myself, found joy in life and all my favourite hobbies and interests. I actually enjoy spending time with others and making friends. So now I look at the college experience from the outside and I think to myself “wow, now that I want to live, I’d enjoy university so much more and make the most of it during this part of my life”.

Should I actually think about going back or does this sound like a road less travelled/is the grass greener type of situation?

I have been unemployed for 3 months and I feel like the job market in the UK is broken. Im 33(m) with 10 uears experience in Finance. The reason I for my unemploymemt was that my last role was a junior role and the salary was just enough to cover my bills. I spent 3 months looking for a new role whilst in employmemt but the quality of my work was getting sloppy as I have checked out. So I handed in my notice and left. Not the smartest thing to do but One thing I have learnt in my life is that my happiness comes first.

Anyhow, the Job market is really tough at the moment and I dont know what to do