I found an interesting article featuring a 35-year-old woman who is alarmed that her approach to life has left her in debt and single, with a gap-filled resume of short-term jobs. I thought it might be useful for young women to read this, and consider whether making “rash” decisions and being “adventurous” works out.
I feel like a ghost. I’m a 35-year-old woman, and I have nothing to show for it. My 20s and early 30s have been a twisting crisscross of moves all over the West Coast, a couple of brief stints abroad, multiple jobs in a mediocre role with no real upward track. I was also the poster child for serial monogamy. My most hopeful and longest lasting relationship (three and a half years, whoopee) ended two years ago. We moved to a new town (my fourth new city), created a home together, and then nose-dived into a traumatic breakup that launched me to my fifth and current city and who-knows-what-number job.
Rash decisions, adventure, exploring…. and lots of debt:
For all these years of quick changes and rash decisions, which I once rationalized as adventurous, exploratory, and living an “original life,” I have nothing to show for it. I have no wealth, and I’m now saddled with enough debt from all of my moves, poor decisions, and lack of career drive that I may never be able to retire. I have no career milestones and don’t care for my line of work all that much anyway, but now it’s my lifeline, as I only have enough savings to buy a hotel room for two nights.
No STEM degree, which means she doesn’t like to study hard things that can be tested against the real world for correctness:
I used to consider myself creative — a good writer, poetic, passionate, curious. Now, after many years of demanding yet uninspiring jobs, multiple heartbreaks, move after move, financial woes, I’m quite frankly exhausted.
Surprised by aging and poor health:
Also, within the past year I’ve had a breast-cancer scare and required surgery on my uterus due to a fertility issue. On top of that, I’m 35 and every gyno and women’s-health website this side of the Mississippi is telling me my fertility is dropping faster than a piano falling out of the sky. Now I’m looking into freezing my eggs, adding to my never-ending financial burden, in hopes of possibly making something of this haunted house and having a family someday with a no-named man.
She’s still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old she used to be:
I’m dating. I’m working out and working hard. Listening to music I enjoy and loving my cat. Calling my mom…. I’m drinking too much… And with men I date, I feel pressure to make something of the relationship too soon (move in, get married, “I have to have kids in a couple of years”; fun times!). All the while still trying to be the sexpot 25-year-old I thought I was until what seemed like a moment ago.
But her plan hasn’t worked out:
I used to think I was the one who had it all figured out. Adventurous life in the city! Traveling the world! Making memories! Now I feel incredibly hollow. And foolish. How can I make a future for myself that I can get excited about out of these wasted years? What reserves or identity can I draw from when I feel like I’ve accrued nothing up to this point with my life choices?
Well, I’ve known women like this, and I think we’re going to see more and more women like this as the society becomes more secular and feminist. I want to say something about whether she is sincere about wanting to get married and have children, and what women should do to avoid ending up like her.
Do women today understand male nature and marriage?
This woman’s demonstrated life plan is that she chose whatever made her feel good from age 18-35+, and now wants to enter into a marriage some time after age 35. And what does marriage mean to her? Has she prioritized entering the traditional roles of wife and mother? Don’t listen to her words. Look at her actions. Her actions show that marriage and children were of NO importance to her. And her current approach to getting married and having kids is the same as ever – work out in order to look hot, and try to coerce a man who signs up for recreational sex with no commitment into becoming a man who makes a life-long commitment to provide for her and her children (which is the opposite of what he signed up for). She wants marriage now for the same reason that she’s wanted anything: for fun, thrills, adventure and to keep up with her girlfriends who are already married.
What kind of man should she have been pursuing from age 18 to 35, if she really wanted marriage and children? Well, the first thing to realize is that not all men want marriage. And the next thing to realize is that women who are serious about marriage need to focus ONLY on men who want to marry. All the men that the women quoted above wanted in her youth didn’t want to marry. They wanted premarital recreational sex with her, and that was fine with her – she chose them, and disregarded the men who were interested in marriage.
A man who was interested in marrying her would have:
- ….told her no to sex before marriage (because the more sexual partners a woman has, the less happy she will be in marriage, and the more unstable her marriage will be).
- …led her to become better at being a wife and mother, by discouraging her thrill-seeking, traveling and wasteful spending, and instead encouraging her focus on a STEM education, career and getting debt-free.
- …led her to develop a Christian worldview in which she would understand the importance of marriage and children, and learn to sacrifice her own interests to love and care for others.
Was she interested in getting ready for marriage? No. She never chose those marriage-minded men. She didn’t want to be a wife. The men she chose were chosen for fun, for thrills, and to show off their outward appearance to her girlfriends.
So, who are the men in this group of marriage-minded men? How do you recognize them? Marriage-minded men are interested in marriage because they want to lead a home. They will have invested a lot of time learning how to protect others, how to provide, and how to debate and lead on moral and spiritual issues. Marriage-minded men see the marriage enterprise as a way of advancing the causes that they care about most. Women who really want to get married will recognize those men, and pursue those men. And they’ll do it early, so that they can invest in their husbands early and be young enough to have children.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Sad a generation of young women want a life of flings and instability rather than a marriage and family!
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‘Don’t listen to her words. Look at her actions. Her actions show that marriage and children were of NO importance to her. ‘
Yup, I unfortunately was burned by the words and then her actions revealed otherwise. My hope for the future is to let reason rule my emotions instead of the emotions blinding me to what’s really going on.
Sad part is I’m still interested in marriage but I can’t seem to find any women remotely interested in it…and I’m even more skeptical now even if they state they are.
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I’m blessed to have found a wonderful, Christian man in college. We waited until we finished college and graduate school (I have a Master’s in Math, he is a CPA) for sex and for marriage. We’ve been missionaries for 30+ years and have 8 children. Our four daughters found wonderful Christian men at a young age and are happily married and following the Lord. So far we have three grandchildren. We are very blessed. We are so thankful that we had great examples in both of our families and also God’s Word to live by. Two of our daughter’s are nurses, one has her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from a Christian school and the other graduated this May from Moody but will be working as a CNA…has a high paying job in that field. All of this is to say that there ARE still girls and guys out there who want to be married, have kids, and follow God’s plan for marriage. They are becoming fewer and more far between unfortunately. God has blessed them in helping our girls to find guys who are serious about following the Lord and taking care of their families, and for our one married son, finding a beautiful Christian young lady to be his partner in life. Thanks for all you do with your blog…I read almost every post!
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Oh wow, this is an ideal marriage. Well done both of you for doing things right and making a difference with these well-educated children.
The trouble I see today is that people want “marriage” but not as it used to be. Marriage used to mean a real partnership involving self-sacrifice. To be honest, what I’m seeing is that young people think marriage in your 20s is something to be avoided in order to have fun, and they just want to do it later for financial stability and social respectability. But marriage is really about building a life together and having children that you really want to raise yourself, not hand them off to strangers.
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…led her to develop a Christian worldview in which she would understand the importance of marriage and children, and learn to sacrifice her own interests to love and care for others.
I’m assuming that the woman in the OP isn’t a Christian, but even if she were, this would be a tall order. How many self-described “Christians” today, of either sex, have anything other than a worldly, hedonic view of marriage (something that explains why “Christians” have a divorce rate that is “only” 12 percentage points below the World’s 50 percent rate)?
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I don’t think that they are learning very much about marriage as an enterprise in the church, and especially about what a prospective Christian husband and father really looks like. They tend to choose with their eyes, and expect that moral character and spiritual leadership is “free”. That would be like buying a computer based on how it looks on the outside, and not caring about the components inside.
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This poor woman Has hit “the wall”. “The wall” is the time that a woman realizes that the party is over and she is out of Time for a responsible, child rearing family. The wall informed her that her looks are diminishing and her marketability is decreasing to find a mate. This cadre of women are the caretakers of many cats, And our feline friends thank them.
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I don’t see how her actions prior to hitting the wall will be of value to the type of man who is interested in marriage. To me, if a man wants to get married, he is doing it to get the support of a woman during his 20s, when he is stressed out trying to build up his resume and save for a downpayment on a home. That’s when he is the most frantic and stressed because he doesn’t have as much money in the bank and a solid resume to use if he gets fired. A marriage-minded man wants someone to commit to him and invest herself in him THEN. Not when he has already passed through that difficult phase on his own.
Why do so many women think it’s OK to have a fun promiscuous period in their 20s, depriving the man who they expect to commit later of what he really needed earlier?
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Often times, women like this and others like her go from one end of the spectrum to the other. Afters years of giving their bodies freely to dozens, maybe even hundreds of men, if they do find someone to marry them, they will withhold much of their past, and will withhold sex from their husband because of their past errors in judgment. I know from experience, because I used to be married to one. They simply don’t understand commitment.
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Well, if they were choosing non-commitment because of how those men looked it how fun they were, why would they give sex to the man who commits, when he looks like so much less, and does not give them the butterflies and drama they accustomed to?
This is why men prefer virgins. There’s a reason.
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This hits home, hard. We dated for just shy of two years when I was running on fumes trying to keep myself afloat.
Of course, it’s a tale as old as time, we broke up, and within a year I had pulled myself up by my bootstraps, moved several States away, got my dream job, and started making 100k a year, up from the 35-40k I had been while we were together (in one of the top COL areas in the US). Hitting the gym hard didn’t hurt either, four years later and I’m pushing 235 lbs and getting looks from all sorts of women.
Meanwhile she’s closing in on 30, has had multiple new out of shape schmucks that don’t realize she’s going to drop them as soon as things get stale. And I’ve never been better. I’ve got land, a house, and a girlfriend who is marriage minded and acknowledges her role in the relationship.
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She’ll say “where are all the good men?” now, when she could have had you.
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