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Parenting
andyyougoonie
member
Has your life turned out how you expected?
andyyougoonie
member
in Parenting
Go back to high school. What were your dreams and ambitions then? Is that how your life turned out?
Mine hasn't. I thought I would be living somewhere else, married to a rich doctor or lawyer, popping out a bunch of kids that I would stay home with and having "ladies' lunches" all the time like my mom did. lol.
I was crazy and sheltered. I'm so glad I have a different life. I guess the basics are still there - I'm married with kids - but I never would have dreamed that I would marry a mechanic, or even someone without a 4 year degree. Or that I would enjoy being a working mom.
What say ye, Parenting? How far off were you?
Mom to two beautiful girls and forever labor buddy to the fab lady MandaPanda518!
This discussion has been closed.
Re: Has your life turned out how you expected?
I thought I would have a better career.
I thought that I would have more money by thirty.
And that my two kids would be 7 and 5... not 2 and in my ute.
But I'm happy with the way things turned out.
I knew I would be spending a lot of my 20's getting an education. But for some reason in high school I pictured the education part of it as a background piece and that I would be comfortable financially and be able to have kids while in the midst of it. I did happen to have a kid in dental school. However, going to school this long is a lifestyle choice and it had made having a family more difficult. We also have until recently been living mostly on student loans and weren't comfortable financially at all.
In other words, I thought I would be happier, richer, have more kids and more free time by the time I turned 30. I'm staring 28 in the eyes right now thinking, "what the hell happened?". Of course, I'm happy with my life, it's just not as cushy as I thought it would be.
I expected to be totally focused on career and would get married/have kids at 30+ to ultimately be a working mom.
I got married at 24, pregnant at 26, and I SAH now. Yep, not really like I envisioned. lol.
In many ways I'm very happy how life has turned out although there are a few things that have been pushed back on my original timeline.
Married at 24 instead of my "ideal" age of 21.
Wanted to be done having kids by 30. Couldn't stay pregnant until I was 30....but won't be done birthing kids until I'm 33 (10 more weeks!!!)
But not being able to have kids when we wanted allowed us to pay off debt so financially we're way ahead of where I thought we'd be at this age.
So overall, not too shabby
Not at all. I thought I would go away to college after HS, get my MRS degree, get married....
Instead I worked, partied, went through a bad relationship in which I got KU, became a single parent, then started school. I still have another year to finish my AA. However I can't complain as I have my smart, beautiful daughter and my prince charming now
Well not exactly, I was off by a few years for some things and off by a lot for others.
I foolishly thought I would meet my husband when I was in college. Get married by 23 and have my first child around 25 and then 27 29 and 31.
What really happened is that I didn't meet my husband until after I graduated and we got married when I was 26. We had our first when I was 29 but she passed away when she was 4 months old. I was 31 when our second was born and 33 when our third came along. We are now considered a fourth child but I will be 35 or older when it happens.
As far as my career was concerned, I suppose I got it right. I always thought it would be nice to get my degree in a business related field, work for a few years and then stay at home when my kids were little and then go back to work. That is pretty much what happened.
Not even close. I thought I'd be married to someone different. I thought I'd get married a lot younger and start having babies sooner. I thought I'd have a lot of kids. I thought I'd be a classroom teacher, but turns out specialist was a better option for me. I thought I'd own a home a long time before I did...things like that.
But I'm okay with it. I just didn't picture it going down this way.
I'm not sure I even knew how I expected my life to be back then.
One thing for sure is I thought I would know what I was doing, you know? I never in a million years would have imagined adults struggle and have doubts, too.
I also assumed I'd have kids, but had no idea what it actually meant until I had them.
Am I happy with the way things turned out? For the most part, yes. I love my H and thank my lucky star every day for my two beautiful daughters (and soon to be born son).
No, I screwed my life up royally.
But I have a wonderful daughter, and a grandson.
So, all is ok.
Plus, I am a firm believer in you've
made your own bed. So why bi*tch.
Unfortunately my dream did not come true, but for the most part I'm pretty happy with how my life is unfolding.
"Man, be creative. Like the stuff you do. Do nice things. Love respectfully. Laugh a fucking lot. Curse when you feel like it. Life is cool." - Jean Grae
BAWHAHAHA!
No even a little close.
I thought I'd be married young - Nope
Have NO kids - have one and want another
Married to my college bar FB - I was young, don't laugh
Be a Vet - Nope
Living in Cali - Nope
“I’d marry again if I found a man who had $15 million and would sign over half of it to me before the marriage and guarantee he’d be dead in a year.” - Bette Davis
No. I really never thought I would have children.
DH and I started dating when I was 23 but didn't get married until I was 34. We were focused on our careers for many years, but were also having fun, traveling, hobbies, etc. We pretty much never discussed having children.
I literally woke up one morning a few months before I turned 36 and thought, "We should have children now." DH totally was on board and now here we are, 40 and 41 years old with two kids under three and loving it (for the most part,
).
I second most of this, although, I didn't ever think I would be a SAHM. I really didn't have high expectations, except I wanted to be happy by my age. I figured I would have had a child earlier than 29, but I'm glad we waited. I didn't think I would be a Step Mom either, but it's turned out great thus far. I say thus far, because she's going to be a teen soon. Ugh.
I'm always conflicted about our small town location. It's where I grew up, so everyone knows who I am because of my family. Plus, my DH works with the public, so we can't go anywhere without being stopped. As much as I would like the anonymity, I also like the fact I have a lot of people looking out for my family. I would love the variety in culture and the possibilities a city would offer, but there are things I don't envy about a city, like rush hour traffic.
((HUGS)) Sofa. Mine is along these lines as well. I never thought I would spend 6 years with an abusive man. Nor did I think I would grow the balls to up and leave him. Never thought I'd marry or have a child with someone who I had been with less than 5 years, but when it's right, it's right. I wouldn't change who I'm with or what we've done together for anything.
I also never envisioned having so much trouble just to have a baby. I was naive in HS and thought it would be so easy to get and stay KU. Oh, how much I've learned.
My life is what I wanted: awesome husband and two beautiful kids. I'm a SAHM And I always wanted to be.
However, the path to getting here was WAAAYY more and complicated than I ever planned.
Not at all. I thought I'd be happily married to my high school sweetheart with two kids and a nice, big house in suburbia by the time I was 30. Some of that came true.
I got married to HS sweetheart at 22 and divorced at 25, but that was a good thing, because my ex is evil and treated me terribly.
I was a few days shy of 28 when my daughter was born. SO and I are not married and LO number 2 is due in July. We haven't done things in the "right" order but I'm happy with where we are.
Yup. Never expected I'd be a SAHM.
Not at all... planned to go to college forever and work with animals in my own practice after that. I planned to get married earlier and start having children right away.
Instead I dropped out of college... worked my way up to where I am now in a totally different field. I married a divorced man with two kids after dating for 7 years... and we are unable to conceive naturally together.
I love my life and am thankful for everything I have... but definitely not what I planned.
In parts. I thought/hoped I'd get married and have kids, so there's that though I thought I would be "done" having kids at this age and have 3. However, I definitely thought I'd have a way better career (especially after all my damn schooling) and it's definitely nothing great.
I knew I wanted to leave MI for school, but I'm not sure I ever really thought it would be a permanent move---looks like it turned out to be.
Is this in response to the NY Times article today? They just posted something in the science section about how although we easily can pinpoint how we've changed over the years, it is very difficult for us to imagine ourselves changing in the future.
For me, no I don't think I envisioned myself being a single mom at age 25. In high school, I was the angry kid in the back who was always protesting something. Politically, I've gotten a lot more dissolusioned and would consider myself less extreme-liberal-activist and more middle ground, though by AZ standards where I live now I'm probably still a crazy LibTard, ha! I'm less concerned with "big picture" statements and more concerned with tangible every day actions/consumer choices where my voice might have an impact.
As far as my career -- haha, I work for the federal government. If you'd told anti-establishment highschool me that I'd be working for "The Man" in just 10 years, I'd have laughed you around the block! No way. The government was corrupt and inefficient and full of lazy overweight employees that did 3 hours of work in an 8 hour day, etc etc. Then I started comparing benefits packages, and being a federal employee with health insurance and retirement options -- not to mention the job stability -- gained a lot of appeal once I'd actually been in the workforce for a couple years and seen what the private and non-profit sectors were offering. I work in the field of equal employment opportunity and do civil rights investigative work -- and this absolutely fits in to the high school version of me who stood up for the underdog, passionately fought for justice be it related to poverty, racism, war, etc -- so the career field is not surprising though the particular employer is.
As for family... I always thought I'd "have a family someday," despite my rant about the exponentially growing global population being cause for concern when it came to all sorts of social and political and economic issues... ha. So much for that... In my case, "someday" just turned out to be sooner than I'd anticipated, and without a ring on my finger or being a homeowner first. So I guess I did those things entirely out of order.
Ultimately, I thought I'd be more relaxed or "alternative" of an adult than I am... I'm pretty conventional after all what with my 9-5 and commute and house+yard+garage and car payment and all that. But I suppose that's what happens to most free-thinking young people; they grow up, they get jobs, and they realize their alternative lifestyle might not be as appealing at 30 as it was at 20. I see myself becoming my own mother quite a bit, and while this would have scared me in my teenage years, I would proudly wear that badge today because it means I'm doing a good job and on the right track to raising a healthy & independent adult!
I'm only 24...but I thought SO and I would be married by now [together almost seven years]. I thought I would have graduated college...but I'm still two semesters away and then I'll have a degree I can't do anything with...so I'll spend three more years in grad school or two more in an accelerated nursing program, neither programs what I thought I would be doing. I thought I would be done having kids by 30, but I want three more...so I don't think we'll be squeezing in three in the next six years, especially before I graduate.
I'm kind of bummed when I see people from HS that are married after a year or two of being together when I'm not even engaged, six years later. I wish I had a degree I could do something besides substitute teach with. But, God always has a better plan than we do, right? I hope so.
SCANDAL!
In some ways it turned out how I thought it would, and in some ways it didn't.
Things that turned out how I thought in HS:
I got the 2 degrees I planned to get from my top choice university, and I work in my chosen field (education).
I am married to a man who has the same (actually higher) level of education as I do and has a good job.
We own a house.
We have a child, and we hope/plan to have another one for a total of 2 kids.
Things that did not turn out how I thought:
I do not live close to my family. At all. In a different country.
Because I went through a phase where I didn't want children, I ended up having my first child later in life than I would have expected in HS.
All in all, I'd say my life is pretty much what I would have expected, but in a different place and moving along at a different rate.
I wanted to be a whale trainer at Sea World. Now I am a teacher.
I never wanted kids. I now have 2.
Pretty close! I wanted to be a teacher and/or SAHM, married by 25, first kid by 30. I thought my DH would take me away from California and to somewhere new and glorious with changing leaves in the fall and snow in the winter. When I was little I wanted 6 kids, a little older more like 3 or 4.
I have my teaching credential, taught for a few years until I had DD and am now a SAHM. I got married at 25, moved to the Midwest for DH's job, and had my first child at 26, second one on the way currently at 28.
I never expected to become as religious as I have become, and I expected DH to have more money, but I think I got as close as it gets. Maybe it's because my dreams as a kid were dull and boring...but I'm pretty happy with it, gotta say.
Not really.
I wanted to live abroad permantly. Nope
I wanted to work in translation or travel. Nope
I didn't want any kids. Nope
I wanted to be footloose and fancy free. Nope
On the other hand. I wanted to be married and I am-to my high school sweetie. We have a DS who is truly the light of my life. I enjoy being a SAHM which is a huge shock.