From my experience, the number of chances you have is not the limiting factor in life. I see people making the same kind of mistakes over and over again. The problem is often the pattern of reaction to externalities. The pattern is then the problem, and it is very hard to break habits.
Yes! Many bad decisions—choosing the wrong partner, making bad health choices, or even getting the wrong degree, can be changed in 6-36 months, if the mistake is realized.
But the person who makes the mistake takes too long to see the mistake, and then goes about making the same mistake (or failing to make a different decision) for years after they start to question their decision. There’s the bottleneck.
That’s why I’ve invested a lot of energy into being more flexible, changing my mind readily, and learning from my mistakes very quickly.
In my case it took a few decades to plumb utterly the idea that perfecting myself, or trying extremely hard to do so, would not make a bad relationship good. It was a hard lesson for me but I learned it in every cell of my system. Not that I am against being flexible, but some people need life to really beat that lesson into them.
At least in relationships that's not the case. Unless you are naturally extroverted or charismatic, if you mess up and haven't figured things out by the time you are in your 30s then you may as well give up. American society just isn't built for finding love outside of school/college.
I had a dreadful marriage that ended in my forties and am now ten years into a relationship where I am so persistently happy I had to rescale my idea of happiness. Maybe by a factor of 1024 or more. I have step kids and my kids have a step mom but they all have been exposed to more happiness than before. And I finally got able to be myself and found a spouse who can talk math with me and gets me in a way I was too blind to conceptualize as a young adult.
This is one of those areas where money can solve your problem. It's a lot harder to rebuild if you're not making good money. Especially for those who are on the hook for alimony & child support.
That's a pretty strong claim to make completely unsupported by evidence. In fact, I think you'll find more people than ever before are settling down in their 30s and starting families, etc.
>> if you mess up and haven't figured things out by the time you are in your 30s
> In fact, I think you'll find more people than ever before are settling down in their 30s and starting families, etc.
I did not interpret GP post to mean "If you haven't settled down and started a family by 30, you may as well give up".
I interpreted it more as "If you haven't made a decent sized social network, or haven't figured out how to approach strangers, or haven't been in a committed/long-term/love/etc relationship, or didn't socialise enough to develop socialisation skills, etc... THEN you may as well give up!"
I think the GP's point is that those people who are settling down in their 30s and starting families, well, they didn't mess up, and figured things out before age 30.
Maybe he'll clarify, but I agree with my interpretation: if you haven't figured out romantic relationships by age 30, you may as well give up, because post-30 it's exceedingly difficult to find an environment with lots of socialising with peers.
Almost impossible, in fact, because, as you said, most people are already out of that scene anyway...
I also disagree strongly with that. I live in Seattle (a city well known for being not social and welcoming - aka the seattle freeze), and didn't recover from being a shy introvert until around 30. The skills and mindset for human connection was hard for sure, but I found many pockets of really welcoming social environments around shared interests. My personal interests run to the outdoors, so for me it was hiking/biking/mountaineering/run clubs. However, groups and clubs around shared activities exist for almost any interest, and the whole point of them is to socialize and meet people! It DOES take some effort and discomfort, but it's not even close to "almost impossible".
Obviously it is in the West in tech circles where everyone is introverted and they work 14 hour days. The protestant work ethic has decimated society and all that matters.
In reality this isn't black/white, but a spectrum. Some may have a harder time than others, but giving up is reductionary and depressing and leads nowhere.
Easier to identify and work around your characteristic errors. Go slow into romance, or make sure to lint and test the code, or be wary of saying yes to things you don't really care about, maybe offload some judgment calls to a trusted delegate. Whatever it is, we all have weaknesses and we can learn to work with them better. And realize when they crop up it isn't uniquely shameful to have broken bits.
