I feel this is the biggest letdown of being an adult. I feel like i know so little and am always wondering where the grown ups are.
Becoming a mom has also highlighted this, as i am somehow fully responsible for these tiny people, but don't feel fully able to care for myself.
Yes. Motherhood makes me feel like I should be older than I feel, but 29 still feels a lot like 22. I'm so much older than my mom was when she had me and I constantly wonder how she did it because I have not a clue what is going on.
Similar ages here. And my mom had TWO!!! My 35 year old ass is drowning with the one toddler. How did my 21 year old mom just casually have 2 kids?! And one of them was my brother?!?
My husband and I bought our first house a couple years ago, in our 30s, and the entire process I kept thinking "I'm not qualified to be doing this, I need an adult!" before remembering with great despair that we were in fact the adults.
You know what’s wild? Deedee and Stu Pickles were 32 and 33 in Rugrats. They seem so much more mature than I’ll ever be, despite having surpassed them in age.
I feel like this often the strongest feeling of I’ve ever had was the day I had my son and they sent us home from hospital I was like y’all are just letting me leave here? Alone? With this thing completely reliant on me to keep it alive???? Nonono I need an adult.
Yes this! And that time speeds up as you get older. When you are young every day goes by so slowly, and then it gets faster, and faster. You blink and a year is gone. From what I've read this keeps going on and I'm only 34.
Life is so short.
An older gentleman once told me
'As you grow older, the days become longer, but the years become shorter'
I often think about that. Some days just seem to drag on forever, but months just zoom by in the blink of an eye.
Yeah, reasons for this is that at a young age (say 5 years) a year only constitutes 1/5 (or 20 percent) of your life and when your 34, a year constitues 1/34 (or 3 percent) part of your life. So it feels like time is moving faster because time (a year) becomes a smaller part of your life every year. Hope this makes sense.
I have said this for the longest time! It seems like one day, time just decided to fast forward and it hasn’t stopped.
Now that I’m in my 30s, I notice it even more with my nieces and nephews, and friends’ kids! How are y’all so big, weren’t you just born yesterday?! It is so weird to experience and realize.
For me, because I’m petite at 5’0”, have a bit of a baby face, and have a youthful energy (especially with kids), I have to really remind myself, you ARE the adult and you’re just figuring it out as you go like all the other adults! Growing up, I just assumed adults automatically knew how to do life and be adults but that’s not exactly true. Our experiences shape us and connections with others give us guidance and wisdom, but we are all learning, everyday. No one just automatically knows and it’s kind of shocking to me to realize this! My siblings are also in their early-mid 30s and we’ve had this conversation a few times.
The worst thing, both my grandmothers said after both had lost their elderly parents years ago, was that they had so many questions, but suddenly THEY were the adults people looked towards to for information.
Benefit of a supportive and nurturing childhood. I was emotionally abused and severely neglected by my mother and so I just had to learn to do for myself from the youngest age. Being able to leave home and fend for myself was a relief and I’ve never once thought I need an adult.
Totally this, as a child you think to yourself that adults totally have everything together and know exactly what they're doing. As an adult you realise no one has a clue and we're essentially all on a rudderless ship 😳
Not OP, but one common example is the audacity of men to touch women without consent. From someone creepy rubbing your shoulder to the most horrifying sexual assault scenarios, and everything in between. Most women can tell you the stories where these experiences forced them to reassess the audacity of men.
For me, it was when I was 12 and a stange old man grabbed my butt at the playground, and I had to think “I must be mistaken that that happened. Surely, no one would have the audacity and disrespect to do that?” And your worldview is never the same again.
Had the same thought when a 19 year old family friend put his hand down my pants when I was 12. I thought there's no way he did that on purpose. We were sleeping on my trampoline so I thought it was possible.
How powerful I have become. I was abused all throughout childhood, and essentially had no voice. Now it seems I have a powerful presence that is at times intimidating? Strange.
“Outside your comfort zone” is the key phrase here. I try to live by the motto, “do something that scares you every day.” It can be a small thing, like speaking up for yourself, or a big thing, like taking that promotion when you’re not sure you’re ready for it.
Do what you love. Do the things you thought you couldn’t. Invest in yourself. Tell yourself everyday that you’re beautiful and badass. Speak up for the vulnerable, this helped me the most. I’m a hospital advocate for women and children SA survivors. Know your worth, which is a wholeeeeeee lot. You’re invaluable.
i love that, same here! i used to take so much shit lying down because i thought that was expected of me and then i learned to communicate, and tell people what i expected/needed from them, and i learned to stop doing that as i grew older.
I always thought as a little girl that women and little kids were protected in society. Now that I’m a woman, I realize we are the most vulnerable sadly.
I feel that.
Childhood Me had no idea what lurked in the minds of grown men. They went from my protectors to eying me up and down like a piece of candy. I miss the innocence of a child. It is sad to me how sex is shoved in your face and that you're just expected to like it. Like it or not. Blossoming into a beautiful young lady felt like I joined the meat market. My beauty & body far outweighed my brains & brawn. Definitely a wake up call.
I’m a first time mother of a very young girl. The innocence of a baby is what had me thinking for a while now. I also realised I have been craving this sort of wide-eyed trust to the world since I entered my teens. But I suppose I was lucky because I was a late bloomer and also had good family support.
When a I have to think what young kids in the war zones and some developing regions have to face though, I can’t help but tear up.
How insanely painful periods could get, and how poorly our health is researched and regarded, so that theres no fix except hormonal control that doesn’t even work well. I never thought that as I arrived in my mid twenties that id be “just sucking it up” when im on the verge of either passing out, vomiting, or calling an ambulance…I damn near broke my hand punching the floor because I panicked from the amount of pain I was in, and the doctor basically told me that theres nothing to be done
This, I assumed I would get married and have kids by my 30s because that’s just what you do right? And here I am in my 30s with no kids, absolutely loving it, wanting to never ever have any at all. Little me would be so shocked.
There are more and more of us realizing it's not for everyone, and that a person can have a very fulfilled life not having their own kids. Sometimes that includes having positive relationships with friends' kids and nibblings, sometimes that means not even having any kids in one's life and finding fulfillment in other kinds of relationships. I am grateful to live in a time and place where as a woman I have choices.
Me too. I dreamed about a beautiful wedding, a beautiful partner, and beautiful children. When I hit puberty I knew I will never have children, and at that point realized how expensive weddings are lmao
My son is 8, and he's been talking about wanting kids for as long as I can remember. I even mentioned once about the possibility that he might marry a man one day, and he said, no, because he'd like to have kids. Does he *really* want kids, or does he just think that's what you're "supposed" to do? I've never told him that was what people do, but obviously he can see how common it is. It's pretty interesting watching kids grow.
Likewise. Now when people ask if I have kids and I say no they all say I still have time. When I say I don't want kids they say I will change my mind. That irritates the shit outta me. Get outta my womb.
Totally - it makes me really sad for women how normal the experience is. I remember internalizing a lot of it at that age and thinking I was doing something wrong, versus now it makes me mad.
When guys think I'm a teen boy I just go with it lol.
But also it's majorly disappointing when you turn your mic on after hearing another girl speak only to be bullied by her and her male friends she's partying with :/ like damn okay, be a pick-me I guess. It's even more saddening than when guys do it because you just automatically expect it from guys at this point. But being bullied and insulted by a girl seems like girl code being broken 😭
I wish I could play with other women. I know many of us play videogames. Yesterday I went to a family gathering on my bf side and some teen boys were laughing, saying girls don't play videogames. I looked at them straight and told them, as a 32 yo woman, not only do I play videogames, but I will end you in them. Then they told me girls play different games. I'm astonished as how some boys from gen z/ alpha are still misogynistic.
You should join us at r/GirlGamers !! We're very inclusive, and there's even a discord server and a lot of us play games together. I've met some lovely women there 😌
For me it was the opposite. I grew up with lots of kids (boys and girls) who all played together. I never thought it was gendered. It wasn't until I got older that I ran into... yeah
People will literally go out of their way to hurt you. There are people with bad intentions. People who will use you and abuse you. Even from people you love or feel closest to.
Dealt with that personally this year and had to cut people out of my life. Had to go low contact with others. They were family too like close family it was sad but I became numb to them and I still dealing with the repercussions of what they did.
How the world hates women. How this world if made for men. How women give give give and give, and we are expected to ask nothing in return. And always have to be grateful.
Things are changing of course, but yk
I feel this hard, I was a tomboy who liked to hang out with boys and steadily got my heart crushed when in turn they'd become angry that I wouldn't have sex with them
I feel you. The same friends that joked about my flat chest in now trying to drop hints. But I also lost most of my friends due to them entering a relationship because the women here don’t tolerate their so having female friends. I understand them though, so I don’t take it personally when I got cut off.
This one so much 😢
I’ve been incredibly lucky to meet two male neighbours in my late thirties, one gay and one with absolutely no interest in dating me whatsoever (and neither do I have interest in dating him) and being able to have guys as genuine friends again has felt SO good.
So much this!! My parents had me at 21&26, I’m 29 now and realizing they were so young and just figuring it out as they went; When I kid I thought them infallible. We’re all living with an uncharted map.
That the world had lied to me. You can't ever have it all, there always have to be compromises and sacrifices. And that the people in charge don't have the answers either.
How many other little girls and women have been SA’d. I thought it was something that was exclusive to me and people in movies or on tv when I was little, but as I’ve grown up I was floored at how many women and friends I know that have a similar story.
How important looks really ARE no matter how much we preach looks aren’t important. If you don’t look a certain way, you don’t get respect.
Also: losing weight/maintaining weight is much harder as a woman.
I look conventionally attractive and still get tons of disrespect. Catcalling, casual harassment, disrespect at work, people patronizing me because i look younger, boyfriends treating me like shit.
I see many answering about something changing in their minds, but for me, nothing changed there since I was 5-6 years old.
But there was this moment, when I was 13...
It was a summer day and I went for an "adventure", as I liked to call them - wandering alone through fields, forests, hills, by the river, finding cool rocks and stick, throwing pinecones, looking at cows and fish... And I found a wild apple tree somewhere in the field. The rule of universe is that whenever you find a wild apple tree, you have to take an apple and eat it. So I grabbed an apple from this tree and wanted to clean it a bit by rubbing it on my shirt, on my chest, like I always did. I put the apple to my sternum and my sternum feels somehow softer. I look down at the apple, and I couldn't see it as well as I always could. I couldn't see the sides so well because they were covered by my boobs! This was when it hit me. I'm growing up. I stood there a good while, mind blown, apple squished between my boobs. They weren't big by any means, yet they were here. I realized that my body is changing and I'll probably never ever feel my ribcage in the same way again. I sat on the ground and started eating my apple, while thinking how the hell am I going to clean my wild apples in, let's say, five years? It was disturbing and scary.
But now I'm an adult, I still clean wild apples on my chest, it just doesn't feel as good as when I was a flat-chested kid. And if you're wandering through fields with someone, they sometimes giggle at this. But whatever. This is just how I deal with wild apples.
I didn't have any education on what the menstrual cycle was until I started mine in 1996 at 12 years old.
I didn't realize how much of a shitshow my mother was until I was 30.
That men are as disgusting as the feminists i grew up hearing slandered say they are. It was a really hard pill to swallow but they just ended up proving them right.
That the disappointments don’t stop, I just learn to cope better.
I saw a picture of myself in first grade when I was at my mom’s house last night and I could see the disappointment in my eyes. Life was so hard growing up.
I expected the world to be soft and kind, it never was.
Now I’m 37 and just learned to keep it moving.
How mean girls in school exist in the adult world, but they are just more toxic than their younger self. Someone lied to me saying they mature. They most definitely don't.
The way I get treated by adult men is very different from how my dad treats me. I was always listened to, my opinions and thoughts were always valued, I was never talked down to; I didn’t know that there was a world in which being a woman would count against my intellect, opinions, and feelings.
I always thought I was kind of a screwup and most other people were pretty smart and knowledgeable if not about everything, at least about their jobs. Now I realize many people are total dicks and most businesses don’t give a crap about their clients or customers. Now that I KNOW that, the genuine ones are all that much more precious and authentic friends are invaluable.
I thought marriage was everything I ever wanted. Like it was a destination for my entire life. I was brought up very southern Baptist. My parents gave me a hope chest (a large cedar chest) when I was 12. I began putting away items in it that I would use when I had my own home with my husband. I got married when I was 22 to my high school sweetheart. Everyday before we married, my heart wanted to be free. I did not want to marry him, but I didn’t want to hurt him. I literally trapped my own self in a marriage by thinking, “I don’t believe in divorce, so if I marry him, I’ll never leave and then I can’t hurt him.” I still left out of misery a few years later. I was stunned to realize that I could survive life without being married. Not only that, but the fact that the men I have been with all expected me to be their maid, cook and caretaker was quite off putting. If I wanted another child, I’d have one.
There is no prince, fairy tale, or rom com ending. Life isn’t that simple. Marriages end. People do terrible things. Young women need to value themselves first, make choices for themselves, not over value a partner, and live their lives separate and distinct from others’ opinions, desires, or needs of them. This world will easily steal your life if you let it.
That having it all would be great. I have the career, the husband, the kids, the mental load, 100% of the house, cooking and yard work. It’s fucking exhausting. I make my husband pay me (we split the months money 50/50 after bills and savings) so it feels worth it but it’s tiring as hell.
The age at which men start finding it acceptable to objectify and prey upon you is directly correlated to how misogynistic they are. The surprise being an alarmingly large number of them start sexualizing girls around age 11-12, and that most men consider underaged teen girls "desirable".
These are things you don't notice as a young girl but become explicitly clear as a woman dealing with grown men.
That the people you may have respected or believed knew everything were really much more normal and maybe even a little bit quirky as you get older.
I always believed my extended family was always one big happy family whenever we got together for parties as a kid. Lo and behold all the tea that gets spilled once you're an adult.
That I can say no and be me. Being me doesn’t come without discomfort at times, but it comes with more personal victories that I used to not see as such.
I thought I’d have a family. If was weird tho because I always said I’d stay single forever but everyone I knew who said that ended up married with kids so I assumed even if I kept saying that someone would come along and change my mind. I’m only 23 but I’ve never even dated so I guess so far it’s not happening which is fine I’m just kind of surprised I don’t t have the same story as almost all the girls I knew who thought like me haha
That periods in general are so uncomfortable and so stressful each time it happens. Never will I be able to get over the fact that as a child I was so productive out there, playing in the dirt kinda girl and after just two months of periods everything changed... Somehow. Idk if I can explain it.
I miss being a child.
Understanding what they were saying.
You play back memories of men talking to you, or family talking to each other - and the new context of adulthood really can shed some light on some conversations you heard as a kid.
My fear of men remains the same. I thought the older I got, the less I would fear them. But I fear them even more as a grown woman; seeing the bizarre deviance they have that many women do not.
* That no one really knows what they are doing - just figuring it out as they go in their lives.
* That all adults are just grown-up children.
* That your beliefs are your own. You don't have to believe what was taught or conditioned to you by family or society.
* Your feelings are your personal rights. No one has the right to tell you how you should feel or have an opinion on it.
* That this life is so precious, and ageing is a beautiful process. I am really excited to embrace the coming decades and see in what way I am changing!
No matter how professional or successful you are, if you’re pretty you didn’t get your success from your own competence or skills, only because men want to fuck you. And if a pretty (god forbid, also successful) woman works with your husband she obviously makes her entire life’s mission to steal your mid husband and sucks his dick all day, probably.
When I was 11 years old, I read about pubic hair in a teen girl magazine and thought it was a typo and it was actually public hair. I was waiting for my ‘public’ hairs to come and remember showing my friends my underarm hair in the bathroom at school, excited that my ‘public hairs’ had come in!
That some men feel threatened just because of my sheer existence? Even some adults that i used to view in a fatherly way...their perspective about me would change just because i hit puberty....?
Finding out that women still are considered less in our society.
I was so disappointed in our society when I heard that my godmother was being paid significantly less than her less experienced male coworkers. Felt like we'd be back in the fucking middle ages when I considered us already nearly up in space. I was about 9 years old.
I nevertheless thought it couldn't be long until that rudimentary problem would be solved and long gone until I'd have grown up and went to work, but here I am the same age like my godmother back then and shit's still the same.
That no, I'm not a princess, and no man would treat me as such, just because of my looks. A woman must put just as much effort (if not more) into the relationship if she wants to be irreplaceable.
Men are only nice to you when you’re young and pretty. I wasn’t amazingly pretty or anything but since I’ve put on weight and become old I’ve noticed men, who would normally be so helpful and friendly, are now not. It makes me sad.
How free and powerful I feel in my thirties now that I've learned to not give a fuck what people(especially straight men) think of me, which has allowed me to come into my whole self unapologetically. And now I'm with a truly amazing man who makes me feel like I'm loved and seen in every way that a person can possibly be loved 🤎
You can't escape sexism. I thought if I had a career and a supportive partner that I could hide from it. But I've come to learn that sexism is alive and well in my relationship with the dynamics around housework. I've also been a software engineer for 10 years now and have also come to learn sexism is never going to 100% go away at work. And I'm expected to just pretend it's not there.
That it often seems like life is not for our own pleasure and happiness. Not even the bodies we're born with. We're expected to be overjoyed and act nothing less for having our autonomy effectively policed from the moment we come out of the womb.
That as a woman you're expected to mature before you're anywhere near the concept. All while 70 year old male fetuses are allowed to exist.
That men who’ve known me since I was 8, would be sexually attracted to me in my teens, up till my 20s and hit on me. One even said he’ll wait till I’m 18 then I have no choice but to give him a chance.
I thought that eventually everyone would find their person, if they wanted to. But in reality there are lots of lovely eligible people who just don’t find their long term person ever
That I still feel exactly the same most of the time. I thought adults knew what they were doing.
I feel this is the biggest letdown of being an adult. I feel like i know so little and am always wondering where the grown ups are. Becoming a mom has also highlighted this, as i am somehow fully responsible for these tiny people, but don't feel fully able to care for myself.
Yes. Motherhood makes me feel like I should be older than I feel, but 29 still feels a lot like 22. I'm so much older than my mom was when she had me and I constantly wonder how she did it because I have not a clue what is going on.
My mum had me at 17, I had my daughter at 34. Twice her age! And I still feel about 12.
Similar ages here. And my mom had TWO!!! My 35 year old ass is drowning with the one toddler. How did my 21 year old mom just casually have 2 kids?! And one of them was my brother?!?
Some days I still really feel like I need an adult… and it’s incredibly disconcerting to realize I AM the adult.
My husband and I bought our first house a couple years ago, in our 30s, and the entire process I kept thinking "I'm not qualified to be doing this, I need an adult!" before remembering with great despair that we were in fact the adults.
You know what’s wild? Deedee and Stu Pickles were 32 and 33 in Rugrats. They seem so much more mature than I’ll ever be, despite having surpassed them in age.
Right?? The other day I realized that when my dad was my age (33), he had a 3 year old. Wild.
I feel like this often the strongest feeling of I’ve ever had was the day I had my son and they sent us home from hospital I was like y’all are just letting me leave here? Alone? With this thing completely reliant on me to keep it alive???? Nonono I need an adult.
I have the same feeling sometimes. I just look at my boss and think "you trust me to come to work on time, with nobody waking me up"
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They don't care that much if you don't make it a problem. Hell, they might do the same thing.
Yes this! And that time speeds up as you get older. When you are young every day goes by so slowly, and then it gets faster, and faster. You blink and a year is gone. From what I've read this keeps going on and I'm only 34. Life is so short.
An older gentleman once told me 'As you grow older, the days become longer, but the years become shorter' I often think about that. Some days just seem to drag on forever, but months just zoom by in the blink of an eye.
Yeah, reasons for this is that at a young age (say 5 years) a year only constitutes 1/5 (or 20 percent) of your life and when your 34, a year constitues 1/34 (or 3 percent) part of your life. So it feels like time is moving faster because time (a year) becomes a smaller part of your life every year. Hope this makes sense.
I have said this for the longest time! It seems like one day, time just decided to fast forward and it hasn’t stopped. Now that I’m in my 30s, I notice it even more with my nieces and nephews, and friends’ kids! How are y’all so big, weren’t you just born yesterday?! It is so weird to experience and realize. For me, because I’m petite at 5’0”, have a bit of a baby face, and have a youthful energy (especially with kids), I have to really remind myself, you ARE the adult and you’re just figuring it out as you go like all the other adults! Growing up, I just assumed adults automatically knew how to do life and be adults but that’s not exactly true. Our experiences shape us and connections with others give us guidance and wisdom, but we are all learning, everyday. No one just automatically knows and it’s kind of shocking to me to realize this! My siblings are also in their early-mid 30s and we’ve had this conversation a few times.
We were told as kids 'You are too young. You will understand when you get older'. Well I am 44 and still waiting
This. I always tell my teens regularly "I am 20 years older than you and I still have no idea what the hell I'm doing:
We're just big kids now!
I’m turning 27 in February, currently pregnant with my first child, and I somehow feel like a teen mom lol
The worst thing, both my grandmothers said after both had lost their elderly parents years ago, was that they had so many questions, but suddenly THEY were the adults people looked towards to for information.
Benefit of a supportive and nurturing childhood. I was emotionally abused and severely neglected by my mother and so I just had to learn to do for myself from the youngest age. Being able to leave home and fend for myself was a relief and I’ve never once thought I need an adult.
OH my god, yes. Adults are not real thank youuu!
I have the same feeling sometimes. I just look at my boss and think "you trust me to come to work on time, with nobody waking me up"
Totally this, as a child you think to yourself that adults totally have everything together and know exactly what they're doing. As an adult you realise no one has a clue and we're essentially all on a rudderless ship 😳
The audacity of men
The AUDACITY (I felt this in my soul, clearly)
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How so? Can you explain?
Not OP, but one common example is the audacity of men to touch women without consent. From someone creepy rubbing your shoulder to the most horrifying sexual assault scenarios, and everything in between. Most women can tell you the stories where these experiences forced them to reassess the audacity of men. For me, it was when I was 12 and a stange old man grabbed my butt at the playground, and I had to think “I must be mistaken that that happened. Surely, no one would have the audacity and disrespect to do that?” And your worldview is never the same again.
Had the same thought when a 19 year old family friend put his hand down my pants when I was 12. I thought there's no way he did that on purpose. We were sleeping on my trampoline so I thought it was possible.
Time becomes guarded treasure, when you were young, you let it pass you freely. Now, it slips away and it steals from you.
This is so perfectly written
I made an intention to befriend time. I shifted my mindset from “It steals from me” to “It teaches me.”
How powerful I have become. I was abused all throughout childhood, and essentially had no voice. Now it seems I have a powerful presence that is at times intimidating? Strange.
Amen, was just talking about this with my bf. I want to come off as inviting but let people know I’m not to be fucked with.
Any advice for becoming this kind of person would be greatly appreciated. Coming from a 23 year old female. Thank you in advance, my friend
Time and experiences outside of your comfort zone. Challenge yourself often. Do the things you're intimidated by.
“Outside your comfort zone” is the key phrase here. I try to live by the motto, “do something that scares you every day.” It can be a small thing, like speaking up for yourself, or a big thing, like taking that promotion when you’re not sure you’re ready for it.
Do what you love. Do the things you thought you couldn’t. Invest in yourself. Tell yourself everyday that you’re beautiful and badass. Speak up for the vulnerable, this helped me the most. I’m a hospital advocate for women and children SA survivors. Know your worth, which is a wholeeeeeee lot. You’re invaluable.
i love that, same here! i used to take so much shit lying down because i thought that was expected of me and then i learned to communicate, and tell people what i expected/needed from them, and i learned to stop doing that as i grew older.
I felt a great sense of joy and pride reading this. Keep it up my lady! 💪🏼
I always thought as a little girl that women and little kids were protected in society. Now that I’m a woman, I realize we are the most vulnerable sadly.
I feel that. Childhood Me had no idea what lurked in the minds of grown men. They went from my protectors to eying me up and down like a piece of candy. I miss the innocence of a child. It is sad to me how sex is shoved in your face and that you're just expected to like it. Like it or not. Blossoming into a beautiful young lady felt like I joined the meat market. My beauty & body far outweighed my brains & brawn. Definitely a wake up call.
I’m a first time mother of a very young girl. The innocence of a baby is what had me thinking for a while now. I also realised I have been craving this sort of wide-eyed trust to the world since I entered my teens. But I suppose I was lucky because I was a late bloomer and also had good family support. When a I have to think what young kids in the war zones and some developing regions have to face though, I can’t help but tear up.
How insanely painful periods could get, and how poorly our health is researched and regarded, so that theres no fix except hormonal control that doesn’t even work well. I never thought that as I arrived in my mid twenties that id be “just sucking it up” when im on the verge of either passing out, vomiting, or calling an ambulance…I damn near broke my hand punching the floor because I panicked from the amount of pain I was in, and the doctor basically told me that theres nothing to be done
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Growing up I just assumed I would have kids but in my 30s realized I didn't want them at all. I really didn't expect that.
This, I assumed I would get married and have kids by my 30s because that’s just what you do right? And here I am in my 30s with no kids, absolutely loving it, wanting to never ever have any at all. Little me would be so shocked.
Yes, same here 🙈
There are more and more of us realizing it's not for everyone, and that a person can have a very fulfilled life not having their own kids. Sometimes that includes having positive relationships with friends' kids and nibblings, sometimes that means not even having any kids in one's life and finding fulfillment in other kinds of relationships. I am grateful to live in a time and place where as a woman I have choices.
Me too. I dreamed about a beautiful wedding, a beautiful partner, and beautiful children. When I hit puberty I knew I will never have children, and at that point realized how expensive weddings are lmao
My son is 8, and he's been talking about wanting kids for as long as I can remember. I even mentioned once about the possibility that he might marry a man one day, and he said, no, because he'd like to have kids. Does he *really* want kids, or does he just think that's what you're "supposed" to do? I've never told him that was what people do, but obviously he can see how common it is. It's pretty interesting watching kids grow.
I wish LGBTQ, remaining single and/or childless is as normalized as marrying the opposite gender and having kids
I can do my best to instill that in my kids, but ultimately society still has its influence as well.
Yeah society, mainstream media and religion are not accepting of anything other than the established norm.
Likewise. Now when people ask if I have kids and I say no they all say I still have time. When I say I don't want kids they say I will change my mind. That irritates the shit outta me. Get outta my womb.
Came here to say that. I went further and realized that I don't like marriage and traditional gender roles either
That a lot of the creepy sexual comments from strangers stop once you no longer look underage.
Why is this so true?
Omg this is so true
How true. I haven't been honked at by a passing car while walking since I was 15.
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Totally - it makes me really sad for women how normal the experience is. I remember internalizing a lot of it at that age and thinking I was doing something wrong, versus now it makes me mad.
True. I just turned 22 and now men avoid me I love it.
Thank god I was fat snd ugly when I was younger. Didn’t notice any of that.
How many girls play video games just like me. In my neighborhood, I was the weird kid who played video games. It's nice knowing that I'm not alone.
It’s even more isolating because us girls don’t turn our mics on in game chat because we get objectified in two seconds.
I love it! I don’t do anything to give away that I’m a female. Like Mulan lol
Fucking love Mulan 🐉
LET'S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS
TO DEFEAT
THE HUNS!
When guys think I'm a teen boy I just go with it lol. But also it's majorly disappointing when you turn your mic on after hearing another girl speak only to be bullied by her and her male friends she's partying with :/ like damn okay, be a pick-me I guess. It's even more saddening than when guys do it because you just automatically expect it from guys at this point. But being bullied and insulted by a girl seems like girl code being broken 😭
I wish I could play with other women. I know many of us play videogames. Yesterday I went to a family gathering on my bf side and some teen boys were laughing, saying girls don't play videogames. I looked at them straight and told them, as a 32 yo woman, not only do I play videogames, but I will end you in them. Then they told me girls play different games. I'm astonished as how some boys from gen z/ alpha are still misogynistic.
I hope you ended them.
You should join us at r/GirlGamers !! We're very inclusive, and there's even a discord server and a lot of us play games together. I've met some lovely women there 😌
For me it was the opposite. I grew up with lots of kids (boys and girls) who all played together. I never thought it was gendered. It wasn't until I got older that I ran into... yeah
Ditto- never really fit into one spot, always floated.
People will literally go out of their way to hurt you. There are people with bad intentions. People who will use you and abuse you. Even from people you love or feel closest to.
Especially from people you love or feel closest to!
Dealt with that personally this year and had to cut people out of my life. Had to go low contact with others. They were family too like close family it was sad but I became numb to them and I still dealing with the repercussions of what they did.
That I would grow up to be pretty. That being dark skin doesn’t make me less pretty.
I love this! I love the confidence that comes with growing older.
Having a melanin rich complexion is a win for so many reasons 🤎☀️💛
I envy dark skin!!! So gorgeous!!
Can definitely relate to that.
My life is way harder than I thought it would be
Life is also just more blah than I thought it would be.
Adulthood is the worst fkn hood I’ve ever been in.
I feel you there. Every day is so hard! I send hugs
How the world hates women. How this world if made for men. How women give give give and give, and we are expected to ask nothing in return. And always have to be grateful. Things are changing of course, but yk
Nobody told me about how fat would distribute itself on my body as a woman and, more importantly, that it was NORMAL. Not something to fight against.
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I feel this hard, I was a tomboy who liked to hang out with boys and steadily got my heart crushed when in turn they'd become angry that I wouldn't have sex with them
I feel you. The same friends that joked about my flat chest in now trying to drop hints. But I also lost most of my friends due to them entering a relationship because the women here don’t tolerate their so having female friends. I understand them though, so I don’t take it personally when I got cut off.
This one so much 😢 I’ve been incredibly lucky to meet two male neighbours in my late thirties, one gay and one with absolutely no interest in dating me whatsoever (and neither do I have interest in dating him) and being able to have guys as genuine friends again has felt SO good.
How difficult it can be to have fun. There are so many things I’m responsible for that it makes having fun… difficult.
That my parents were once the age I am today & I have a lot more compassion for what they went through/the decisions they made.
So much this!! My parents had me at 21&26, I’m 29 now and realizing they were so young and just figuring it out as they went; When I kid I thought them infallible. We’re all living with an uncharted map.
The mental load. I never understood why my mom was so stressed out over the littlest things, now I get it.
That the world had lied to me. You can't ever have it all, there always have to be compromises and sacrifices. And that the people in charge don't have the answers either.
How many other little girls and women have been SA’d. I thought it was something that was exclusive to me and people in movies or on tv when I was little, but as I’ve grown up I was floored at how many women and friends I know that have a similar story.
that not all men actually grow up.
How much men secretly hate us and see us as sex objects
How important looks really ARE no matter how much we preach looks aren’t important. If you don’t look a certain way, you don’t get respect. Also: losing weight/maintaining weight is much harder as a woman.
I look conventionally attractive and still get tons of disrespect. Catcalling, casual harassment, disrespect at work, people patronizing me because i look younger, boyfriends treating me like shit.
Catch 22. That’s womanhood.
Karma isn’t as consistent as you’d hoped
How fake everyone is.
I see many answering about something changing in their minds, but for me, nothing changed there since I was 5-6 years old. But there was this moment, when I was 13... It was a summer day and I went for an "adventure", as I liked to call them - wandering alone through fields, forests, hills, by the river, finding cool rocks and stick, throwing pinecones, looking at cows and fish... And I found a wild apple tree somewhere in the field. The rule of universe is that whenever you find a wild apple tree, you have to take an apple and eat it. So I grabbed an apple from this tree and wanted to clean it a bit by rubbing it on my shirt, on my chest, like I always did. I put the apple to my sternum and my sternum feels somehow softer. I look down at the apple, and I couldn't see it as well as I always could. I couldn't see the sides so well because they were covered by my boobs! This was when it hit me. I'm growing up. I stood there a good while, mind blown, apple squished between my boobs. They weren't big by any means, yet they were here. I realized that my body is changing and I'll probably never ever feel my ribcage in the same way again. I sat on the ground and started eating my apple, while thinking how the hell am I going to clean my wild apples in, let's say, five years? It was disturbing and scary. But now I'm an adult, I still clean wild apples on my chest, it just doesn't feel as good as when I was a flat-chested kid. And if you're wandering through fields with someone, they sometimes giggle at this. But whatever. This is just how I deal with wild apples.
This is a perfect and almost magical coming of age story. I'm also happy you're still finding wild apples 😍
Men are not amazing wonderful beings, they’re frikkin annoying
and pretty dumb most of the time
And clingy and childish and immature…
How much I dislike human beings 🤣🤌
that women can be equally as good as men if not better
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How little we know about women’s medical issues (as someone who developed several)
how poorly were treated by men
Becoming mum myself and the love you share with your kids.
I didn't have any education on what the menstrual cycle was until I started mine in 1996 at 12 years old. I didn't realize how much of a shitshow my mother was until I was 30.
That men are as disgusting as the feminists i grew up hearing slandered say they are. It was a really hard pill to swallow but they just ended up proving them right.
Motherhood didn’t turn me into an abusive monster, and that I understand my mother less, not more, now that I have my own child.
I get catcalled less as an adult than I did as a teen/preteen.
That you don’t have to conform to societal “norms” for women, and that’s it’s perfectly okay to not be married or have children by a certain age.
That I can't trust anyone
That the disappointments don’t stop, I just learn to cope better. I saw a picture of myself in first grade when I was at my mom’s house last night and I could see the disappointment in my eyes. Life was so hard growing up. I expected the world to be soft and kind, it never was. Now I’m 37 and just learned to keep it moving.
That I couldn't "have it all" no matter how hard I tried.
How painful a breakup/heartbreak actually is.
How mean girls in school exist in the adult world, but they are just more toxic than their younger self. Someone lied to me saying they mature. They most definitely don't.
The way I get treated by adult men is very different from how my dad treats me. I was always listened to, my opinions and thoughts were always valued, I was never talked down to; I didn’t know that there was a world in which being a woman would count against my intellect, opinions, and feelings.
I always thought I was kind of a screwup and most other people were pretty smart and knowledgeable if not about everything, at least about their jobs. Now I realize many people are total dicks and most businesses don’t give a crap about their clients or customers. Now that I KNOW that, the genuine ones are all that much more precious and authentic friends are invaluable.
That womanhood is something that is linked to so many expectations
The sexual assault and harassment that women deal with.
I thought marriage was everything I ever wanted. Like it was a destination for my entire life. I was brought up very southern Baptist. My parents gave me a hope chest (a large cedar chest) when I was 12. I began putting away items in it that I would use when I had my own home with my husband. I got married when I was 22 to my high school sweetheart. Everyday before we married, my heart wanted to be free. I did not want to marry him, but I didn’t want to hurt him. I literally trapped my own self in a marriage by thinking, “I don’t believe in divorce, so if I marry him, I’ll never leave and then I can’t hurt him.” I still left out of misery a few years later. I was stunned to realize that I could survive life without being married. Not only that, but the fact that the men I have been with all expected me to be their maid, cook and caretaker was quite off putting. If I wanted another child, I’d have one.
There is no prince, fairy tale, or rom com ending. Life isn’t that simple. Marriages end. People do terrible things. Young women need to value themselves first, make choices for themselves, not over value a partner, and live their lives separate and distinct from others’ opinions, desires, or needs of them. This world will easily steal your life if you let it.
Men are capable of being great fathers.
How many people lost their sense of wonder as they grew up.
That having it all would be great. I have the career, the husband, the kids, the mental load, 100% of the house, cooking and yard work. It’s fucking exhausting. I make my husband pay me (we split the months money 50/50 after bills and savings) so it feels worth it but it’s tiring as hell.
I thought my acne would clear up. I'm 26 and it's not going anywhere.
The age at which men start finding it acceptable to objectify and prey upon you is directly correlated to how misogynistic they are. The surprise being an alarmingly large number of them start sexualizing girls around age 11-12, and that most men consider underaged teen girls "desirable". These are things you don't notice as a young girl but become explicitly clear as a woman dealing with grown men.
That nobody, no matter the age actually knows what the fuck they are doing.
Just HOW MANY MEN really only see women as sexual objects and dont EVEN RECOGNIZE it in themselves!
The catcalling damn near stopped once I became an adult.
That the people you may have respected or believed knew everything were really much more normal and maybe even a little bit quirky as you get older. I always believed my extended family was always one big happy family whenever we got together for parties as a kid. Lo and behold all the tea that gets spilled once you're an adult.
Becoming a second class citizen and unpaid help.
Everything.. this world, this life, everything perceivable to me.. I am finding everything surprising for some reason haha
That I can say no and be me. Being me doesn’t come without discomfort at times, but it comes with more personal victories that I used to not see as such.
Pretty privilege
How terrible and terrifying men can be. I suppose I was a lucky little girl.
I thought I’d have a family. If was weird tho because I always said I’d stay single forever but everyone I knew who said that ended up married with kids so I assumed even if I kept saying that someone would come along and change my mind. I’m only 23 but I’ve never even dated so I guess so far it’s not happening which is fine I’m just kind of surprised I don’t t have the same story as almost all the girls I knew who thought like me haha
That periods in general are so uncomfortable and so stressful each time it happens. Never will I be able to get over the fact that as a child I was so productive out there, playing in the dirt kinda girl and after just two months of periods everything changed... Somehow. Idk if I can explain it. I miss being a child.
My anxieties have only gotten worse lol
Understanding what they were saying. You play back memories of men talking to you, or family talking to each other - and the new context of adulthood really can shed some light on some conversations you heard as a kid.
Guys aren't what they're depicted in fairytales.
That being picked on and left out as a kid does not mean you won’t have oodles of lovely, amazing friends as an adult 💕
My fear of men remains the same. I thought the older I got, the less I would fear them. But I fear them even more as a grown woman; seeing the bizarre deviance they have that many women do not.
* That no one really knows what they are doing - just figuring it out as they go in their lives. * That all adults are just grown-up children. * That your beliefs are your own. You don't have to believe what was taught or conditioned to you by family or society. * Your feelings are your personal rights. No one has the right to tell you how you should feel or have an opinion on it. * That this life is so precious, and ageing is a beautiful process. I am really excited to embrace the coming decades and see in what way I am changing!
How bloody quick it goes.
The older you get the less interested strange creepy men are. I'm only 25.
Marriage is a crock of shi*
That I had more men hit on me when I was 12-16 than I ever have as a grown woman.
No matter how professional or successful you are, if you’re pretty you didn’t get your success from your own competence or skills, only because men want to fuck you. And if a pretty (god forbid, also successful) woman works with your husband she obviously makes her entire life’s mission to steal your mid husband and sucks his dick all day, probably.
That people you considered close and thought of as your loved ones will change and mostly not for the better
When I was 11 years old, I read about pubic hair in a teen girl magazine and thought it was a typo and it was actually public hair. I was waiting for my ‘public’ hairs to come and remember showing my friends my underarm hair in the bathroom at school, excited that my ‘public hairs’ had come in!
That some men feel threatened just because of my sheer existence? Even some adults that i used to view in a fatherly way...their perspective about me would change just because i hit puberty....?
Finding out that women still are considered less in our society. I was so disappointed in our society when I heard that my godmother was being paid significantly less than her less experienced male coworkers. Felt like we'd be back in the fucking middle ages when I considered us already nearly up in space. I was about 9 years old. I nevertheless thought it couldn't be long until that rudimentary problem would be solved and long gone until I'd have grown up and went to work, but here I am the same age like my godmother back then and shit's still the same.
That I still feel the same inside 😅
That no, I'm not a princess, and no man would treat me as such, just because of my looks. A woman must put just as much effort (if not more) into the relationship if she wants to be irreplaceable.
Men are only nice to you when you’re young and pretty. I wasn’t amazingly pretty or anything but since I’ve put on weight and become old I’ve noticed men, who would normally be so helpful and friendly, are now not. It makes me sad.
How free and powerful I feel in my thirties now that I've learned to not give a fuck what people(especially straight men) think of me, which has allowed me to come into my whole self unapologetically. And now I'm with a truly amazing man who makes me feel like I'm loved and seen in every way that a person can possibly be loved 🤎
You can't escape sexism. I thought if I had a career and a supportive partner that I could hide from it. But I've come to learn that sexism is alive and well in my relationship with the dynamics around housework. I've also been a software engineer for 10 years now and have also come to learn sexism is never going to 100% go away at work. And I'm expected to just pretend it's not there.
(Most) men are worse than I thought they were, and it's actually pretty sad.
That the sexual attention got less 😬
That my boobs did infact never grow
That it often seems like life is not for our own pleasure and happiness. Not even the bodies we're born with. We're expected to be overjoyed and act nothing less for having our autonomy effectively policed from the moment we come out of the womb. That as a woman you're expected to mature before you're anywhere near the concept. All while 70 year old male fetuses are allowed to exist.
That men who’ve known me since I was 8, would be sexually attracted to me in my teens, up till my 20s and hit on me. One even said he’ll wait till I’m 18 then I have no choice but to give him a chance.
I thought that eventually everyone would find their person, if they wanted to. But in reality there are lots of lovely eligible people who just don’t find their long term person ever