I'm turning 40...no relationship, no children, no hope :(

First of all, before I dive in and say how much I can relate, let me give you a practical piece of advice (and I apologize in advance if you don't want advice and just want to vent): freeze your eggs. (I did this by the way, and it wasn't cheap but I just told myself that that is what the money is fore, for a family.) With frozen eggs and IVF you can have baby until you are 50. You can also do it with an egg donor within the same timeframe.

Another idea, if you want kids, have you thought about having one on your own? It's not easy, but there is a huge network of women joined by Single Mothers by Choice. You might want to check it out.

I am kinds of the flip side of your situation now but I can still relate. I never had a real boyfriend before I was 37. While I wasn't all that desperately focused on it, I certainly thought it would just happen for me the same way it seemed to for everybody else. I am now 42 and still with the same guy, my first official "real" boyfriend. We live together and do the whole domestic thing. He has frozen he gametes as well and we will probably pull the trigger on those suckers soon and make some embryos and get that bun in the oven. I fought hard and worked hard for this relationship, and I love him and I have a reasonably happy life.

But you know what? I can see myself having a good life without him, too. The toughest part for me about being single into my late 30s was how other people treated me because my friends were either married and settled or way younger than I was. With my coupled friends, it was always about inviting me to lunch and never over for dinner, if I got invitations at all. With a partner, suddenly I am socially relevant and get all sorts of invitations. (I was really able to test this theory because we were long-distance for a while and only lived together part of the time, when he was in town the invitations would roll in like the tide, when he left, they dried up again. People would constantly say, "we should get together, when Mr. Zazzlekdazzle is back in town?" And I would be thinking, "I'm actually here right now.") But that is a problem with other people.

What I am saying is that being with Mr. Zazz is great, but being without him was great, too. I finally have this domestic life that coveted and, while not bad, now that I have it I don't think it's the best thing ever by any stretch of the imagination. All my friends who love love love being married and all partnered-up started really young and never really tried it another way.

Lastly, while dating at 40 is not the easiest thing, if you are willing to date someone who may already have kids and to do some online dating (because, let's face it, as we get older our tastes before much more refined and we probably aren't going to meet a guy that matches all our criteria, and fits into our already full lives, by chance) I think you can do really well out there.

Good luck, sister!

/r/TwoXChromosomes Thread