Dear Carolyn: I am at my wit's end with my two adult daughters. They are both in their 30s, very capable, with great jobs and many wonderful qualities, but wildly depressed, and their personal lives are a mess. One of them has had an on-again, off-again relationship with a man who won't commit. The other is in a many-years-long relationship with a wonderful man but SHE won't commit, despite crying and claiming she wants a family and children.
My sisters have adult children with their own families and children whom they spend holidays with, and it pains me to see my own daughters so stuck and to contemplate yet another year with my daughters of the same stuck-ness, and still no grandchildren or progress. What can I do or say that would help them (and me)?
-- Pained
Pained: How bout this: They are okay. Wherever they are, is okay. This is right where they need to be or else they would be somewhere else. Say this in your mind until it sticks.
What's a little tautology among friends.
The depression is concerning for obvious reasons. But I think there's a push-pull to it that may not get enough credit -- meaning, they may be struggling with the sense there's something wrong with not being alll set! by a certain arbitrary age. That alone can contribute to a battered, diminished sense of self-worth, when in fact they are and have always been as fine as anyone else, paired or un-, in the worth department. Because there's no clock, no race, no Major Award for Approximation of Happiness Through Life Milestone Achievement anywhere that I've ever seen.
I don't have access to your daughters, so I can't say, hey, this whole sense that you're supposed to be all paired off and checkboxed by now? It's utter [unprintable]. You'll figure out yourselves and/or these men when you're good and darn ready, or good and darn sick of not having figured them out.
But I have access to you. So I can ask you why you're so caught up in your adult children's business.
And I can ask, urge, beg you to adopt the view yourself, please, that there's no timeline. To stop looking over at your sisters as if they've won something with their kids that you didn't. You think your daughters don't know?
I really don't want to put a negative spin on any life choice, because they all have wonderful possibilities built into them. But if you want to talk stuckness, then there's arguably no stuckness like paired-off-with-kids stuckness. K?
Now, eyes on your own paper. Your two adult daughters are doing their thing and that's great. That they're capable and have great jobs and wonderful qualities is not stuff to breeze by.
When you unstick your expectations of what a happy or successful or rewarding life is supposed to look like, then you can get creative about what you and your daughters and their successes make available to you, possible for you, in this unique stage of your lives. There are so many paths, once you shed the weight of limited thinking.
Re: Stuckness: Mom, it's not their job to give you grandchildren. That expectation alone can eat away at their well-being.
-- Anonymous
Anonymous: Can we go with any expectation besides functioning as adults? Unless they're asking for things, "wit's end" is for kids.