Good morning everyone.
Sometimes I feel lost. I am 30 years old and the friends I have are the same friends ten years ago and they all still drink excessive alcohol. I am totally fine getting wasted once a year but they still do that every time we meet up.
I am also getting married soon, while I love my soon to be wife I get this huge feeling of anxiety when it comes towards our wedding. I invited most of my above friends because I don’t have any other friends. I wasted my 20s and thinking those are my friends but in the end I notice they are just drinking buddies. I don’t want to make them sound bad they are friendly people and they work and have degrees but the only connection I have to them is the bottle.
I wish I could just make a small wedding without inviting them and just cut ropes. But I already sent out the invites a year ago and organised most of the stuff for the wedding so I am going through it with them. And again, I don’t hate them. I just probably have like two close friends out of those 15 people and thats it. The rest is alcohol.
I am also in the process of building a house. We will be paying 1300 € to the bank the next 25 years and I designed the credit with my bank that I can pay it off with my salery alone in case my wife doesn’t work. I have about 3200 € a month after taxes and my (soon) wife 2400 € a month after taxes, so it seems possible.
Now the construction company of our house is slower than expected (planned to move in february and its gonna be may) and the wedding is july.
I wish I could take a sleeping pill and wake up next year.
Edit: Thank you to all for the kind answers and it helped me think about it from a different perspective and perhaps take things easier! Thanks
Cancel the wedding. Just have a tiny one. This became popular over COVID but is just a great idea in general.
Absolutely, have that conversation at least. Just tell them how uncomfortable you feel and if you can find a compromise. My wife and I got married in a courthouse for less than $50 and we still think it’s the best decision we ever made. Maybe do a road trip tour where you see small groups of people/family and celebrate afterwards.
That does all sound pretty normal/common. No worries on making any solid plans to drop the friends you don’t feel close to, it will happen naturally over time. Just focus on the ones you want to keep, make sure you are putting energy into those relationships.
Make sure that “accelerated payments” are at least an option for your mortgage/financing. So that if you do find in the future that you can spare a bit of cash, you can always pay extra on the house. Clearing it sooner saves a pretty insane amount of money.
In that same vein, try not to carry a balance on any credit cards. Pay them off fully every month. Credit card debt is easy to accidentally carry, and it’s crazy expensive. Always do the math on what your various sources of debt are actually costing you, and pay off the worst ones most aggressively.
And after all that, the next most important thing is to make sure you are enjoying life. It’s easy to get too wrapped up in things that feel more important than having a good time. But all the important stuff has a purpose, and the purpose is to increase your comfort, it can’t do that if you don’t let it. Find a balance that feels right for you.
Also, make sure you can talk to your wife, and hopefully the rest of your family about this sort of stuff too. Gain the perspective of as many people as possible, without having to gain it first hand yourself. Life is big, we are each of us small. But together, we can add up to be pretty big too.
It is perfectly normal to feel lost at some point in your life. There’s also nothing wrong with feeling like your friends aren’t really your friends. People change, priorities shift, and sometimes you get a new perspective on the people you know. It means you’re growing and are probably ready to move on to things that fit you better.
Try to take it day by day and look for smaller things you can appreciate. It’s not to shut out any problems, but to remind yourself that you are a complex person and that you need a wide range of things to feel satisfied and fulfilled.
People change over time. Who you consider a friend changes too. You are at that point in your life where you are realizing that that is the case and it is JARRING. Because very few people are warned that this can, and usually does, happen. In my case, I have 1 close friend, a few not so close friends and a lot of people I grew up with that are now essentially strangers that I once knew. There are going to be people you consider friends that are really friends of circumstance, there are friends you were linked at the hip for years that suddenly evaporate and very very few that stick with you as life long friends. The reality is that you’re probably going to have to rebuild your social circle many times throughout your life.
You can make a small wedding. There is no law of physics forcing you not to be able to do that. Just the social consequences. BUT you have to remember that this is you and your future wife’s wedding and you only really get one wedding so it should be what you both want and it does not sound like you want what you’ve set up. As for how to do that diplomatically… I am not an expert on that so Ill point to this article TLDR: They dont need to know why. And I would keep the details of the small wedding that would come later close to your chest.
So TOTALLY normal! I think most young adults at your stage of life have felt like you feel now (I know I did).
You don’t need to make a drastic change like dropping all of your friends urgently; like another commenter said, it’ll happen naturally over time. It’s a good idea to try and not burn bridges in your life, because everyone matures eventually (though it’s natural to drift apart from people while you’re in different stages of life).
One thing I do recommend: find a mentor. This would be an older person (ideally your same gender) who is just a bit further along than you (maybe at the kid stage if life, even if you’re not planning on having kids). A mentor can help ease your anxieties and help you level set for your next phase of life.
I’ve had luck finding mentors through religion (Christianity for me), but there are also mentoring clubs in most major cities. An elderly relative can also be a mentor, but I don’t have any of those. Start by asking a potential mentor out for coffee and then ask them for some advice. You’ll know if it’s a good fit because their advice will be wise, they won’t have an agenda, and they’re happy to give the advice.
You can always change who you want to be.
Yeah, man. The thing is, almost nobody has any fucking idea what they’re doing with their life. Most people are just winging it. And as you grow and learn about yourself, often times your priorities will change. It sounds very much like you just outgrew several of your friends, and that’s 100% completely normal. It also sounds like you’re learning about the wacky, wonderful world of construction delays, and that also, sadly, is 100% completely normal.
Life’s going to shit on you from time to time. Calling it now - their estimate of May is going to be way off. There’s even a good chance that you’re still not going to be able to move in by your wedding date. I mean, obviously I hope that’s not the case, that they actually make good on their estimate, and that you can move in and get that bit of hot stress out of your life. But from experience? Make a plan B.
There are two points of advice that I can give from my own life. The main thing, as some of the other users here have said, is to hold on tightly to those people in your life that you don’t want to lose. If someone is worth your effort, make sure you’re putting the effort in. Great people will drift apart from you just as surely as meh people if you don’t make a constant effort to keep them in your orbit. It’s just part of life.
The second bit of advice? Go easy on yourself. You’re probably not going to wake up tomorrow with some burning passion or sense of purpose and direction. You might never get it. Most people don’t. A good way to find happiness is to become ok with not making some huge impact on the world, and instead just focus on the things that bring you joy. And if it takes you a long time to come around to that mindset, I at least hope that you’ll be gentle with yourself along the way.
Yes it’s normal to feel lost - and you’ll go through it often. We change a lot over the course of our lives and that feeling of unsure-edness is one of the hallmarks of being alive.
Sounds like you’re making progress on important milestones so you can feel good about those things. It may take some distance to see exactly how much you’ve really accomplished and to appreciate how you did it even while feeling kind of lost or at sea.
Only thing I’d advise is, lay off the heavy drinking if you can. Being wasted isn’t a cure for the anxiety of living. And it takes more from you than it gives you, including screwing with your “feel good” chemicals over time. I wish you luck with it all!
Some people never grow past the “go out to get drunk” phase, some are alcoholics that drink everyday and you just don’t know, some are alcoholics that just can’t stop when they start but they don’t necessarily drink everyday. It’s normal that at some of the people will move on to other things at some point in their life and you’re one of those people, the good news is that you can focus on forming stronger bonds with fewer people and create life long relationships instead of having tens of “friends” that wouldn’t bother helping you if you were in a bad spot.
I’m sorry if I’m out of place here, but 3200 + 2400?! You’re fucking loaded dude!
Honestly it sounds like you are building the foundations of a good family. Maybe you are in a transition period where the consequences and requirements of being an adult are starting to become clearly visible.
Honestly in this economy it sounds like you have a leg up on most. Find joy in the little things, and look forward to a warm future.
Yes it’s normal to feel lost - and you’ll go through it often. We change a lot over the course of our lives and that feeling of unsure-edness is one of the hallmarks of being alive.
Sounds like you’re making progress on important milestones so you can feel good about those things. It may take some distance to see exactly how much you’ve really accomplished and to appreciate how you did it even while feeling kind of lost or at sea.
Only thing I’d advise is, lay off the heavy drinking if you can. Being wasted isn’t a cure for the anxiety of living. And it takes more from you than it gives you, including screwing with your “feel good” chemicals over time. I wish you luck with it all!
