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Dear Evan,
Everyone thinks I'm 32/33, but I have just turned 40. I am very far from being successful like your Love U clients, but I look great and am fit, smart, romantic, and generous. I can say without a doubt that I am a feminine energy type of woman.
I had a big myoma removed from my uterus three weeks ago, which means I can't get pregnant until the at least six-month-long internal healing is complete. I've never been married and have no children. How am I supposed to do all the things that you - so correctly! - teach? How am I supposed to "let go of the outcome" and never worry about "the last page of the book"? How am I supposed to relax, let the man make up his mind about me at his own pace, and wait 2.5 or 3 years before I decide to marry someone?
You always say your wife was 38 when you met her, and that her age was a problem for you initially as you wanted two kids. Her age made you think twice, rush things a bit, and propose when you were not 100% sure yet. It worked wonderfully for you guys, but... Where does that leave me? I'm 40. Why would a man who wants a family choose to speed up more than you did - a process he does NOT need to hurry at all? If you felt this way about her age, what would a man feel after finding out that I'm 40? And if I did online dating, this family-seeking man wouldn't even ask me out to begin with, as I wouldn't want to lie that I'm 35.
How am I supposed to feel optimistic if, after realizing I'm way older than I look, men who want kids will see me as a bag of fruit about to go bad? How can I feel certain that everything will turn out all right if my only chance of having a family is having a man falling for me so hard and so ridiculously fast that he will marry me after six months or one year tops? I am not saying that I find this totally impossible or that I am not someone who could bring that out in a man. Far from it!
But it is such agony to think that this is the only way I can have a family. It's like depending on a lottery prize to be able to retire or needing to score a goal in the last minute of a World Cup match in order to save your team from being sent home early. How can I grow and sustain this "cool girl who doesn't worry about outcomes" attitude in this context?
I am seriously thinking of putting children out of my equation. Not because I don't want a family anymore, but because right now at least I feel that this subject will only make me feel anxious or plain depressed and hopeless - and that definitely will not attract anything/anyone good to my life. What do you think? What is your take on this? My situation is such a painful and scary place to be, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
Lots of love and THANK YOU SO MUCH for everything you do!
Ana
Dear Ana,
I usually edit for brevity but I thought sharing your entire story was necessary to give you (and our readers) a greater sense of hope and peace. You articulate yourself well and you have a realistic sense of the obstacles that face you. That’s healthier than the alternative but it’s led you into a doomsday kind of thinking that is not serving you well in this crucial period of your life.
Let’s start with the facts of your situation and work backward into what you could proactively do to get the husband and family you desire.
You’re 40 years old. That means that - absent egg freezing and IVF - you have about a 5% chance of getting pregnant naturally with each cycle. Those are long odds, even with a husband. But it happens. 5% per month over six months or one year gives you far greater chances than you acknowledge.
As you noted in your email, my wife had kids at 41 and 42 without fertility treatments. The difference is that we started trying when she was 39 and, before getting pregnant, she went through two chemical pregnancies, two miscarriages, a fibroid surgery, and two exploratory trips to fertility labs.
We were both fertile and lucky.
Alas, you can’t control your age or fertility, but you can, to some degree, make your own luck. That’s what I want you to focus on today.
I recently learned a new term: post-traumatic growth. It’s about resilience, which comes in the form of optimism, gratitude, and the ability to shift to a different interpretation of the same events.
Thus, it doesn’t serve you well to lament that you’re 40 and want to fall in love, get married, and start a family in the next two years. You’re better off focusing on what you can control - since all trauma is about a lack of control.
Here are a few things you can do immediately, Ana, to gain a greater sense of power over your destiny.
You can embrace the idea that there’s no value in looking backward about what you did “wrong” to get here. The only focus is on what you do now.
You can express gratitude for what you do have: youthful good looks, intelligence, and a generous spirit, among other things.
You can develop an action plan and outlook that will be more empowering and effective in achieving your goal. Despite what you’re feeling right now, anxiety, scarcity, and paralysis, aren’t helping you. You have to game out a realistic path moving forward.
What does that path look like? In my opinion, it’s about embracing reality while simultaneously doing everything in your power to fight it. In Love U, we call it “short-term pessimism and long-term optimism.” Don’t expect too much from the next man you meet but know that if you persevere, you will find a great guy who wants the same things you do.
Will most 35-40-year-old men who want kids choose a 40-year-old woman online? No, for the very reasons you suggested: the majority of guys will want to date for a few years before making any huge life decisions. Timing is everything when it comes to dating, and if you’re on different timelines, a lot of these men will be automatically ruled out.
This doesn’t mean all is lost. There are always exceptions to such rules.
You can meet a man in real life who falls for you so much that he throws his arbitrary online search criteria out the window. I did this with my wife (who was 3 years older than my max age range online) and she did this with me (I’m 1000x more Jewish than the generic Christian guy she expected to marry.)
You can meet a man online who isn’t as attuned to your fertility and is open to pursuing fatherhood with you. I have a bunch of clients in their 40s who met their husbands this way.
You can change your search criteria to meet your target audience. This, in my opinion, gives you the best odds. While most 40-year-old women search for men without children, 35-45, you would open up to slightly older men as well as single fathers (if you’re not already doing so).
Remember: your dating pool consists of the men who want to date you. Who is likely to value a 40-year-old woman more? A 36-year-old never-married guy who is searching for women 25-35? Or a divorced dad between 45-50 who has a six-year-old girl but would love a second chance at being a husband and father? I think you know the answer.
If this sounds challenging (or distasteful), consider: the same way you have to compromise to date an older man with kids, he has to compromise to date an anxious woman of advanced maternal age who wants kids ASAP.
You can choose to close the book on motherhood. I’ve had many clients in their mid-40s who came to that conclusion - and later married men with kids, as well as men without kids. Both groups of women are happy because they found love. Even though I’m a proud father of two and couldn’t imagine my life without my children, I can point you to studies that show that women without children are happier than women with them.
By illustrating all these options, I hope it’s clear that the only thing I’m pushing is for you to put love first. Not that I judge women who freeze their eggs, find sperm donors, or choose to be single mothers (which I think is the hardest job in the world).
It’s that - when you find a man on the same page as you - regardless of whether he’s 40 or 50 or childless or a single parent - you can create a family together. It’s not all up to you.
You can do IVF. You can explore surrogacy. You can adopt. You can be a stepmom. You can find contentment in an infinite number of ways - but you’re doing it all with a loving man by your side.
You can find contentment in an infinite number of ways - but you’re doing it with a guy by your side.
If you want to learn how to date from a place of confidence and abundance despite your fears about aging and fertility, I invite you to apply to Love U.
You can be proactive in love and also “be cool” with the men you’re meeting.
Do you have a dating question? A disagreement with me? A screenshot of a guy’s text message? A dating app profile you want to write to but don’t know how? A honey shot? Click here or email me at questions@evanmarckatz.com and I’ll share it in a future Loveplaining.
Thanks for being part of my Love Universe!
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