Are you 30 or over and you’re single and childless? I know how you feel. As at writing this article I was you not long ago. I was in the same situation not long ago. I wish I can tell you honestly that you shouldn’t be worried, but I can’t, and for good reasons.
You’re clearly at a point in your life when getting married and having kids has become a priority for you. So even if I say don’t worry, realistically it’s not possible for you to stop worrying about this.
Also because there are valid reasons to be worried. While there is no time limit as to when to get married, there is a time limit to childbearing for women. Medical experts say an average woman’s reproductive years are between ages 21 to 51. And that as you get older your fertility declines and it becomes harder for you to conceive. And this applies to IVF too.
According to WebMD.com
The latest report, from 2018, shows that 50% of IVF procedures in women ages 35 and under resulted in a live birth. For women ages 42 and older, 3.9% of the egg transfers resulted in a birth.
See the huge difference between 35 and under and 42 and older? 😳 It’s scary to think about.
Then there’s the health risks too for older pregnant women. 🤦
This is not to add to your anxiety rather to keep things honest and practical.
You’re Not Alone
I read a post a few days ago by a lady who just clocked 30 and was feeling underachieved. She had planned out her life in her head and according to that plan she was supposed to have had a successful career by now and was supposed to have finished childbearing too. But here she was, no degree, no marriage and no children. I read her post and it touched me because I knew exactly how that feels and I know there are too many women in her shoes. I keep thinking how can I help this group of women, it’s partly why I started the Dear Karo session on this website. To give my time to listen to these women and offer them emotional and moral support. It’s not easy dealing with the feeling of sadness and loneliness alone. It could lead to serious depression. So anything I can do to help I’m open to it.
35 Single and Childless – The Struggle is Real
I remember when I was 30. That was 2011. In 2011 I was jobless, no money, no degree, no husband and no child. I was staying alone in one tiny room in a compound I will describe as ghetto. Imagine a house of 25 rooms how crowded that would be. I was only able to feed from the little allowance my elder sister was giving me. I had a job for 2 years plus. My salary was meager just N21k (I only had Ordinary National Diploma and was working with that) but as at then it was enough to take care of my basic needs. But then I lost that job unexpectedly in 2009. I was fired from the job suddenly and no reason was giving to me as to why I was being let go.
I went home and cried my eyes out. Then later I got really angry at how easily they got rid of me without caring about how I will survive. That was when I decided that I will never work for anyone again. I refuse to give someone that much control over my life again. So I decided to create a job for myself.
At this time I had given up on furthering my Education. I really wasn’t a school person anyway. All I wanted was just to get a BSC and be done. But after OND and direct entry wasn’t happening fast enough, I was over it.
Creating a successful business is easier said than done. But I started on it. I wanted to learn how to make money online because working from home is the best way to get the lifestyle I wanted for myself. When my sister discovered my interest in that she decided to place me on an allowance so I wouldn’t need to get another job and I could focus on learning the trade I was interested in. The allowance wasn’t much and I struggled to survive with it.
I didn’t expect things to happen quickly. I expected there to be a learning period and a wait period for the business to take off. What I didn’t know is that it would take me another 7 years before I would become successful in a business. That 7 years till date remains the toughest time in my life 😔. My business was going nowhere, neither was my relationships. Every attempt I made towards that ended very quickly.
At 35, 2016, I was very broke. Actually broke seems an understatement for my condition then. I struggled from month to month to feed. At this time my sister was no longer giving me an allowance. I depended on the little money I was making from my business then, about N30k. And sometime in that 2016 I even lost that N30k monthly earnings. I was having to ask one sibling or the other for money to feed. It was a tough time 😔 And there was no one, no friend and no lover I could depend on to even emotionally make this period of my life bearable for me. A few men came and went. I was always indoor and therefore didn’t have as many opportunities to meet new love interests. But the few that came were mostly up to no good. And I was determined to marry for the right reasons.
I can’t tell you how many nights I cried alone. I’m someone that puts on a happy face regardless of what I am going through. So most of the people close to me then didn’t even know I was struggling that much. I had too much pride. I couldn’t bring myself to just ask friends for money, the few I could call friends then.
Just remembering that period of my life now brings tears to my eyes 😭. I’m a Christian. I was raised on good Christian values that I still practice and believe in. But this time in my life my faith was getting weakened. I questioned God many times. I asked him what I did wrong that my life has to be that difficult, why was I not progressing in any area of my life? I put in so much effort in my business, I was on my laptop every weekday from 7pm to 7am for some of those 7 years it took me to become successful in a trade. I literally had years of sleepless nights. And I was active at a time with trying to find someone to love and still nothing seemed to progress. Many people I grew up with, attended school with and even those I was a lot older than were all progressing; graduating, getting a job, getting married and having kids while my life just seemed to remain constant.
I had so much love in me to give. I wanted to share that with someone. I wanted someone to love me. I wanted to journey the rest of my life with someone. I didn’t want to be alone anymore, I had been alone for way too long, since 2006! I wanted to have kids. Oh how much I wanted kids then! As I added to my age every year, these feelings intensified; as expected.
On one hand there was the pressure from the society to get married and have kids. On the other hand there was the pressure from myself. It’s a different feeling if the society wanted for you what you didn’t want for yourself or didn’t yet want. But I was longing to get married and have kids at that stage in my life. I was desperate even. A few times I considered settling for less than I wanted. The loneliness was getting unbearable. And there was some shame there too especially because my neighbors then didn’t let me forget that I was ‘old’. Every opportunity they took to insult me. Every mature single woman in Nigeria is regarded as an ashewo (prostitute). That’s the name everyone calls them especially by their fellow women. 🤭
Pull Yourself together! You’re in Charge of Your Life
If not for my strong convictions about the life I wanted I likely would have settled for just anyone then. I was so sure of it, not just the kind of man I wanted to marry and the kind of marriage I wanted to have, I was very sure of the kind of lifestyle I wanted to live too. I wanted a life of financial freedom. I wanted a life of time freedom. Basically I wanted to be able to earn 6-7 figure monthly but still be able to have the time to do whatever I wanted any day I wanted with my family. I wanted to be able to be home to raise my future kids while still being a boss. I wanted to make a difference in the world with the gift/skill that I have. For example this blog and this page you’re reading exists because it’s my little way of sharing hope with the world. My way of supporting and encouraging women to be more in their lives and marriages.
Getting the ‘right’ man was non negotiable for me. I knew marriage wasn’t a end all be all. Even though I loved to get married, I also was hearing of and seeing many marriages that were breaking up or tormentous, husband cheating on wife, husband beating wife, husband killing wife, wife cheating on husband and wife killing husband. It was everywhere and it was scary. I wanted none of it.
I never wanted to endure marriage. I wanted to enjoy it. Also I knew that if I made a mistake in choosing a spouse, I wasn’t the only one who will suffer for it. My unborn kids would suffer too. Kids have no say in choosing their parents. So they count on one of the parents to make the right decision of who to make their other parent. Choose wrong and it will affect the kids for the rest of their lives. How do you think the children feel when their parents are always yelling at each other? Or they always watch the dad beating their mother. Or the marriage become so abusive and toxic that one of them had to make the decision to separate or get a divorce, one parent will take custody and the other parent who doesn’t have custody may never get to see the kids again until they are adults, or he or she settles for seeing them once awhile. Kids needs both of their parents in their lives. A father cannot play the role of a mother and vice versa. So all this I think about a lot and it gave me the strength to keep pushing through the loneliness and never relent on what I wanted.
I also realized that getting married and having kids was just some of the things I needed to feel fulfilled in life. There were other things I needed too like I just explained above and becoming financially independent was on top of that list. You can’t be so eager to have a family and not equally be eager to improve yourself and your finance so as to be able to support that family. Also working on your personal and financial growth makes you more attractive to suitors, especially in this present economy. No man wants a liability. In fact for some men, it is not enough for a woman to earn. The woman’s earnings needs to make sense. You need to earn well especially now that cost of living has skyrocketed, N50k (Naira) salary won’t do it anymore. Also we know a lot of men are not earning well themselves so they want a woman who can complement them financially so the family can live decently.
How to Cope When you’re Over 30 Single and Childless
Focus on what you can control. I can’t tell you how many times I told myself during the eve of a new year that this new year I will get married. But each time the year came and went and I didn’t sometimes even get a serious relationship. Trying to control what is uncontrollable just makes you more vulnerable to the feeling of defeat. You start to feel you’re a failure. And if care is not taken you can start to have low self esteem, feeling that you’re not beautiful or that something is wrong with you that’s why no one wants you. Or you meet someone that is obviously not good for you but you keep them in your life anyway because what if another doesn’t come. 🤦
What you don’t know is that someone out there wants you. One of the best of men wants you. You just haven’t had the opportunity to meet yet probably because you both still have some work to do on yourselves before you meet. Read the story of how I met my husband and got my fairy tale at almost 40 and you will understand better what I mean here.
To cope in this challenging period of your life focus on what you can control as I said before. And what is it that you can control?
You can control personal development. Learn more skills. Add more value to yourself. Make yourself an asset both in character and in finance. Increase your pay worth.
Do you have a character flaw that many people have pointed out to you that had often caused problems in your past relationships? If you do, that can become a problem in marriage too. So work on it. The character flaw that I had that I was honest to myself about before getting married was that I had zero tolerance in relationships. My patience was thin, which made me appear harsh sometimes. I knew I needed to work on that. Then I needed to grow a thriving business too, not just to make myself more attractive to suitors but for me to feel good about myself and be able to afford a decent life for myself. A successful mature single woman is often not as desperate for marriage regardless of her age as a broke mature single woman is. Having lived through it and experienced both sides, mature single and broke, and mature single and financial comfortable, I can tell you that the feeling is different. You may not even want to get married anymore when you’ve gotten to a certain level of financial success.
With money, you can afford to enjoy life while you wait for your Mr Right. In fact with money you can fulfill some of your dreams without having a man. I mean if you’re desperate to have children like I was between ages 38 and 39 you can look into adopting. I don’t know how adoption works in Nigeria and if they allow singles to adopt but you can look into it. Another option is IVF, though most Christian faith don’t support the concept of a single woman going through IVF to have kids, so it might not be an option for everyone; but yes a mature single woman can have kids through IVF using a donor sperm.
Do Not Worry, Your Time Will Come
Not everyone will find the man for them and get married, but most will. So you very likely will. Just be patient and take advantage of the time you have now to grow yourself. Believe me it is harder to achieve much after you get married. Your time wouldn’t be all yours anymore. You have to take care of the home and your man everyday. Then there’s getting pregnancy, giving birth, breast-feeding and raising children. It’s a lot and it’s hard to find time for other things when you’re married. It takes a lot of determination for married women who are also mothers to be able to have a career. For some, some areas of their lives suffers for it, like the children being mostly raised by a nanny and the husband not getting as much attention as is needed for a beautiful, loving long lasting marriage.
Something else that you may be worrying about is that your age makes you less attractive to suitors. Maybe they will want younger women instead. Well, news flash! We have more men now going for mature older women than those going for younger women. Times have changed. Most men no longer wants a child for a wife. They want a woman mature enough to be an helpmate in all areas of life. That include supporting the family to achieve greater things. Girls of less than 25 don’t often have the level of maturity and clarity a woman of 30 and above has. So don’t worry about that at all.
Finally just live your life. Love will find you eventually. When my husband and I became a thing it was at a time I was no longer expecting to get married. I was focused on living a great singular life. I was already planning to take one of the options available to me to have kids in my life. And I was even already thinking of working on a house project for myself. So I encourage you to do the same. Remove your mind as much as possible from this marriage thing, plan your life like you are not going to get married. If you’re still living in your parents house, move out! Living alone forces you to take responsibility for yourself and your life. And responsibilities forces you to get a job or start business. With technology now it’s become really easy to start and grow a thriving business. Another reason you need to move out is because you don’t want to give your parents and or siblings any opportunity to mock you because of your situation.
Then once you start making money, make some investments in your name, get a car and build a house if your earnings enables you to. You can always move out later and rent it out when you find a husband and he isn’t comfortable living in a house you built. Don’t limit yourself in the name of waiting for a husband. Better it is if you’re already established before marriage. That way you’re more relaxed as I am now to enjoy your marriage when it happens. I’m still actively doing my business of course, but I don’t deal with the pressure to earn that start ups face because I already grew a thriving business before marriage.
Even though I would have preferred to have had kids earlier than I will now be doing, I am really grateful that I didn’t get married earlier than I did. It afforded me a lot of opportunities to grow personally and in business. I needed that time to be ready for marriage; mentally, emotionally and financially. As for now having kids late, it is more about the experience for me of nourishing, raising and guiding them in the right way to go and watching them blossom into their own person; beautiful, smart, intelligent, resourceful and God fearing children than it is when it is I have them. Also now I know better how to raise decent kids who are useful to themselves and the society than I did when I was 30.
I was 2 months shy of 40 when I got married. And even at that age I got one of the most handsome, intelligent, smart, loving, playful, God-fearing and supportive men out there and he is two years older than me. And my wedding? Oh it was beautiful! ❤️ This could be you too soon. Find the strength you need to cope in this waiting period from my story. If it could happen for me, it can happen for you too.
And she got married and lived happily ever after! 🙂
I can’t wait to hear your own story on your journey to finding Mr Right. How has it been? What about this wait period do you find most challenging? Where is your head at? You can leave a comment below or email me your story I’ll publish it on this site to encourage others too. Or if you need my advice on something related, do send it over. You can leave a comment and or send your story anonymously if that will make you feel more free to express yourself.