Moving to a New City in Your 30s—Feeling Lonely in Your “Prime”
a true story of searching for fulfillment in new places, only to realize that home and contentment were always within.
*cue the movie montage à la 2000s romantic comedy*
Moving to a new city in your 20s is the stuff films are made of.
Sparkling friendships. Spacious, beautiful apartments you can somehow afford even on a crappy, entry-level salary. Many trendy parties to attend and other of-the-moment places where you can show off the high heels that no one seems to wear in real life anymore. Great hair.
But in your 30s… Not so much.
This is when everything in your life is supposed to “make sense” by now. Like, you’ve found a partner with whom you can settle down and start doing all the domestic niceties:
going to the farmer’s market every weekend
hosting dinner parties with a Martha Stewart-like self-assuredness
starting (or at least planning) a family that you’re “beyond excited” to tell everyone about
excelling at a career that’s the perfect mix of a true passion that stimulates your creativity yet somehow gives you enough extra cash to afford second-hand-but-still-overpriced clothes, around-the-world vacations, and frequent nights-out to the kind of restaurants and bars that don’t swivel an iPad in your face at check-out.
And you do it all with a sitcom-worthy gang of ride-or-dies, each fulfilling their niche character role, as well as a couple of accessory weirdos you keep around for comic relief.
Except a lot of that is bullshit.
In your 30s, life is a wild card.
In your 30s1, life is a wild card—or as Taylor Swift so astutely captured in her song, Florida!!!: “… my friends all smell like weed or little babies.”
You’re either riding out your 20s in a blaze (pun intended) of we’re-going-to-be-young-forever-but-now-we-have-bigger-salaries brazenness. Or you’re settling into a whole new tier of adulting with mortgages and pre-school waitlists and in-laws you swear are like your best friends because “I got so lucky.”
But what if you’re doing neither?
Worse—what if you’re doing both? And you still feel a gaping hole of:
“What am I doing with my life?
I’m checking all the boxes, doing all the things, and still going to bed staring up at the ceiling and wondering what’s missing in my rom-com montage?
Why aren’t the end credits rolling while an Amy Winehouse song plays in the background and I ride off into the sunset of professional success and romantic bliss?”
When the shit-I-just-turned-30 crisis comes a calling, there are a lot of different ways to respond.
If you’re a woman, you might get your first dose of Botox.
If you’re a man (and handsome enough or at least rich enough), you might decide to take the Leonardo DiCaprio route and start telling your dates they must be this young to go on this ride. Or you can take the alternative route and get really into lawn care and showing off to your neighbors what a perfect husband and father you are.
Others assume the philosophical fetal position and basically do nothing, deciding that this is it and they’re just going to let the chips fall where they may for the next 50 years.
Not a lot of people take a hard right turn to make an active change in their life—and even fewer people take a second hard right turn when that active change leaves them feeling just as desolate and despondent as they were to begin with.
Doing that takes courage to lean into your loneliness and let it lead you towards a new path in life.
That’s what Gavin Williams did.
New on A Merry Loner, contributing writer Gavin Williams describes feeling lonely in his 30s (or what was supposed to be his “prime”) and how attempting to fix things by moving to a new city left him feeling lonelier than ever.
(Don’t despair—there’s a happy ending.) Read Gavin’s story and see how leaning into his solitude ended up being the thing that brought him peace.
🌻 Moving to a New City in Your 30s—Feeling Lonely in Your “Prime”
Until next time,
Merry
Full disclosure, this is speculation. I haven’t turned 30 yet—though I am a 28-year-old woman with more than her fair share of gray hairs who’s starting to get “complimented” for the fact that I look younger than my age. And I’m getting asked by total strangers about my intention to start a family. My husband does not share this experience.