What age do you become "left on the shelf"?

Tony Broke wrote: »

These threads are a joke and so common.

What is up with people today thinking they are old when they are young?

You get idiots on here saying " I am getting on a bit at 23 ffs "

OP you are still a young woman at the peak of your powers, your 27 not 47 ffs.

It's people posting stuff like Dudess (well, not just posting, we can't blame the internet for everything....Just paedophillia and emo's... So I should paraphrase and say that it's people saying stuff like that. )

Dudess wrote: »

"I'm getting old" is usually code for "I'm an adult now and I'm scared to face up to it". There's a tendency for people to compare themselves at, say, 23 to when they were 17. I'd advocate the opposite. Compare yourself at 23 to being 40. It'll make you a lot less freaked out about getting older.

Seriously, you're telling people in their 20's to act like they're in their 40's?? WTF? Should they take up golf and stop drinking? Should they have more fibre in their diets?
Generally in these sort of threads I'd tell people to grow up. But you're a 20 something pretending to be a granny.

Has everyone forgotten that there is a shelf life on a woman's fertility? Or is biology escaping some people here?

The truth of the matter is that if you don't want children then there sure as hell isn't a shelf life but if you do then I'm afraid there is.

That said OP you're young. My mother didn't get married till she was 39. She gave birth to me at 41 and my sister at the age of 42. That said I wouldn't advocate it as my mother did a bit of panic settling.

A.

Wibbs: I agree to a large extent over the reproductive issues (though to my mind, and i vary lol, adoption is there as an opportunity.), bUt there is also the physical issues for men, at it simplest level its having the ability to play in the park without an oxygen cylinder. Its also a point at which you may not be there for the childs important years. But thats by the by i guess.

With these issues its always personal perspective on what age constitutes being on teh shelf.
A single friend of mine years ago told me that the married with kids envied her single lifestyle and she occasionally envied their kids occasonally. But she balanced everything up.

If settling down and having a family is a priority then reproductive age is the time that that shelf looms. If on the other hand, finding somene for when you are wanting not to gallop around but canter then its much later.

Fact is social mores are changing and people are getting married later, is that good or bad? or just different to what has been before.

The fact is if you cosncsiously choose one path or another (or even switch between them) then that is the right choice for an individual.
But its not if the pressure is because of what is expected from outside ... the "pitying looks from non singleton friends" syndrome. That then is where you get horerndously rushed marriages leading to a lifetime of unhappiness, potentially. (yes its a generalistaion as everyone will know someone who has / has not made a success of it).

In the end nothing is or should be set in stone, people will have widely varied views and its down to the idividual to decide what they want. But at the OP age there is plenty of time and no need to rush to find the available partner, that juts puts too muhc pressure on everything (see threads in PI about dating and not getting anyhwere cos they appear desperate)..

edit define decent man ...

Dudess wrote: »

Well firstly I'm 30 (and it didn't have me on the brink of suicide like so many women because I look young and feel young and the date on my birth cert doesn't mean sh1t)

You feel good because you look young? Hardly going to help the OP "whatever happens, always look young and you won't be on the shelf..."

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

You feel good because you look young? Hardly going to help the OP "whatever happens, always look young and you won't be on the shelf..."

No, I was replying to a comment simply focusing on age. People tend to define themselves a bit too much according to the number of years they're alive/date on their birth cert, thus inhibiting themselves.