Issue #56: Meeting a partner in your thirties (and beyond)

'Your identity is no longer as malleable as it once was. You’ve probably taken some stab at chasing your dreams; fulfilling your own needs; creating your own family-like structures.'

Five years ago, at the wedding of my close friends, the bride delivered one of the most romantic lines I’ve ever heard during her speech. ‘I know we’re always told, “Be your own person”,’ she said, of the groom. ‘But you make me feel more like myself than anyone else ever has.’

I was reminded of this recently, when a friend shared that she’d parted ways with someone she’d been dating. While things ended amicably, she was fixated on his final words: ‘I didn’t feel like I could be myself around you.’

In your thirties, ‘Not feeling like yourself’ is a relationship dealbreaker. Authenticity is something we put a high value on as a Western culture (as demonstrated by Merriam-Webster’s recently-announced 2023 word of the year: ‘authentic’). But it’s also an age thing: your personality is said to be more or less ‘fixed’ by the time you reach your early thirties. There’s less room for adaptive shape-shifting.

With experience, you’ve realised the futility of jamming your square peg self into round holes. So you stop trying. Maybe you interact a bit differently with your parents, understanding the fundamental differences between you. Maybe you’ve started to think more carefully about your friendships. Maybe you find yourself drawn to certain social, or professional, situations, avoidant of others. If someone makes you feel uncomfortable, you’ll probably consider it their problem – not yours.

Which, maybe, makes one’s thirties – the ‘fully-baked’ years, rather than the formative ones – a good time to meet a life partner. Someone who meets that version of you. Except, this isn’t how it tends to pan out: the stats say we’re more likely to meet The One in our twenties: aged 25 for women and 28 for men, respectively.

Whether it’s a good or a bad thing, being single in your thirties (and beyond that) complicates things immeasurably. Your identity is no longer as malleable as it once was. You’ve probably taken some stab at chasing your dreams; fulfilling your needs; creating your own family-like structures.

You’ve built your internal cabinet of things you’d like to protect: the snow globe from your hometown; the trophies; framed certificates; the diagnoses. There’s a lot more at stake, when letting another person in, because you’ve got so much more to protect. You’ve survived this long alone; what’s the point of letting someone else in, only to make a mess of it?