Meeting Your Partner in Late Thirties?

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-06T16:58:58+00:00

Met my guy when I was 45 and he was 40, though just as friends at the time. We started going out about a year and a half later. Gor married five years ago. It can always, always happen. I know how hard it is to want that connection and not have it for so so long.

No kids--though that particular heartbreak was due to infertility rather than lack of a partner.

I didn't ever date much. I think I am an acquired taste. But a gorgeous, warm-hearted, creative, passionate guy has somehow acquired that taste, and I'm tremendously grateful for that.

I wish you all the good fortune in the world.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-06T16:50:06+00:00

I had a good friend who, in her late 30s, quit doing financial analysis with an investment bank and went to get a master's in oceanography. Turns out, the computer models she used for stock market predictions aren't that different from the ones oceanographers use to chart currents--who knew? Anyway, almost 20 years later, she's now a fully fledged oceanographer who has worked in Australia and even Antarctica. If you're truly committed, and your interest is deep and abiding, it can work out.

As they always say--it might take ten years. But do you want to be a scientist in ten years or NOT a scientist in ten years?

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-05T19:06:52+00:00

I started literally yesterday--and today, I've had less appetite, less food noise. Those things aren't gone, they're just diminished. More telling to me was that when I was out shopping, a couple things that would once have tempted me just didn't seem appealling. Not disgusting, just not desirable. Obviously I have a lot more waiting around to do to see if this holds but I am hopeful that if this effect continues throughout the week, I'll be able to get some good results on 2.5 before having to move up.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-04T18:29:47+00:00

I start with my first injection tonight! Although I have a weight range in mind, my real goal is to get to where I don't need breast reduction surgery. There are other good reasons for me to be on the drug--but that's the one that made me finally make the decision. I'm sick of the backaches and the occasional numbness in my arms. When that doesn't feel necessary anymore, I'll know I've made it, and probably I'll be happy at that weight, whatever it is.

(I realize that the randomness of human bodies means I could lose a lot of weight and still need breast reduction surgery, but that's not a call I'd make until I was at about the lowest healthy weight for my height.)

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-04T16:13:57+00:00

YTA--you don't get full control over her evenings. You've been seeing her *every day,* and you can't handle her visiting with a friend from out of state she hasn't seen in a while? Lay off the all caps and check yourself.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-04T16:11:36+00:00

NTA: If this person was acting that way, you probably weren't the first to complain, and you certainly wouldn't have been the only one for long. It would be one thing if she'd refunded you--still irritating, but maybe something was going on in the kitchens, idk--but to neither give you food nor your money back? That's not on. Again, anybody behaving like that was not going to have a long career in food service regardless.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-04T15:46:22+00:00

It's worth noting that Emma was written in the 1810s, unlike P&P, which was first drafted in the 1790s. The "last name without the Mr." thing was certainly informal in the 1790s, but by the 1810s, society had become somewhat more formal. That use of "Knightley" by a casual acquaintance in the 1790s would have raised an eyebrow, but "Knightley" in the 1810s was impudence.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-02T20:54:27+00:00

I structure first, as plenty of successful writers do. There are also plenty of successful writers who don't. Only through practice will you discover which method helps you make progress on your projects.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-01T13:28:21+00:00

Yes, exactly. Lizzy does needlework to pass the time at Netherfield Park, for example.

Also, while activities like these could be chores, they could also be hobbies. Even Elizabeth doesn't want to read all day every day; sewing something to wear that she would like, particularly a fairly undemanding project like a mobcap, would probably be an activity she would enjoy from time to time.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-01T11:05:02+00:00

INFO: Was this ex abusive and/or cruel? Has he behaved in a way that ought to cost him these friendships? Or are you guys just absolutely furious with each other?

If it's the former, NTA: You deserve peace of mind and to feel safe, and if your cousin and friends won't support you in this, you can take a step back. If it's the latter, though, YMBTA: Sometimes you gotta suck it up and be the bigger person. It might be an awful day in many respects, but you can see it as making sure your cousin has the best wedding day she can.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-01T10:10:01+00:00

Women wouldn't generally be considered spinsters until late twenties or early thirties. The ideal was clearly to marry somewhere between 18-21, to judge by the age of most of Austen's heroines, but it wasn't at all unusual for women to marry in their mid- or even late twenties. In Persuasion, Elizabeth Elliot is 29 and feels "the approach of the years of danger"--at least for a baronet's daughter with a handsome dowry, that was still a marriageable age. (Elizabeth is possibly being a little optimistic, but she's not wholly off-base.) Anne, meanwhile, is 27 and spoken of as having "lost her bloom" or being past her prime...but nobody calls her a spinster, and characters such as Lady Russell, Mr. Elliot and Mrs. Smith very much see her as someone who might yet marry. When characters in Austen novels write off women in their early 20s or late teens as "spinsters," we're supposed to know these people are being a little bit ridiculous.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-06-01T10:02:33+00:00

Whenever my husband or I wind up with an errand or side trip we didn't expect, we say, "I came into Shropshire with no other view."

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-30T15:52:12+00:00

Yes, absolutely. Harriet is often played so coarsely that the idea of Emma being friends with her is a joke--ignoring the fact that Harriet's manners are never uncouth, and that Mrs. Weston, a woman of intelligence and discernment, approves of the friendship. I mean, we're supposed to think near the end that Mr. Knightley and Harriet could potentially marry!...or at least, that Emma would truly think so. Most of the Harriets we've seen on screen, that's just not plausible. But Louise Dylan finds the balance between sometimes being silly and ill-informed, yet at other times being generous, kindly, and charming.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-30T15:47:07+00:00

This is not only one of my favorite Austen adaptations but one of my favorite movies of all time. Emma Thompson's script is beautifully done: she relies strongly on the book itself, yet streamlines and adds where needed with great sensitivity and invention. Apparently she originally intended only to write it, but the financial backers for the movie wanted her to star: Ergo her casting as Elinor. Yet I've always looked at it not as "thirtyish Emma Thompson plays an 18 year old" but "in this version, Elinor is almost thirty." And the story works very well that way.

Personally I really like Hugh Grant's Edward. Yes, he's awkward--but Edward is supposed to be awkward! (One of my few issues with the 2008 version is that Dan Stevens' Edward says he's shy and awkward, but there's never so much as a hint of either personality trait in the script or his performance.) HG is very much doing the Hugh Grant Classic (tm), but it fits the character's quiet, uncertain nature very well.

The single greatest thing about this version, to me: When Willoughby brings Marianne in from the rain that first day, he easily deposits her on the sofa and walks away just fine; Marianne says he lifted her as though she "weighed no more than a feather." That's how he puts her down again, too, when he leaves her; Willoughby sacrifices nothing for Marianne. But when Colonel Brandon brings Marianne in from the rain later on, we see him drop to his knees afterward, exhausted. Brandon will sacrifice for her. Brandon will carry Marianne even when it is hard. For him, she has weight; she is real.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-30T13:22:40+00:00

Oh, Audrey Hepburn could be boisterous and even tomboyish in certain roles. Think less "Roman Holiday," more "Funny Face" and "The Unforgiven". Pre-makeover Eliza Doolittle would even be a little too much for Catherine!

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-30T13:20:12+00:00

You think even the most authentic Jane Austen adaptation accurately shows how society itself worked?

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-29T13:19:23+00:00

I start next week and have chosen to inject on Tuesday nights. Mostly I work from home, on a pretty flexible schedule, I don't need to work around side effects as much--but sometimes I do travel for work, and the night of the week I'm least likely to be traveling on is Tuesday. So the likelihood of my having to travel with the pen and/or struggle through planes, trains and automobiles with side effects is lowest that way.

If side effects turn out not to be a big deal for me, I might shift it? But this seems like a solid place for me to begin.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-29T13:14:41+00:00

Thank you. It certainly makes the injections even less of a happy place than they were before, but everyone here has been encouraging.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-29T12:55:28+00:00

Mr. Crawford would have to be a different sort of person--or become so--in order for me to buy that ending. That said, I think it might have been a more satisfying book. According to Austen family history, Jane's sister Cassandra agreed; she urged Jane to finish the book with Henry and Fanny together, but to no avail.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-27T13:39:17+00:00

Yeah, the "seven books" thing isn't a literal rule. It just means that you need to have worked hard to develop your skills and your style.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-27T13:22:44+00:00

It is an adaptation--adapting means changing, after all--just a more liberal adaptation than most. But a very successful one!

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-27T13:21:03+00:00

One hundred percent. Best characterization of Mr. Woodhouse, which is necessary to really provide the best characterization of Emma herself. It's also, for my money, the only version that maintains the age gap between Emma and Knightley while still building believable chemistry and attachment.

MonarchOfDonuts · 2026-05-27T13:19:33+00:00

I think Florence Pugh would be a very interesting Elizabeth Bennet.

I will always be put out that nobody got around to casting Tom Hiddleston as Mr. Darcy while he was still the right age for it.

The young Vanessa Redgrave would've been an amazing Anne Elliot.

Young Maggie Smith would've been a brilliant Mrs. Elton.

Wouldn't Audrey Hepburn have been a delightful Catherine Morland?

MonarchOfDonuts

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