Metsti Mag

On womanhood, social comparison, and the illusion of a universal timeline

We are expected to make some of the most consequential decisions of our lives at a very tender age, most of us believe we should have our life path worked out before our frontal lobe has developed.

We choose degrees, pursue professions, and invest years of our lives and copious amounts of money into determining who we hope to become. We approach these decisions as though the person making them at eighteen or twenty-two will remain fundamentally unchanged at thirty-five, forty, or fifty.

If studying psychology has taught me anything, it is that human development is anything but linear.

The modern woman is educated, ambitious, and increasingly determined to forge her own path. We find successful women everywhere, from corporate boardrooms and political institutions to independent ventures and platforms like OnlyFans. Success no longer belongs to a single profession, lifestyle, or definition of respectability.

And still, the expectations placed upon women remain astoundingly traditional.

While young boys are often encouraged to work hard, establish careers, and eventually provide for their families, girls inherit a different set of pressures. We are encouraged to pursue education and financial independence, but with an unspoken deadline looming over us. Marriage, motherhood, and the expectation of building a family remain deeply embedded in the institutions that shape our lives.

We are told we can become anything, provided we accomplish it all before our biological clock runs out.

So we assume our positions. We pursue degrees, enter professions, establish families, and attempt to construct lives according to timelines we hardly question.

At an age when we are still discovering who we are, we are expected to know who we will become.

The Perception of Falling Behind

Many experience discomfort in the realization that the life we envisioned no longer resembles the life being lived.

Perhaps the career we pursued no longer fulfills us, bores us or is no longer financially viable. Interests evolve, the person we have become no longer identified with the ambitions of our younger selves. Perhaps we have spent years prioritizing responsibilities that left little room for our own professional development.

Whatever the circumstances, we begin to question our decisions.

Did I choose incorrectly? Have I wasted my time? Am I behind because I am unlucky?

In psychology, social comparison describes the process through which we evaluate ourselves in relation to others. Although comparison can help us understand our abilities and aspirations, it can also distort our perception of personal achievement, particularly when we measure ourselves against people whose circumstances differ considerably from our own.

A word of caution: Perceiving oneself as a late bloomer will come with growing pains.

You might experience an unexpected tinge of sadness, even despair, while being your friends’ biggest cheerleader. You genuinely want to see them succeed. You celebrate their promotions, vacations, first homes, new cars, and the little luxuries they’ve worked hard to afford.

Yet somewhere beneath that excitement, you might find yourself wondering:

When will it be my turn?

There is a particular kind of grief in watching others reach milestones you once imagined for yourself. Not because their accomplishments diminish your happiness for them, but because they remind you of an imagined version of your own life that has not yet materialized.

The comparison becomes especially painful when we interpret another person’s achievement as evidence of our own inadequacy. (The danger begins when you start resenting your peers’ accomplishments. I would recommend creating distance until emotions and mental framework become manageable.)

We begin measuring ourselves against an invisible chronology of adulthood: graduate, establish a career, marry, have children, buy a home, accumulate wealth, and eventually retire.

Those who accomplish these milestones in the expected order are perceived as progressing appropriately or having flourished. Those whose lives unfold differently may feel as though they have deviated from the intended course.

But who determined that there was only one acceptable sequence?

Why then have we internalized a standard of growth as a measure of our worth?

Feeling Unrecognized

One of the most misleading assumptions about late bloomers is that arriving later means having spent the intervening years standing still.

Consider the woman who returns to university in her forties after raising children. Or the woman who begins pursuing a profession after spending years caring for an aging parent. Consider the woman whose twenties and thirties were consumed by financial instability, personal loss, or circumstances that left little room for ambition.

Their experiences may not translate neatly into professional credentials, but that does not render those years meaningless.

Some may have developed considerable emotional intelligence, conflict-resolution abilities, adaptability, organizational skills, and practical knowledge. Others may have discovered interests and capacities that would have remained unexplored had their lives followed a more conventional route.

And yet, much of this experience remains absent from the dropdown menus of LinkedIn.

Our understanding of competence is frequently organized around employment, education, and measurable accomplishments. We recognize years spent in an office as professional experience, while years spent managing a household, navigating adversity, or caring for others are often treated as interruptions.

It begs the question:

Why do we regard certain forms of personal development as valuable only when they produce economic returns?

How much more would parenthood or caregiving be revered if they were compensated appropriately for around-the-clock care?

The woman who feels inexperienced in her professional life may already be a seasoned mentor in another.

Perhaps you’re the one offering guidance to friends who are just beginning their journeys into motherhood. Maybe you’ve navigated financial hardship, loss, or difficult relationships that have given you perspectives others have yet to encounter.

My hope and encouragement to you is that you learn to perceive a possible reality. You may be a beginner in one chapter of life and an expert in another.

This does not mean that lived experience automatically replaces professional qualifications, nor does it erase the practical difficulties of entering a career later in life. Financial obligations, age discrimination, caregiving responsibilities, and limited opportunities can impose very real constraints.

But it does challenge the assumption that professional inexperience is equivalent to personal inadequacy.

The misconception of a late bloomer is that a life got stuck or just stood still. On the contrary, you’ve been growing in directions society does not recognize as measurable professions.

Change Your Timeline

Developmental psychology recognizes that identity continues to evolve throughout adulthood. Our values, relationships, interests, and personal understanding are not permanently established upon entering the workforce.

Nevertheless, we treat our earliest professional decisions as lifelong commitments and so begins the race to retirement.

As children, we are taught to imagine adulthood as a destination rather than an ongoing process of change and adaptation. Once we have chosen a direction, changing course can feel like we are admitting failure. However, reconsidering our ambitions and planning a new path does not invalidate the decisions that preceded them.

The person who pursued a particular degree at twenty may have made the most reasonable decision available to them at the time. The person who changes careers at forty may be responding to a different set of values, circumstances, and aspirations.

Both decisions are legit.

The difficulty arises when we interpret personal evolution as evidence that our younger selves made a mistake.

Regret can become debilitating when we believe that the years already lived should have produced a different outcome. Those with depression can compound this feeling of loss and grief making it difficult to see new available opportunities. I would recommend seeking professional help and support to recognize the distinction between accepting our circumstances and resigning ourselves to them.

Realizing that our lives have been shaped by social expectations, unequal opportunities, and extenuating circumstances does not mean we are entirely powerless to influence what happens next.

Sometimes, we are our biggest thorns and inhibit our own emergence.

We may become so attached to the identity of being a late bloomer that we begin treating it as a permanent condition. The good news is that we have the capacity to challenge it.

Perceiving yourself as a late bloomer is not a diagnosis. An appropriate reframing of this is acknowledging that the timing alone does not define your value and your life’s course.

No Universal Season

Allow me to be the first to say, there is nothing inherently comforting about beginning again.

Starting a career later in life may mean accepting entry-level positions while your peers occupy leadership roles. Returning to education may involve financial sacrifice. Pursuing a long-postponed ambition may require confronting insecurity, uncertainty, and the possibility of failure and rejection. These difficulties deserve to be laid out rather than dismissed.

We are allowed to grieve the opportunities we believe we’ve lost, and equally allowed to feel frustrated by the circumstances that postponed our dreams and ambitions.

But grieving the past should not become a proclamation of a doomed future.

Some women spent their early adulthood developing careers. Others spent those years raising families, pursuing relationships, surviving hardships, or discovering their identities or place and purpose in the world.

Some are only now beginning to ask what they want from their remaining years, having spent much of their lives fulfilling what was expected of them.

We cannot reclaim the time that has passed, nor can we guarantee that every ambition will eventually be realized. But we can question the social expectations that taught us to interpret an unconventional life as an unsuccessful one and create a change for us. We owe ourselves that much.

The goal is not to convince ourselves that we have been successful all along, or that every experience must serve some greater purpose.

It is to recognize that our development does not become less meaningful because it fails to align with someone else’s chronology. The takeaway, it is never too late. Embrace the multidimensional patterns of life, and notice that you can flourish at every stage of it.

There is no universal timeline for success. Research has found that entrepreneurs who establish businesses employing at least one person are, on average, 42 years old. Among women who accumulated a million dollars in their 401(k) retirement accounts, the average age was 58.5. And creativity? Research suggests that our most productive years vary by discipline, experience, and when we begin pursuing our craft. Some of us do not reach our creative stride until our sixties or seventies. Exploring our ambitions can be the first step to affect change to our timeline. How iconic do we want to be and what will we do to get it?

Let me know below, what stage you are in.

Featured Image courtesy of: coco HACHE