When would one be correct in reaching desperation point?

Are you saying that being single would make a woman feel desperate? I think that is the sign of low self esteem. Some people live their entire lives as singles and are happy with it.

@YARNLADY I totally agree but why does it cause such feelings of doom and despair to most women?

A desperation point is never correct; it just happens. Each woman has her own needs for life-fulfillment. And even “desperation points” unrealized are usually lived through. After that may come a calming, or perhaps a new desperation point.

I have met men that are just as desperate or even more so than women when they find themselves alone after 40.

@chyna I wondered why the OP said women

The biological clock is a female issue only. And women’s identities are still more bound up in their sexual attractiveness than men’s are.

Women are taught to think they’re incomplete without a husband and children – don’t you see that conditioning everywhere? If that’s all that’s perceived as valuable, of course some women would feel desperate if by 40 (this random arbitrary number assigned in our society as a certain death for women in terms of fertility, attractiveness, etc.) they don’t have it. People, including women, should realize life isn’t about getting partners or spawning.

@anartist Oh please. Men cannot live without having a woman in their life. Biological clocks were not mentioned in this question at all.

@chyna Though I don’t really think either sex is incapable of living without the other, I do agree with you that all people have some biological urges to reproduce, conscious or not and not all women give two craps about reproducing, even.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Good answer. I am one of those women who have never had the desire to have children, nor am I attracted to babies.

@chyna “40 and childless” what else could it be but the tic-toc-tic of the clock?
I don’t say lonely men aren’t desperate too, but the statistics are with the women. That is why so many of the matchmaking lists charge women over a certain age but not men of similar age [and incidentally charge horny young fellas but not the young women]—trying to balance the pool.

I personally grieved when the time passed for me to have children. True love and building a shared life was more important, but having a child of that love also mattered. I decided that if I had not managed to do it, it was an indication that I would have made a poor mother. I may have made a poor mother, but there are so many things I loved as a child that I wanted to share with a child. And now as I am aging and have gone through the death of my mother surrounded by her loving children I regret that will not be in my future as it will be for my siblings.

@chyna That’s probably good, lol ( I know that’s now how you meant it ) ~

@Simone_De_Beauvoir Oops, you know what I meant!

If the question is whether there are things other than being single and childless woman over 40, being seriously ill, or in financial ruin that can make one reach the breaking point I would say that yes there are. I was over 40, and married with three kids the last time I hit a real breaking point in my life. Everyone has a different threshold for stress and everyone has a different breaking point. One person could easily sail through a situation that might bring someone else to their knees. It is just so individual I don’t think there is any way to generalize.

Weird question. You feel what you feel. It’s not like there’s a time for everyone, because we’re all different and we all have different goals in life and different things we want to accomplish.

I don’t think there is a single person in the world that hasn’t been desperate at some point in life. At some point, you have to come to grips with the idea that you aren’t going to get what you want. How you come to grips with that is a subject for another question. Besides which, I can’t answer that question. It’s one I am asking myself at the current moment.

So the timing of your desperation is an individual thing. If you’re desperate, and you want to talk about that, then talk about it. I think it is self-destructive to compare yourself to others, and that’s what really makes you desperate.

When your wife has left you for your grandfather. Your dog stops loving you and when you are told by the government that you have been chosen to have new biological weapons tested on you or you have to listen to Barney (the purple dinosaur) songs for the rest of your life.

@Universal_Scapegoat We’re a happy family