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30 Times Adults Over 30 Should Have Known Better But Still Made These Mistakes
We all make mistakes in life. Nobody’s perfect. What matters is how we react to our failures, whether we let them take root and turn into shame or regret, or learn from them and do better in the future. But not everyone learns at the same pace. In some cases, it takes a long while for the lesson to sink in.
The r/AskOldPeople online community on Reddit opened up about the mistakes they’d made past the age of 30, after being asked to share their regrets by user u/otherworldly_mirror. Read on to see what pitfalls to avoid in adult life.
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#1
Staying with my company over 15 years and being told I won’t be getting any raises going forward bc I’m at the top end of the range. It’s my biggest regret bc I thought (foolishly) loyalty meant something.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 year ago
12 years at one job and never even came close to topping out. Topping out there was $50,000 per year. 12 years and I left at 18.50/hr.
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#2
Throwing myself into work and not being more present for my family. You can't ever get that time back.
Serial pacifist 1 year ago
True. Still struggling with it. You want and try to get some time for the things of real value, but capitalism just yanks you back into the grind.
#3
Ignoring childhood trauma and pretending everything is okay instead of dealing with it. It just ends up controlling you and eats you up eventually.
Cecilia Herrera 1 year ago
When you can believe that, "It's okay to get counselling," then you can begin to heal with your counselor's help and support.
Living a life with no regrets whatsoever is next to impossible. Feeling regret is a very human emotion. It means that we still probably haven’t learned the lessons we were meant to.
However, as consultant Tchiki Davis, Ph.D., writes on Psychology Today, research is quite clear on one thing. Broadly speaking, people most often regret not doing something rather than doing something. Taking that to heart, making a mistake and learning from it is far better than never having had the courage to try.
In some cases, however, it’s better to be prudent instead of rushing headlong into something risky. Whatever the case might be, ask yourself whether you’ll regret (not) doing something before you make a decision.
#4
Financed a new luxury model vehicle late in life that caused me to extend how long I worked before retirement. The $ would have been much better utilized in retirement savings. Idiot.
François Bouzigues 1 year ago
This should be much higher. A very nice and wealthy gentleman (think governor of the central bank of a first world country) whose garden party i crashed through a serie of coincidences explained me kindly, but very seriously : i am not rich enough to spent over 10 000€ in something that will loose value over time. I never owned a new car. If you are really a car enthousiast, my best adviced would be to save as much as you can, invest in bonds, shares, real estate... And use only the interests of your investments to finance your car. I never bought a new car. Never had a leasing. Never bought a car under 1500 000km. Never spent above 4000€ on a car. If things go nicely, i might have a nice car in the next decade.
#5
Believing I could get a guy to change if only I was "good enough" for him. Oof.
Vivid-Gur0822:
Ooh yes! THIS! This is probably the mistake in my life that caused the chain reaction of mistakes I made all through my 20s, possibly early 30s as well lol (I'm 39).
AnnaRachelle 1 year ago
I made that mistake in my teen years then in my 20's. Took me until my late 30's to realise what I was doing.
#6
I'm 63F now. When I was 32, I met and married my late husband. He was a genius (literally,) but ultimately a covert narcissist who abused me and our children for decades - while making it look like HE was the long-suffering victim.
OP mentioned being able to afford one's mistakes. I worked to put my late husband through college. He took his BA with honors in Philosophy, Summa Cum Laude. He was recognized at the Honors Convocation as having overcome drug addiction and homelessness to achieve great academic heights.
Then, he went on to law school, moving our little family 3000 miles from home. Five weeks later, he quit. Not because it was difficult, but because he just didn't want to do it, he said. Looking back, I can see that as a covert narc, he must have realized that he could not become a successful lawyer while still playing victim. He had to shoot himself in the foot, so to speak.
Well, he refused to work, Woe was him! But he became a master of the household budget and he pushed me to work as much overtime as possible. pported our family of 5 on my income alone. I paid off his student loan for law school in 12 years. I learned there is such a thing as financial abuse and he exerted that over our family. He convinced us that were were one stick of gum away from homelessness.
Why did I not divorce him? Two reasons: 1) God hates divorce. 2) In our home state (to which we had returned,) I'd have had to pay him alimony to keep him in the lifestyle to which he was accustomed.
Instead, I focused on the ways he actually served us well. He was an astounding chef and pitmaster. We ate so well, and still on a budget. He actually squirreled aside some $15K from all those "sticks of gum" he kept me from buying over the years. That money came in real handy when he died in the pandemic.
My big regret in all of this is that the true love of my life had gotten a divorce the same year that I married this clown. I wish I'd been able to spend an extra 28 years with my Mr. Right. The moment my true love discovered I'd been widowed, he and I got married without a date, without a proposal, without a doubt.
Tiny Dancer 1 year ago
This deserves a 10-episode limited series on Netflix, dang! So glad it worked out in the end, I hope you both have nothing but happiness from now on.
According to Davis, it’s through accepting negative emotions like regret that we deal with them and then move on. Regret is what motivates us to correct our behavior so we don’t feel the same emotions again.
In the United States, the most common regrets among adults include missed educational and romantic opportunities, unwise romantic adventures, not spending enough time with loved ones, rushing into something too soon, and failing to “seize the moment.”
#7
Regaining 60 pounds that I took off in my late 40s. Fortunately, I took the weight off again about six years later and have kept it off since.
#8
Continuing doing extreme sports even after the 5th orthopedic surgery. I'm in chronic pain now.
Ima Manimal 1 year ago
Our bodies use pain to tell us when to stop. Listen to your body people.
#9
That is so easy for me. I left my husband and 3 young children for a douche bag. It’s a good 30 years ago and our kids are all adults.
I will never forgive myself for abandoning my family.
StrangeOne 1 year ago
My grandma did this. Caused most of her kids to never talk to her until they were all middled aged. A couple of them schemed her for most of her money. She ended up dying from cancer with no funeral.
As we’ve recently covered on Bored Panda, as we grow older and our bodies change, it becomes more challenging for us to learn new information and skills. This is because our brain’s ability to form new neural connections, known as neuroplasticity, slows down. On top of that, the hippocampus (which we need to form memories) shrinks, cognitive functions are reduced as the blood flow to the brain decreases, and neurotransmitter systems can decline.
However, this doesn’t make learning impossible. Our bodies and brains adapt. And the more we take care of both of them, the better off we’ll be. Our brains are akin to muscles in that the more we practice learning, the better at it we’ll be.
#10
Trusting one diagnosis and not getting second opinions. Getting misdiagnosed for 7 years and used like a guinea pig for pharmaceutical testing almost killed me.
Libstak 1 year ago (edited)
When I had unusual bleeding during menopause, I went in for a pap smear. Doctor also booked me for an internal ultrasound. I get a call from hospital to see a specialists, more tests and one operation to remove polyps in my uterus later..I have uterus cancer. Then I get a call from my doctor to give me the good news that my pap smear can back all clear....umm doc, thanks a bunch but thanks even more for the internal ultrasound and the testing facilities immediate referral of my results to the nearest hospital cos that false pap smear result on its own would have cost me my life. All good everybody, I had a hysterectomy and am cancer free.
#11
Getting married.
I'm happily divorced now, fourteen years. I'll never make that mistake again.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 year ago
43yo here and never married. Almost everyone I know who got married in their 20s divorced within 10 years. I watched the whole thing from the outside and said "nope not for me".
#12
Not taking the time to learn about myself and spending some time alone understanding who I am before getting married.
This was a mistake in my 20s, but I did the same thing on my 2nd (in my 30s) and 3rd husbands (in my 40s). I am still married to my 3rd, but I really appreciate my alone time.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 1 year ago
Nothing wrong with being alone. I've been single for five years now. Two of those years were because of a stalker and the other three were because of COVID. About halfway through 2023 I finally started to feel social again.
Aside from getting the basics like sleep, nutrition, and exercise right, you can also keep your brain in tip-top shape by carving out time for learning and new experiences.
You could, for instance, sign up for online or in-person courses to learn a new skill or sharpen an old one. But education doesn’t have to be so formal. You can listen to podcasts, meet new people, travel somewhere you’ve never been… Even making a meal you’ve never attempted before can spark new life in your mind and your life.
#13
Started doing c*ke in my early 40’s. Lost everything (kids, house, dog, cars and a lot of money). I had to move away from my home state. I’ve been clean for about 16 years.
Panda Kicki 1 year ago
Took me a while to figure out the coke-thing. First thought coke as in coca cola, then thought it was something sexual, before it dawned on me. 16 years clean is really good!
#14
I took out student loans to go to college after I got clean. I was able to get my degree but now I’m in my late 60’s and I still have 46k in student loans. I’m not willing to work until I die just to pay them off. I’m not even using my degree for my job. I don’t have anyone to blame but myself, but I’m still pissed that I didn’t know enough about money management until I hit my late 50’s.
#15
After a heart wrenching divorce at 50, I started dating three years later. Though I vowed to be careful going forward, I got involved with a sociopath who further destroyed any self-esteem I had left. Whatever possessed me to hang around such a self-absorbed, cruel man still haunts me. I knew what he was three months into the relationship, yet I stayed. That was 15 years ago. I never dated again. Why would a woman who had spent 28 with a man who destroyed take up with a worse nightmare? I am grateful my adult children were kept in the dark about Mom's foolishness. You can make terrible mistakes at any age.
Dread Pirate Roberts 1 year ago
That's so sad :< sometimes loneliness makes you desperate to where you'll put up with behavior that you shouldn't.
#16
A couple years ago, I made the mistake of letting an ex-friend weasel her way back into my life. She came with all kinds of reasons/excuses for her bad behavior in the past, said she'd totally changed and gone through therapy, etc. So I figured I'd give her a 2nd chance. Within a year, she was doing exactly the same kind of things, even worse than before. After calling her out on a couple of bad acts, she went totally ballistic on me. So I dropped her again. My mistake. :-/
#17
Mine isn't as dramatic or serious as others, but I really hate when I've been an a*****e or s****y person. I really try hard not to be, but you know... human is human.
MyNameIsNotAPortent 1 year ago (edited)
Join the club. We’ve got human shaped jackets wrapped around lizard brains
#18
Got into massive debt for the third (F**K!) time in my life recently. Despite the fact that I had done so much reading about FIRE and other personal finance stuff. Just thought I was sooooo f****n' smart and yet I still went and did it anyway...
I didn't figure it out until I used one of those debt payoff calculators online that shows you pie charts of how long til payoff, how much interest, etc. where you can plugin different payoff times and/or monthly payments.
It took the visual of a pie chart and the rest to finally get it on a "gut level" and finally pull my head out of my a*s...
Roland Gosselin 1 year ago
I suffer from ADD and haven't ever been able to plan anything in my life. Nothing. Luckily I have zero debt, but I also have zero savings... Oh well. :)
#19
Oh yea… getting involved with a co-worker. I was in my 40’s. NEVER again. Ever… and I can confidently say never.
odinskriver39:
Definitely the co-worker mistake. We were both separated and the story sharing date turned into fun for a while and then a bad marriage. Really glad I got out and listened to the friend who wanted me to meet her friend. Third time is the last and best.
Ima Manimal 1 year ago
Bro, rule number 42: never ever ever date people at work. It’s probably not going to work out, and then creates a lot of unnecessary drama at work.
#20
Marrying the wrong person for the wrong reason
Met my ex at a church function. Hit if off 'okay'. Nothing great or friends whatnot. Just an odd 'attraction' that *somehow* turned to a brief dating before getting engaged 4 mos. later (huh? 🤔) Never once declaring any love. Just assuming we were. The relationship was compatible as Christians (it wasn't) Zero in common (didn't dawn on us) I wanted to wait another year, but he was impatient insisting we marry "now". Couldn't wait. Well, big mistake. Barely lasted 3-years with consistent arguing and disagreement because of our polar differences and delusion. Mercifully divorcing at 4, getting our lives back. To finally be ourselves.
Lesson learned: ... Don't marry the wrong person for wrong reasons because "its time" or you're lonely.
#21
Using people for sex. I specifically regret not being more gentle with their emotions and being more honest about mine.
I wasn't a womanizer but there were a couple occasions when I knew I would seriously break a really great girl's heart and I did it anyway. I'm ashamed of myself for doing that.
DeeDee M 1 year ago
I'm glad you regret it, because it shows you have a conscience, and that you've grown as a man. My husband expressed similar regret about his college years (he played football, was super hot, and those guys literally had groupies.) He said he didnt take sex "seriously" enough, and that as a married father of three, he was sorry for his behavior. I just glared at him on behalf of all those broken-hearted one-night stands, and said " you should be." However, I was secretly cheering that there can be reformed womanizers out there.
#22
I fell for all the finance manager’s tricks when I bought my car about 10 years ago. I ended up buying a bunch of dealer extended warranties that I didn’t want because he snuck an extra 6 months worth of payments. I thought the sales guy was the one to watch out for, but he was easy. I bought a new car for my wife recently and I want in to the finance managers office expecting another ambush, but it was fine. I just got a real dirt bag last time.
stupidMonkey 1 year ago
Trust no-one at a car dealership. They are just knots of concentrated greed in the space time continuum.
#23
Still make friends that I am not compatible with, who have used and abused me, force me into friendships. Most of my psychological harm has been caused in the last 6/7 years by narcissistic or dismissive people. They latch on to you and don’t let go. I need to stand up and just cut them immediately.
#24
Not getting myself out of a long distance commute in my 50s, which probably caused me to retire sooner than I would have otherwise. Gripping the wheel for all that time also worsened the arthritis in my left hand to the point that I can’t work on cars.
Rinso the Red 1 year ago
Can relate. I have RA and used to commute 1 1/2 hours both ways. Luckily, I qualified for the American's with Disabilities Act, so work was forced to give me some time remote. Then we went fully remote during COVID and I've been relabeled at "Virtual" so I only have to go in now on very rare occasions.
#25
Dated someone else with bipolar again. I have bipolar so dating someone else with bipolar is a really bad idea. You would have thought I would have learned the first time around but apperently not. At least the second guy wasn't anywhere near as bad as the first one. Je is a halfway decent guy it's just when I date people with bipolar our mental health problems feed off each other. It's just not healthy for anyone in the situation.
#26
I didn't make the mistake but 2 people in my friend group did.
There are 5 of us that grew up together and are still friends. Up to our late 20s none of us had real jobs or responsibilities. Every weekend was party time. I got married at 33, got a really good job and consider myself in a good place mentally and financially.
But two of my friends are now nearly 50, have never had permanent employment and basically survive by help from friends and relatives. They still drink and smoke weed almost on a daily basis. As far as I know they have no mental or physical issues that would keep them in their current situation. I've just come to the conclusion that they are lazy.
That could easily of been me. I credit my spouse and family 100% for helping me not make that mistake.
#27
People still drink and drive well past age 30. I doubt how much it will cost them (or whoever they kill) ever enters their mind.
BTW if you live and breathe you will make mistakes, growing wiser means you take responsibility for them ( meaning you stop whining "It's not my faultttttt) and limit the fallout to others.
#28
Yes, you are still capable of making bad mistakes past your 30's.
But what does happen is that, *if you reflect on your mistakes and treat them as the learning opportunities that they are*, you make fewer mistakes and the consequences become less severe.
For example, I used to say and do things during fights with my wife that really hurt her and brought us to the brink of divorce. I wasn't *trying* to. I just didn't have enough awareness of how I was hurting her. Now our fights are less common and less painful, even though I'm still not perfect.
The same decrease in frequency and severity happens in your work life as well. It's why VP's and CEO's tend to be old. You don't want the people with the most power to sink your company to be people who haven't made enough mistakes in life to figure out how to reduce the frequency and severity of their mistakes.
AnkleByter 1 year ago
Maybe stop fighting with your wife in general. It doesn't matter how old you are. If you're "fighting:" this frequently, there is still something wrong, even if you're not as mean as you once were. Figure out the source of your issue that keeps making you fight. It could be you, it could be her, it could be both of you (most likely) but if you're fighting frequently at all, that's not a good marriage and something is going to break. Also, no, that is not a reason why older people are CEOs, what a stupid reason, lmao. As if older CEOs don't still, continuously, make mistake after mistake. Being aware of your mistakes and not doing anything to not repeat them, at any age, is not wisdom, nor does it come with less consequences. "I really effed up, but, man did I learn something" loses its meaning if you have to say it more than once (for the same thing), at any age. That goes back to, stop fighting with your wife, it's stupid, fix your issues.
#29
Cashing in stock options to pay bills; the employer who'd issued them has since become acquired X2. Lost just under $500K. So that's fun.
SM 1 year ago (edited)
One needs to ask themselves, could they have paid those bills (or avoided them in the first place) and if not then you did what you had to do. But there is something else to understand, looking back is always 20/20, but no one can do that. People will tell you that you should have bought Apple back in the day and held on to it until the price skyrocketed but forget to tell you they almost went bankrupt. When I was working, we got some stock instead of pay (pay reduction, instead of firing people) because of bad times, later things turned around and this co-worker sold them for 3x profit but was complaining because if he had held them a bit longer it would have made 4x profit. And to that I say, if you can predict the future like that you will be a trillionaire. But that isn't how the world works. If you made money on stock options, you did OK. By their nature they can be worthless just as easy as them going up in value.
#30
Getting a better job a with a decent boost in salary when I was in my early 30s, then being complacent and not taking my career any further because (due to my low self-esteem) I assumed this was as good as it gets. So treaded water for 20 years until I was laid off (though did good work and was well-regarded by my employer). If I could turn back time I would have spent those 20 years networking, job hopping and aggressively doing everything I could to advance my career.
What do you think ?
DB 1 year ago
Early 40's I went back to playing in a small rock band to make a few extra bucks. Best two guitarists I had ever played with and the worst drummer. It started out as fun but turned into aggravation. The handful of gigs we played went well but the money wasn't that great. Drummer had a habit of booking us low paying jobs for the "exposure". One by one the guitar players quit. The drummer and his girlfriend who was also our percussionist wanted to rebuild the band from scratch. I told them "no way" and called it quits. Don't regret my decision.
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
I spent twenty years devoting most of my spare time to a fan-run science fiction convention that was controlled by a person who never trusted me and became convinced that I was trying to "destroy" the convention. I came to realize that she didn't trust me, but I took her at her word that she was going to retire from conrunning after running the con's 50th year. She didn't. Then she managed to convince another person with the con, who had been my friend, that I was up to no good, and he ultimately made me so unwelcome that I publicly repudiated the entire convention. Three years later, the convention went bankrupt because they were trying to do things the same way as had been done since before the commercial internet existed. This was one of the things I had been trying to fix.
Josephine Blogs 1 year ago
Lots of people in here replying on each post with things like "Oh I'm sorry this happened to you" and "so what did you do?". While these are lovely comments and I love seeing how kind us Pandas are, the OP will most likely never see your comments because this article was taking from Reddit and you're not directly replying to them. You can however just click through to the post in Reddit and comment directly to the OP there. :)
elijo sintetico 1 year ago
I regret having taken so many drugs and not having done a PhD. And that my life became hell. But now I am clean and I like it. But I'm not old enough and I don't have time to do a PhD anymore, I have to work and that takes up a lot of hours.
DB 1 year ago
Early 40's I went back to playing in a small rock band to make a few extra bucks. Best two guitarists I had ever played with and the worst drummer. It started out as fun but turned into aggravation. The handful of gigs we played went well but the money wasn't that great. Drummer had a habit of booking us low paying jobs for the "exposure". One by one the guitar players quit. The drummer and his girlfriend who was also our percussionist wanted to rebuild the band from scratch. I told them "no way" and called it quits. Don't regret my decision.
Toothless Feline 1 year ago
I spent twenty years devoting most of my spare time to a fan-run science fiction convention that was controlled by a person who never trusted me and became convinced that I was trying to "destroy" the convention. I came to realize that she didn't trust me, but I took her at her word that she was going to retire from conrunning after running the con's 50th year. She didn't. Then she managed to convince another person with the con, who had been my friend, that I was up to no good, and he ultimately made me so unwelcome that I publicly repudiated the entire convention. Three years later, the convention went bankrupt because they were trying to do things the same way as had been done since before the commercial internet existed. This was one of the things I had been trying to fix.
Josephine Blogs 1 year ago
Lots of people in here replying on each post with things like "Oh I'm sorry this happened to you" and "so what did you do?". While these are lovely comments and I love seeing how kind us Pandas are, the OP will most likely never see your comments because this article was taking from Reddit and you're not directly replying to them. You can however just click through to the post in Reddit and comment directly to the OP there. :)
elijo sintetico 1 year ago
I regret having taken so many drugs and not having done a PhD. And that my life became hell. But now I am clean and I like it. But I'm not old enough and I don't have time to do a PhD anymore, I have to work and that takes up a lot of hours.
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