“The older I get, the less interested I am in being liked and the more interested I am in being at peace.”
I don’t remember where I first heard that quote, but it has stayed with me because getting older does change the conversation we have with ourselves.
Imagine two women sitting across from each other over coffee. One is 28, and the other is 45. The younger woman talks about her career, whether she is where she should be by now, married, making enough money, or falling behind and, of course, whether everyone else seems to have figured life out except her. The woman sitting across from her listens, smiles, and probably recognises more of herself in that conversation than she would like to admit.
Then the conversation turns to her own life. She talks about the things she used to worry about that no longer keep her awake at night. She shares a time in her life when she would spend an entire weekend replaying something someone said to her, wondering whether she had offended them or if they were upset with her. Now? She might still wonder, but she is certainly not losing sleep over it. She has bills, children, ageing parents, responsibilities, perhaps a body that has started doing things she did not authorise, and a whole list of things that actually deserve her attention.
Somewhere along the way, she learned that everybody does not have to like her. And strangely enough, that sounds a lot like happiness.
We talk quite a bit about women being happier in their 40s, and I can see why the idea is appealing. There is something almost celebratory about reaching an age where you supposedly know yourself, have your boundaries firmly in place, no longer care what anybody thinks, and have finally figured out how to choose yourself. Social media would have us believe that 40 is the age when we wake up, throw out everything that no longer serves us, buy linen trousers, and suddenly become completely unbothered.
I wish.
The truth is, your 40s can be complicated. They can be liberating and exhausting at the same time. You can be more confident and still have moments when you question yourself and know exactly what you don’t want and still have no idea what you want next. You are grateful for the life you’ve built while quietly wondering if you are to keep living it exactly as it is. And perhaps that is why I am not entirely convinced that women are necessarily happier in their 40s.
Maybe we are just clearer and there is a difference.
When you are younger, there’s so much noise around what your life is supposed to look like—timelines, expectations, and invisible milestones that become very visible when you start comparing yourself with everybody else. You should have the career by a certain age. The house. The husband. The children. The business. The degree. The body. The savings. The Instagram-worthy life. And even when nobody says these things directly, somehow you know.
So you spend years measuring yourself against a life that may not even be yours. Then you get older, and something starts to happen. You begin to realise that some of the things you were chasing were never really about you. They were about approval and proving something; they were about being able to say, Look, I made it.
Believe it or not, freedom comes when you stop needing your life to make sense to everybody else, and maybe that is what women are experiencing when they say they are happier. It may not be an easier life; in fact, for many women, their 40s bring some of the hardest realities they have ever had to face. There may be changes in marriage or relationships, children leaving home or needing us in completely different ways, parents getting older, career questions, financial responsibilities, grief, health concerns, and the uncomfortable realisation that some dreams have changed while others are still waiting for us.
But we also begin to understand the value of our energy.
- At 25, you might spend an entire evening arguing with someone who misunderstood you.
- At 45, you may think, That’s unfortunate, and go to bed.
- At 30, you might stay in a situation because you have already invested so much in it.
- At 45, you might finally ask yourself, But is this actually good for me?
- At 35, you might say yes because you don’t want to disappoint someone.
- At 45, you might say no because you have finally realised that disappointing someone else is sometimes the price of being honest with yourself.
That isn’t selfishness; consider it maturity, and perhaps this is where happiness comes in—Not from having fewer problems, but from no longer creating additional problems because we are afraid to be honest about what we need.
There is also something to be said for knowing yourself and understanding what drains you and what restores you. The friendships that nourish you rather than leave you emotionally exhausted, you are less impressed by titles and appearances and more interested in character, and finally realise that peace is not boring.
For years, we mistake chaos for excitement because we are constantly finding solutions. Then one day, a quiet life starts to look incredibly attractive.
- A Saturday morning with nowhere to be.
- A small circle of people who genuinely know you.
- Work that has meaning.
- A body you are learning to appreciate rather than constantly criticise.
- The ability to say, “That doesn’t work for me,” without writing a three-page explanation afterwards.
There is happiness in that, but I think there is another side to this conversation that we don’t talk about enough. Getting older can also expose the things we have been avoiding. Because once you become clearer about what matters, you can no longer pretend you don’t see what doesn’t. You may realise that the career you built isn’t fulfilling you anymore or recognise that a relationship has changed. You may look at the dream you put away when life became busy and wonder whether it is really too late to take it back out.
That can be frightening.
And sometimes the 40s aren’t about finally having all the answers. They are about becoming brave enough to ask better questions.
- What do I actually want now?
- What am I doing because I want to, and what am I doing because I think I should?
- What am I still trying to prove?
- What would change if I stopped measuring my life against somebody else’s timeline?
Those questions don’t always make you happier immediately; sometimes they make you uncomfortable first. It can tell you that something needs to change.
So, are we really happier in our 40s?
Maybe some of us are.
Maybe some of us aren’t.
I suspect the bigger shift is that many women become less willing to sacrifice their happiness, their peace, and their sense of self simply to maintain an image of a life that looks good from the outside. And perhaps that is what we mean when we say we are happier. We have finally realised that happiness isn’t necessarily found in getting everything we once thought we wanted. Sometimes it is found in wanting less approval, less performance, less comparison and less noise. In becoming comfortable enough with who we are that we no longer need to introduce ourselves through everything we have achieved.
Maybe getting older doesn’t make us happier, but we finally get permission to stop pretending, and isn’t that way better!
What do you think? Are women really happier in their 40s, or do we simply become more comfortable choosing the life that actually feels like ours?
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How long have you been waiting to feel ready? In this episode, we explore procrastination, personal responsibility, faith, and the uncomfortable truth that sometimes the biggest thing standing between us and the life we want is our willingness to take the first step.
In this conversation, we explore:
- Why waiting until you’re “ready” can keep you stuck
- The difference between preparation and procrastination
- Why fear can disguise itself as being practical
- What psychology tells us about procrastination
- Why faith requires action
- How small daily decisions create momentum
- Taking responsibility for your next step
- Learning to trust God while moving forward
- Questions to help you identify what you’ve been postponing
