Were your 20s easier than your teens?

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I turned 20 in January, and I don't know what this means for me. I really want it to go better than my teenage years, especially my late teens up to now. I'm depressed every day; very few friends, never had a relationship, never had a job where I actually went somewhere to work, although I do work on the newspaper at school and get paid for that. So did things tend to get easier or harder for you when you entered your third decade of life? Especially in the emotional and social aspects.

Much easier. I had some experience by then and I wasn't going to high school every day where the same people judge you day after day for twelve years. It's a fresh start. Nobody at college or a job knew me when I was very awkward, and I could pretend to be normal. I met new people and they didn't see me as somebody who has something wrong, even though we didn't know about AS then, they saw me as who I had learned to come across as. Me dealing with my issues. And they didn't know about those issues. The past image wasn't always there hanging over me so I was able to relax and actually feel like I was someone new, and better and everything. That was when I was able to actually start to feel confidence instead of just fake it like I had before.

I had also been through a rough teenage rebellion marriage to a criminal who beat me up and I divorced him. I was stronger than I had been led to believe. I wasn't going to go through all that and give up.

So new decade, new people, new image. It's one of the few chances in life to change who you are to others. Grab that bull by the first impressions and present yourself as the person you want to be. Fake it until you make it, change your mind, or collapse from exhaustion. It's worth it.

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I'm giving it another shot. We will see.
My forum is still there and everyone is welcome to come join as well. There is a private women only subforum there if anyone is interested. Also, there is no CAPTCHA.

The link to the forum is http://www.rightplanet.proboards.com

After a misreable teens my 20's to early '30's were the best years of my life. I was doing well at my jobs and got along well with co workers. Some of it was maturity, a lot of it was I was in my prime physically, a lot of it was the times bieng right for me. In the 1980's economy was rolling along if you had talent you could find a job and get constant raises. For certain jobs it was not as expected that you be an extrovert or team player. Now nerd culture is a cliche then it was first getting started as computers and video first became part of our lives. New Wave, Post Punk and synthpop music emphasized bieng quirky and different with acts like the Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, Devo, and B-52's. While my type of autism was not recognized back then these acts helped me understand and accept myself.

While the '80's are long gone accepting yourself is still the key. While the social climate is in many ways more hostile to people like us there are more ways to find people who are different doing well and there are many more tools to work with. Acceptence is not something you can just decide to do it takes time. At 20 coming out of the clique obsessed teen years when because you were not in a group you were ostracized people often only know the things that are "wrong" with them. In the 20's people can not beat you up without bieng arrested and they are getting more concerned with money and relationships and have less time to care about you bieng different. That gives you time and space to find out about yourself and gain prespective.

Not particularly no aspiphobia was still rife and there was no help and support. But I did have my first girlfriend in 1988. But that was whilst I was in some sort of sheltered workshop where emotional abuse was rife and the teenage years were just as bad.

Much easier for me.

I moved out at age 20. I didn't have to live under the "rules of the house."

I started working. I had independence.

I had a mattress on the floor and no TV. I didn't care. I took the mattress off the street. No harm done.

I just gloried in being on my own.

No. I hate a relatively easy childhood, and I found a nerd clique the last couple years of highschool. Times and friends were good, grades were good, future was good. Everything went downhill after highschool for me.

Infinitely easier. I'm in my late 20s now. My teenage years were entirely reclusive, incredibly painful and unbelievably lonely. I was bullied and mistreated, had nobody to speak to and felt like I was failing at everything. I'd gone from 'genius' to 'barely getting by' at school, and I was completely alone. Then, to end those teenage years, I started university hoping for a fresh start in life and found the same issues all over again! No magic cure. At the time I didn't know that I was probably on the spectrum, so my thoughts were "Hey, nobody will know what a loser I was growing up, so if I make an effort at university I should be able to make friends". Needless to say, that didn't work - I could act more confident, but ultimately I quickly crashed and burned.

However in my case, I met a guy that gave me a chance and became my friend and introduced me to his social group. He was incredibly popular, but that way because he was genuinely nice to people. We became very close friends, ended up in a relationship in our early 20s, and things moved on and now we're married and have a child.

It's a wonder there was any hope left for me in life! I know that hopeless and depressed feeling all too well. But it takes just one small thing - one person, or one bit of luck elsewhere in life - to turn it all around. My husband has provided so much support to me, he's changed my life more than anyone could ever imagine, and I'm now the happiest and proudest mum as well as being the happiest and proudest wife.

That's not to say there aren't still struggles, just that now I'm struggling beside someone understanding and mature. I still face some of those immature attitudes - some grown adults have certainly acted towards me the same way the teenagers in school and young adults in university did - but it's rarer now. For the most part, at my age, people are civil and respectful; they may drift out of your life, but they do it quietly and without a big fuss, and some will even be tactfully honest that you're not 'their kind of person' which is a hell of a lot better than what you get from bullies. I can now socialise to some extent. I'm never going to be the person that goes out for fun, but I go out for my daughter's sake and the other parents talk to me even if I don't really have close friendships, and I go out to do business networking and I do alright with the small talk.

I know I'm not great at any of it. I'm never going to be the best socially, and it does hit you hard emotionally to know that, but the world is more accommodating of my differences than it has been in the past. Adults are much better at letting you in, even if you know that it's not ideal for them, and you're also able to enjoy the independence that comes of being able to make your own decisions at all times. Don't like something? Change it!

It can be I know for me it was. But I know some people who struggled in their 20's as they were going through their quarter life crisis and felt like a failure at life. But like all things that to will passed. So just keep your head up.

I know that men aren't supposed to say this, but my sex life began in my 20s (the summer before my 21st birthday) so as a consequence I have many fond memories from that time of my life, even though overall it wasn't exactly a bed of roses.

Of course, part of this is that, as a teenager, your potential for being in a relationship is largely dependent on how popular you are and what kind of crowd you hang out with, which for an aspie is a non-starter. In your 20s, you have the opportunity to connect with members of the opposite sex on a one-to-one basis, including former wallflowers who hadn't had the courage to talk to guys before reaching their 20s.

Speaking of sex, I have said before that sex is sometimes the only way an aspie can form a truly close connection with another human being. Popular teens who are virgins still have great memories of fun things they did with their friends. I have no such memories from my teen years.

I get the feeling none of us were the popular kids at our high schools. But I think this applies to almost everyone aspie or norm, the chemical cascade of puberty starts to die down, you begin establishing yourself within the world both intellectually through reaching a certain level of maturity and learning and physically by taking on the traits of an adult and taking some sort of position in the adult world ie making a living.

I remember very clearly one day when I was twenty-three and I got a bill in the mail, went online checked my balance, wrote a check put it in an envelope and dropped it off at the post office and suddenly it just hit me out of the blue, 'holy s**t, I'm an adult.'

Short answer: Hell yea!

Teenage years were a total misery for me. I was confused, didn't know my place in the world. Didn't know I had rights... sad sad sad. Once in my 20s I realised I could say no to people, I started to make a life of my own. Truth is I recon childhood sucks!

*reckon* my spelling still sucks a bit

**** no, it's only gotten harder

teen years were crap too

Childhood is overrated, teen and young adulthood too.

I think I started to find a life for myself around mid 20s, but it was gradual and I had challenges still.

I can't believe how naive I was.

My 20's as far as life events was horrible. But it still "felt" better than my teens. I think the big factor was that I had some say in my life in my 20's and had very little say in what happened to me as a teen. Being much older now, the things people are told the have to do in their 20's as far as life goals are really made up nonsense. You don't really have to do any of them if they don't suit what makes you happy or are not something you really personally want to do.

My twenties were so much better than my teens.