Media personalities Michelle Andrews and Zara McDonald have revealed the weird and unavoidable thing that happens to everyone at the end of their twenties.
Michelle, 30, and Zara, 29, co-host the successful podcast Shameless and have recently shared a new term they’ve coined.
“We are calling it the late twenty switch, and we wanted to explore our thoughts on that,” Michelle said.
Zara said she’s about to be 30 thirty next month and has found that everything feels “different”.
Michelle said that she feels like she’s living out the lyrics from Taylor Swift’s song Florida, in which she sings, “My friends all smell of weed or little babies”.
She elaborated, explaining that she feels like her friends are being divided into two groups: those who are having babies and getting married and others who are entering a different phase, where they are “partying” or “travelling to Europe”.
Zara said she feels the same way. People are settling down or moving “into their freedom”, which means that the people you love are suddenly at radically different points in their lives.
She continued, revealing that recently, when it was just her and Michelle in the office, they started talking about how she’d been struggling with the winter blues.
But Zara said she thinks it’s less about the chilly weather and far more about how she’s realised her life is changing.
“I found myself (at the) beginning May end of April looking around and starting to wonder where everyone went,” she said.
“And why everyone was suddenly pursuing different things, and I realised there was a lack of unity between how my friends and I live.”
Zara said she felt it was a realisation she had overnight and it hit her like a “tonne of bricks”.
She stressed that she still sees and loves her friends, but she’s noticed that between catch-ups, everyone has their heads down and is concentrating their busy lives and she doesn’t feel ready for a future where things are more separate.
“It feels like you are at a party, and you’re outside, and you look around and realise everyone’s inside, and you want people to come back outside,” she said.
Michelle said that she feels the same, but a different metaphor has helped her understand what is happening. She said she visualises a switch above all her friend’s heads and some are going off.
“Every time I wake up, another switch has gone off for another person and they are entering a new chapter,” she said.
Michelle said that she never gave into the hype that turning 30 would be a big deal. However, after reaching that age, she has noticed how things change.
“I thought I’d turn 30 and feel totally fine,” she said.
Psychologist Carly Dober said that ending your twenties does tend to bring out everyone’s feelings.
“There are also a lot of social and cultural pressures that can occur at the end of your 20s, including the expectation to settle down, to start a family, to get married, and to pick a career,” she said.
“I don’t believe that everyone needs to live their life a certain way.
“However, the stress that can come from family or your friends and other people around you when you do try to live your life differently can lead to people feeling like there’s something wrong with them, they are falling behind, or they are not good enough. It’s a lot.”
