Make changes if disappointed in adult life

Q. Is being an adult just the process of becoming more accepting of disappointment in life?

I'm in my 30s and awakening to the fact that nothing in the life I have spent a decade building - relationships, career, skills, hobbies, home - is fulfilling to me at all. Is that normal? Do people walk away and start over or is there another option?

Is the other option to get over myself? I don't have kids, but I am in a committed relationship with a mortgage and pets. I just wish I could start again as a new person.

Being an Adult

A. Being an adult means giving up on fairy tales, yes, so it does include learning to accept disappointment.

But adulthood also means agency, which is so much better than fairy tales that, by comparison, it makes prince- or princessing sound like a miserable line of work. With really nice clothes.

Anyway. This isn't to minimize the pain you're in right now. Or the confusion you probably feel: It's possible you chose the wrong partner-career-hobbies, sure, or you could have grown or changed a lot since you made your choices, or you could have an unrelated health issue that's blurring the lens through which you view everything in your life.

To sort this out, it's going to take some hard work and patience and scary challenges to your status quo.

But you have the wherewithal to do just that - work hard, think bravely and make changes. You can get a screening for depression, to start; I'm always suspicious of across-the-board alienation.

And, you can schedule some time out of your routine to help you gain some perspective. Just changing what your eyes rest on, what you eat, whom you talk to, what you listen to, can jog things loose.

Spending time with people who knew you before the partner/career/mortgage specifically can reset your thinking in surprising ways, just by reminding you who you once were.

And you can identify changes you're able to make, in order of increasing life-disruptiveness, starting with the smallest of tweaks to your diet, to your exercise habits, to your sleep habits, to your hobbies. You can also research changes (career or otherwise) right up to the line of actually making them to see if anything piques your interest.

And you can stare into the void. Every life is missing something, if only because having X typically means not having Y. What are you missing that matters? What did you think mattered, but now doesn't matter at all? What preoccupies you that you don't think you can do?

And you can talk to your partner about how you feel. Full-on.

As the one in a funk, you're the one who needs to make changes, but no one is a fixed quantity; you both can work to adjust your relationship.

Regardless, your partner deserves to know the terms have changed already, and might be changing some more, and deserves a chance to make changes accordingly.

I said this was scary and meant it. Even an unhappy rut feels safe, even comforting. But the risk of risk-avoidance is deceptively, ironically high. The unhappier you get, the less thoughtful your changes are likely to be. Reason this through while you still can.

• Email Carolyn at tellme@washpost.com, follow her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/carolyn.hax or chat with her online at noon Eastern time each Friday at www.washingtonpost.com.

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