The Life You Were Told to Want vs. the Life You Actually Do

There is a specific moment — sometimes gradual, sometimes sudden — when a woman realises that the life she has been building is the life she was told to want, not the life she actually does.

It might be the career path chosen for its stability and prestige rather than its genuine fit. The relationship pursued because it ticked the cultural boxes rather than because it was genuinely wanted. The version of success that looks exactly right from the outside and feels hollow from the inside.

This recognition is disorienting. It is also one of the most important things that can happen.

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How We End Up Living Someone Else's Vision

The early shaping of desire. Before we have the self-knowledge to distinguish between what we genuinely want and what we have been taught to want, the desires are shaped for us — by family, by culture, by the specific examples and narratives of our community.

The approval system. The specific things we receive approval for pursuing — the academic achievements, the marriageable attributes, the career trajectories that our community values — tend to become the things we pursue. Not because we chose them, but because the approval system directed our energy.

The borrowed vision. The version of a good life that was modelled for us — by parents, by mentors, by the women whose lives the community celebrated — becomes the template we build toward. Without examining whether it is genuinely ours.

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What to Do With the Discovery

Make the distinction. Not everything in the life you have built is the wrong life. Some of it — perhaps much of it — is genuinely yours. The skill is in distinguishing clearly between the elements that are genuinely satisfying and the elements that are performed or pursued for their external rather than internal value.

Resist the impulse to blow everything up. The discovery that you have been living partly for others does not require the immediate dismantling of everything built. It requires honest examination and, over time, gradual movement toward the genuine.

Ask the honest question. If the external measures of success were removed — if no one would know, if no one would have an opinion — what would you want? The answer to that question, genuinely engaged with, is some of the most important information available to you.

Begin making small choices from the genuine. Not revolution — a gradual reorientation. Each small choice made from genuine preference rather than external expectation is a step in the direction of the life that is actually yours.

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Related: The Pressure to Have It All · Intentional Living Guide · What Does Success Look Like for a Nigerian Woman?