I don't know how to be in my 30s

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It is difficult to grow up feeling like you use the same words to speak a different language than most people. I just remind myself that many of them complain when we have days off work that they don't know what to do with themselves. I will never have that problem.

Don't sweat the maturity thing too much. It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling behind everyone else but look at the countless number of celebrities who were late bloomers and didn't suffer as a result.

I'm really pretty tired of hearing people's judgments about who is mature and who isn't. My parents and some other family members are very good at that, judging my friends behind their back's and all that. I love the irony of how everyone wants to be young, and yet, they make themselves old before they have to.

I think that the concept people refer to as maturity is actually some combination of a bunch of other factors that separate people.

1. A relationship. As long as it looks great on paper, from the outside, people think it's good and normal. Never mind about how half of the relationships don't last long. Or never mind if you hate your spouse. You're mature because you made a commitment. I've never heard it called immature when people enter into hasty marriages.

2. Having children, because it seems to me that a lot of adult fun goes out the window then.

3. The stage of career you're in, for those obsessed with climbing.

4. Level of attention paid to house/apartment. For example, frequently ducking out of social situations, but never work situations, because you have errands.

5. Accumulation of awards, honors, prestige, and/or savings for the future.

6. Skipping weekend fun time for the sake of a boring routine of errands and dinner parties, or just working your weekends away. Reality shows? They don't factor in for someone being considered immature, but watch a wholesome children show and see what happens.

Does any of this sound like a good idea to you long term? If not, then why bother being in your 30s? Life is too short not to do what you want, just because some people say you shouldn't.

I'm having this problem too, and I agree with the above. There is a "script" you're supposed to follow, it seems, for every phase of western human adult life. Like a mayfly. Anything outside that script is considered immature or otherwise derided because it's different.
But something someone around this site said once occurred to me - that you have to find a way to be autistically happy. Trying to be like others, to have the lives they have and derive any kind of happiness from that yourself may not be possible.
I maintain I am childlike, not childish. In many ways I'm very "adult" but I know I will never conform to that script and be happy. I won't finish a university degree by 25 (obviously), I won't get into a professional job and spend the next five years ladder climbing and seeking promotion, I won't meet a nice partner and get married and have children, work a 9 - 5 and have BBQs on the weekends and golf in annual leave, spend all my time paying for children's tuition so they can have an education, save up, retire, die.
It's just not going to happen and honestly, I would be miserable if it did. I'm too different. My life at whatever age is going to be off-script.
I say push back against people who tell you you have to follow this formula or you're "immature." Because pushing against that can be hard with everyone telling you otherwise. I'm done feeling like I'm inadequate because I'm different and my life is different. Trying to be like everyone else brings me nothing but misery because it is almost guaranteed to be anti-autistic. Its trying to be something you are fundamentally not.
I don't know about you all but I'm trying to cultivate my world, a situation where I will be happy, not a situation that measures up to the narrow expectations of others.

I've seen a lot of very interesting posts here, but unfortunately I don't have time to read them all

In addition to the perspectives provided here, there is also the fact that the nature of life progression in developed countries has significantly changed in recent years. People have children later and later in life, more women are integrated into the workforce, credential inflation pushes more young adults into pursuing postgraduate qualifications. The decline of traditional industries, and changes in work place structure and law (combined with increased deregulation and 'globalisation') mean that individuals are often obliged to be flexible and mobile, and to frequently reskill and reinvent themselves in order to secure work, and - in the UK - significant housing shortage and market inflation mean that many young adults are priced out of property, or even rent, and end up living in shared accommodation or moving back with their parents, long after they think they 'ought' to.
However, our cultural preconceptions about what 'stages' we reach at what time are far slower to adjust. People feel anxious if they approach 30 without securing a long term partner, they feel anxious if they are unable to afford to buy a house, if they live with their parents, if they don't have children when their peers do, etc. etc. There is a mismatch! And it really isn't just people with autism who feel this way. A friend of mine has a full time permanent academic job in Scandanavia and a long term partner. Jobs of that kind are highly competitive in my area, and so she is definitely 'successful' for a given measure of success. But she once mentioned to me that she felt 'behind' in comparison to me because I'm married. This was a real paradigm shift for me, because I saw things the other way round. While I'm married, we rent, I am still a student and I have no financial security and live right on the edge of my overdraft. But the mismatch between our views made me conscious of how arbitrary it all is, and how important it is to remember that it is all relative.

In terms of my own feeling about my age, I relate well to the title of this thread. I've never 'felt my age', and at all the socially significant ages... 18, 21, 30... I always had the feeling of 'but I still feel like a teenager'! I am just 5 months into 30, and certainly had that feeling again... objectively I'm an adult. I do adult things. I've done a lot of teaching at my University. I have secured a full time job for next year. I'm married... but I don't feel any different! I still feel about 18. My husband and I frequently note that we don't feel 'married'. We just sort of found each-other and didn't want to leave eachother, and got used to hanging out together... and we're still hanging out together! Nothing changed after saying our vows. So I can only assume that I will still feel 25 when I'm in my 60s :p These are all just constructs that don't actually point to anything real. There are activities and experiences that draw people together in a certain way, such as having children, buying a house, being a student... but I know from experience that if you are a mature student you don't feel 'old' once you're there. Partaking in the same practical activities and concerns is what defines that stage, not your age.

Funnily enough I feel as though I grow younger and younger. As a child I was very intense and serious. I didn't get along with my peers. All my friends bar one or two very close ones were older. People frequently assumed me to be several years older than I was. Among my friends I was the sensible, wise one, who always had perspective and rational advice to offer, and who was never swayed by impulse. Then I reached 'adulthood' and things began to change. I matured by becoming 'younger'. I started to recognise the grey, to see that many things in life are far less black and white than I had perceived them to be from my egocentric teen perspective. I began to realise how little I really knew about people and life. This made me feel younger, because it confounded confidence and some of my self assuredness. This was only compounded by life experience. It took going through some extremely unpleasant and difficult experiences as an adult, to really grasp, for the first time, how truly difficult some experiences can actually be, and to become more empathetic and sensitive to other people and their difficulties. This is a kind of 'maturity' but it also feels like a loss of maturity. I am much more aware of how scary, risky, complicated and difficult the world can be. And so I don't feel 'on top' of my life all the time. And with that comes a better ability to laugh at myself, even though I'm still intense and serious.
I went to University at 21 not 18 because I moved to England and it took a few years to earn my 'residency' status and gain access to the domestic student financing (I was born here though, in case anybody reading is silently deeming me a scrounger :p ) And that was a period in my life where I suddenly went from being ahead to being behind. At University I was older than my peers and more emotionally secure and confident, but I was also more naive. I hadn't been to the same schools or learned the same study skills that many of my peers had. I hadn't figured out who to ask, and how to be 'strategic' about how I studied. And I was almost entirely new to the kind of social dynamics that went on at my institution largely because I'd studied at home (distance learning) for high school (no regrets). And right now I feel artificially youthful because I'm *still* a student. Finishing up my doctoral thesis now. And for the last five years or so I've been in a very awkward in between phase where I'm technically a student but in some ways a professional. I've been a teacher to undergraduates, and a marker and supervisor. I have worked with academics to moderate and mark papers, and to strategise over course structure and strategy. I have produced and presented independent work at conferences, and I have published. Yet I am still technically a student, and I started my PhD with a student mindset, which led to me being fairly submissive and deferential to my PhD supervisors. Unfortunately I've never been able to snap out of this relational dynamic with them, even though I see other students younger than me interacting with them as peers. Once I started a job on the side, this became very clear to me because my boss and I had a professional and equitable relationship in which I was treated as an adult. But I am at a loss as to how to alter the dynamics of the relationship with my supervisors so as to grow out of my 'student' behaviour.
Over the years I've also had similar difficulties with my relationship to my parents. It has been quite stressful and frustrating, and much of the time I feel like there is a gear I'd like to shift into with them, and that the gear stick is stuck.

So.... to conclude. It's all relative. How we see ourselves isn't how others see us. And it's perfectly possible for us to be older or younger in certain domains at certain times, and I don't think it does any good to feel bad about it. We just have to accept ourselves and muddle along.
I'll leave you with a hilarious buzzfeed article, though, which I read once every few months and laugh myself silly over
19 pictures that perfectly summarise becoming an adult...

Ooohhh, that 10-years-experience shite, don't get me started. I once cornered an interstate haulage company into admitting they cannot hire anyone (specifically me, who had just paid 2K out of my own pocket for licensing) under 45 who is not ex-service, because their insurance regulations specifically prevent anyone actually having "experience" except the above.
And that sleep one - yeah, possibly why I'm on two kinds of sleeping pills, every night.
I think I've decided not to be an adult anymore.

I understand how you feel. I am only now getting my own place and becoming independent. I've always had people watch me and take care of me even in relationships. I am playing catch up big time but for me its sort of worked out. Best thing that could of happened was everyone abandoning me and forcing me to fend for myself. I'll never forgive the f*****s but I am better for it.

People like to show off their accomplishments and hide their faults. It gives a distorted view. More than a few of the people I know living it up like they're successful are actually broke due to their showing off.

Don't play the game. Don't feel like you need to be like other people or follow the Western Life Script. It's your life, live it your way and control what you can control.

Yes, you should save some money for the future or be diligent with your health. Do what you can when you can.