DAE in their 30s/40s/50s not really feel like an adult?
DAE in their 30s/40s/50s not really feel like an adult?
My age says I'm an adult but sometimes I think other people know more about being an adult than me.
Comments
83-
-
"When do I start feeling like an adult?"
That's the neat part! You don't!
-
what does adult mean anyway?
like the traditional markers of adulthood as in home ownership, family, etc. ?
or just a self of responsibility?
-
If we strip the externally-imposed milestones and accomplishment domarisons, we're left with basic stuff like the skills required to cope in a society with other individuals, make decisions and be responsible for those decisions, and manage (not achieve, but manage) basic needs.
It's bullshit, but that's close, right?
when I ask myself whether others - or me too - are achieving these intrinsic requirements, I'm not often impressed. But that's a target to work toward, anyway.
-
-
-
I'm in my 40s and I still don't get it. I keep asking myself when my life as an independent adult who has my own place to live and access to decent transportation will begin.
-
why don't you have those things?
i've had those things since i was 18.
-
- I have a disability that prevents me from driving and makes it difficult to find employment without strong inside connections or outside of a few very specific niches.
- I live in a very large, pedestrian-hostile city.
- While my grandfather, who lacked a college education, could afford to buy a house and feed a stay-at-home wife and 8 children, I, who have no dependents and have two college degrees, cannot afford an apartment in a location that fits my needs.
-
ladies and gentlemen... "The problem"
-
-
-
I feel like I came at this from another direction. In my twenties I cut my foot pretty bad on a rusty screw so I went to the hospital and got stitches. The doctor didn’t prescribe me an antibiotic and I foolishly thought “oh they’re a doctor, I must not need one!” I of course got a pretty bad infection within a few days that required me to be on IV antibiotics for several days. I’m lucky I didn’t need any debridement or worse. I learned through that experience that nobody knows what the fuck is going on and you cannot count on “adults” because we generally know fuck-all.
-
people make mistakes. doctors are imperfect.
-
Yeah, that was the point of my story…
-
-
-
Nobody knows how to be an adult. Everyone is posing.
-
i strongly believe we have deluded ourselves as a society to associate natural human feelings with youth when they are simply how humans perceive and feel regardless of age. every single older person i ask if they feel their age says no. they all tell me they feel like they’re in their 20s at the oldest, some still teenagers. your body ages, you get wiser due to life experiences, but you don’t “become an adult” ever, because what we consider adulthood is a Western lie built upon capitalist standards and strict American individualism (if you’re in the US).
i don’t feel 36. i don’t know what that would even entail. i feel “younger,” but i don’t see it that way. i feel like a human being connected to his actual existence and acknowledging it rather than allowing it to be repressed because i’m too old for x y z. we are all young-minded permanently. that’s just how humans are. it isn’t reserved for the physically young.
-
Perhaps its because we assume a proportional relationship between ignorance and youth. But because its impossible to know everything we are doomed to feel ignorant frequently and therefore perpetually stuck in a state before the imaginary line between young and old
-
IME ignorance is just a function of your inability or unwillingness to learn. Mostly because you are afraid of being 'wrong' or making mistakes.
-
-
i feel younger as i get older because i have less stress. in my teens are 20s i was constantly under stress. i remember high school, and college, and most of my 20s full of constant agonizing and worrying. mostly because i was poor and any life mistake felt like i'd lose everything and become homeless.
but apparently many other people had an opposite life experience where their youthful life was not stressful and their adulthood is. probably because they grew up with money and had parents who helicoptered over them and now they find basic responsibilities to be a burden. like it shocks me how many people think having to work and pay bills is 'unfair' but i guess maybe that's because they grew up not having to work and pay bills.
-
-
When I turned 18 and my grandmother was in her 80s, she told me, "I still feel exactly like I did when I was your age."
I asked if that meant she was frustrated by how slowly she moved (she used a rollator by that point), and she confirmed it did.
You'll never really feel like an adult, but your body will keep on aging anyway. And you'll never really get used to that, either.
-
It's right around the time that you realize your parents were just doing the best they could and didn't know how to "adult" either that you start to understand that you're destined to do the same thing. We're all just making it up as we go and hoping to do better than the previous generation. Generation after generation built upon the knowledge of iteration.
So yeah, mentally, I don't feel significantly different than I have at any other time in the past twenty years, aside from knowledge and experience, but I also realize that I'm viewed significantly different by others, so you kind of have to act the part and fake it till you make it.
-
the difference between my parents and my siblings and I is that we learn from our mistakes. we try different things, we defer to experts to gain more knowledge and guidance.
my parents didn't. a lot of people actively don't and refuse to do so and live with the assumption their their assumptions and instincts are 'correct' and others are not.
-
-
I've always felt like a kid and told myself I wouldn't grow up.
Still the same. I think having a somewhat traumatized childhood also makes you want to live as a child freely again.
Also not having kids helps. I can do anything I want and make my own schedule.
I never understood boring old people. Ill be doing projects and having adventures until im 80.
-
most people don't want or need projects and adventures. they want to relax and do nothing in their spare time.
-
I want to sit on my ass and be unproductive
-
And this is why i argue we cant have UBI, or most people wont do jack shit and the utilities will get shut down 😅
I have times where I want to be lazy. But it doesn't last long and then im on to the next thing. And I consider myself low energy compared to the shit I see my friends getting done!
-
-
-
I feel like adding a positive experience to contrast the more negative comments (including my own). The summer I graduated high school was perhaps one of the best times in my life. I really, truly felt that I had my whole life ahead of me.
I spent all of June training with my first guide dog. The clearest memory I have of realizing I was finally an adult was when we were flying home after training. I was sitting at the gate, my new dog lying quietly under my chair, my feet resting slightly forward into the walkway to accommodate her, my head filled with future plans and possibilities. I thought about how I would provide a loving home for this carefully bred, meticulously vetted, and rigorously trained canine that this organization had entrusted me with. I imagined our first semester of college together. I hadn't gotten into my first choice school or major but that was OK; I had a backup plan and was looking forward to it. A kid ran past me, pulling me out of my thoughts, then I heard his mother say "Watch out for that man's foot." That's it. I was a "man" not a "boy" or a "kid" or a "child". The world saw me as an adult. The future may not have turned out how I thought, but in that moment, I was exactly who I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do, exactly where I was supposed to be, and man it felt good.
-
feeling you are responsible for something other than yourself is a huge motivator that a lot of young people lack these days, and probably a huge disconnect why so many people are unhappy and anxious.
but then again when you propose people get involved in a deeper way with something outside themselves, like volunteering, they tell you to f off they don't have the time. and yet they whine about how all they do is sit at home.
you can't have the rewards without the responsibilities. I've always wanted children because i know that would be a lot of work/responsibility, but it would also make my life more than about my own personal goals and achievements. sadly i have never found a partner who felt the same way, mostly just people who thought children would detract from their own personal hedonistic fulfillment. which made we realize we were not compatible, because my life is and never was about personal hedonistic fulfillment.
-
-
You don't have an insight into other people's minds so you attribute their behavior and decisions to some knowledge you don't have but they do.
This is a fake feeling caused by lack of information. Everyone is improvising life.Some reading as introduction to the cause of the phenomenon:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_bias-
yep. it's like when people think my IT/coding skills are 'magic'.
they aren't... they are a product of learning and failing and learning... effort.
i also notice people think like some 12 year old who is really good at something is magically gifted.... 99.9% of the time it's because they are already been doing it for a decade. all my professionally level musician friends started learning music at like 2 or 3. most kids don't learn until like 12, so those 'gifted' kids have a decade of experience already.
just like when i took calc 3 at 30 and my class had a bunch of 15 year olds in it. those 15 year olds in it they weren't geniuses. they just had more experience and knowledge than me and parents who pushed them. many of them probably would go on to graduate college in 2-3 years instead of the traditional 4.
-
-
You're fine, some days I barely feel human let alone adult. I imagine the overwhelming majority are faking it till they make it. It's one of those clichés that's cliché for a reason.
-
I'm 42, and I feel like I'm cosplaying and LARPing as an adult. I'm able to convince everyone but myself.
Mortage, kids, and a pretty nice career is my equivalent of a fursuit - something to hide behind in an effort to find acceptance from likeminded.
-
that sounds miserable.
-
-
I'm almost 50 and had to look up DAE 🤷 It turns out that it is an abbreviation for 48 meanings!
I figured it stands for Does Anyone Else but what has clearly changed as I grew older is, how tired I am of abbreviations
-
I totally agree with the abbreviations.
-
-
Just hit the big 40 recently and I still feel just as immature as I did in my twenties. Just with a bunch of new and exotic pain.
-
"Being an adult" means doing all the things your parents did when you were young with the confidence and determination you assumed they had at the time.
Also doesn't help that much of modern management culture is suffocatingly paternalistic. Bosses want you to continue getting an education, they want you to dress a certain way, they're out assigning you work after hours, they're harping on you for showing up late or leaving early without regard to traffic conditions or life events. There's HR policy around shaming you for being overweight or diabetic or pregnant that's pitched as "how you can save some money!" but mostly revolves around saving the company paid sick leave and benefits. You're told to save in a 401k, but forbidden from managing your money independent of a brokerage. You're told to live independent of parents or roommates, but without the income to afford a home or an apartment convenient to your workplace. You're constantly subjected to reviews and milestones that only ever seem to monopolize your time and never result in career advancement.
You get the same attitude from businesses you interact with - everyone from salesmen to bill collectors to DMV officials have a way of talking down to you and using shame or disappointment to manipulate your behaviors. TV is increasingly just a series of jangling keys. Social Media is just 40 year olds who act like they're still in High School. PTA meetings feel like the blind leading the blind, as you meet with people who are just as infantilized as you've been, trying to convey why this month's deluge of standardized tests is more important than the last in a way you'll believe more than they do.
And that's before you get to the fucking Police. An entire multi-billion dollar bureaucracy dedicated to being America's abusive stepfather.
It sucks out there, man.
-
it sounds like you have a shitty job. my job doesn't expect any of that.
i also don't watch TV or hang out with immature people.
that's the great thing about being an adult. i get to choose who interact with, where i work, where i live. in childhood you had no choices.
-
-
I don't know about feeling like an adult, but I don't feel like a kid, that's for sure.
-
Sounds like we're all in the same boat here.
Adulting is an illusion.
-
I only really feel like an adult when I spend time with kids and young people. Even though the students I teach are at university, and thus technically adults... I'm always struck by how often they seem 'immature'.
And to be clear, I don't even really mean that as a criticism. Sure, at times they don't pay attention and forget to do things and seem akward/nervous. But "adults' do all those things too. The difference is the adults have generally accepted these flaws and come up with coping strategies (both good and bad) like avoiding those situations, or blaming other people.
So, what makes me feel like an adult is not that I'm on top of things, or that I'm no longer a mess. It's that I know I'm a mess, and I no longer hope that one day I'll get everything sorted, and tbh, that's fine.
-
the ability to delay gratification and think through the long term consequences of an action is a skill most human beings don't have until they are in their mid to late 20s. biologically speaking.
but i totally get it when my 13 year old nephew thinks his parents are ruining his life by not letting him buy more fortnite money. because in his brain all that matters is there pressing urges of the here and now. to him the future is no more than a week away, he doesn't think in terms of months or years and he won't until he's apply to college probably.
-
-
Never really have. Around 8 or 9, I stopped wanting to get any older and since then I've always felt like I was pretending to be my age rather than being it.
I understand that a lot of other adults are also pretending, but I've all but ceased to be able to keep up the charade.
For example, I own a house, and even managed to look after things for a while, but that was a struggle and there's no way current me is up to any of that.
I envy others' strength and ability.
-
what if you were never pretending, and you simply are your age.
-
-
As someone pushing 40, this thread is full of people who sound like fun.
-
I feel like an adult, but I feel like very few others actually are
-
No one ever truely grows up, some people are just better at hiding it.
-
My little daughter thinks I'm an adult and calls me daddy
-
having someone else depend on you tends to jolt a lot of us out of our selfish immaturity.
i notice a lot of people my age w/o kids are like... crazy selfish and seem to think they are the center of the world.
most of my married/children having friends are the opposite of that.
-
It's almost unbelievable how much my world changed by having a child. Indeed the center of the universe shifted and I became a satellite instead of the center piece.
And it's still weird for me because I didn't even know I could feel so much love. I don't actually understand it because especially in the beginning a baby doesn't really do anything positive for you except for totally depending on you and looking cute. Besides that extreme sleep deprivation (she had a lot of tummy aches as baby), torture by loud crying all day long, causing lots of worries, no more time for friends and also costing quite a lot of money.
I don't mean this in a negative way. I just mean without this sudden feeling of total unconditional love babies probably wouldn't survive. She's 4 years now and it's still a struggle but I love her to bits and would still give everything. The game has changed though and now she tells me what she wants while I know that not everything she wants is good for her and sometimes I have to force her to do things she absolutely doesn't want for her own good...
-
-
-
Being adult is highly overrated. Look at all the "serious" people ruining the world with their greed and selfishness. Never let the inner child die. Children inherently understand morals that adults corrupt with religion and over-thinking.
-
In my experience the only defining trait of being an adult is that you suddenly start to like getting socks as a present.
-
One of my many "I guess I'm a grown man now" moments was when I got legitimately excited to buy a ladder.
-
-
Fake it til you make it
-
Adult is just being 18+ years old. What you may be looking for is how to mature as an adult. That’s done by trying, failing, and learning over and over again. You’ll always have some fear of new things, but you eventually learn how to bounce back from failure to reduce the fear. As you get older, you’ll lose the support of family because they die. As that happens, you’ll learn to fend for yourself. You will not mature if your are doing the same old stuff because it’s comfortable.
-
yeah. trying new things and failing and getting better at them... has been really great. i recently was taking language and writing classes, and it's been really interesting experience. it's forcing me to interact with people outside of my bubble and it's rewarding when i study and make an effort and punishing when i fail to do that.
-
-
Last night I ate two bowls of knock-off cinnamon crunch at 23 o’clock, simply because I hadn’t had cereal in a while. My parents would have sure been like “why? Just wait for breakfast.”
I’m 40.
-
Feel still like a kid.
Sometimes feel like a 10 year old in the body of an adult
-
- I have adult aches and adult bills and sometimes adult hopes I won’t wake up in the morning… but I’ll still laugh at fart jokes.
-
idk, i do a lot of joking around, but i pay all my bills on time
-
you're doing better than like 60% of other adults then.
-
-
Yep. At least partially. Never been able to achieve any of the milestones of adulthood. Marriage, home ownership, kids, etc. Could never afford anything.
-
I'm about to hit 49. We're just older kids, that's all.
-
I don't feel any different than I did in high school. Mentally or physically.
-
My body reminds me I'm an adult every day.
-
There are two types of adults; old teenagers and grown-ups. I'm definitely an old teenager.
-
OP: What do you consider 'adult'? I am trying to be a responsible parent to two children, and I pay the bills on time. I have a decent paying job while still being able to care for the children. As the father I do most of the cooking and cleaning and in the weekends I perform the upkeep of our home. But the best moment I had with my kids were doing 'immature' things together, like playing with Lego or loudly singing along with 80s goth music, or occasionally both at the same time. I also play board games and computer games (instead of passively sitting in front of the television, I might add).
On the other hand, I saw parents at the playground who were working on spreadsheets and totally ignoring their children. If that is being an 'adult', I do not want to be one.
-
Well in some ways yes, and in some ways no. I never seem to get jaded, silly things still make me laugh. I still can read and shut out the world like when I was a kid.
But I am so competent in some ways? Can cook and hold a job, raised kids, gardens finally grow for me. All those seem adult qualities. And I have made so many mistakes and have been hurt so much, do feel the weight of experience. And while nothing hurts, and I can still cartwheel and do yoga, I have no bounce - can't run well, can't jump.
-
The idea of "growing up" is bullshit and probably stunts a lot of kids growth and development.
-
I know when I first hit my 30’s it dawned on me in a panicked rush that people expect me to be a mature knowledgeable adult. I have accepted that truth but also know that I am still just as “adult” as I’ve ever been
-
all it says is you are insecure.
i have felt like an adult since my teens. probably because I'm responsible for myself and i don't blame other people for by problems and i understood that the only person in my life who will ever help me accomplish anything is myself.
Well I mean, we're all just mostly LARPing this whole adult thing, right?
I’m in my 50s and actually still LARPing, and playing TTRPGs, and MMORPGs. No need to grow up for anyone else’s sake as long as you’re not harming others.
When I was little, I thought I would grow out of playing video games, as in I have a very specific memory of sitting in my 1st grade math class and just making that observation to myself. I was a 90s kid surrounded by baby boomer adults who largely were not gamers, so I just assumed one day I'd grow out of it.
On the positive side, I learned that you don't have to give up your imagination when you grow up. I came up with elaborate make-believe worlds as kids are wont to do, and merely started adding lore and continuity and documentation when I got older. You don't need to be writing a sci-fi novel or DMing a homebrew D&D campaign to do it, either. I worldbuild for the mere joy of pretending, or to dignify it with Tolkien's words sub-creation.
Lightning bolt, lightning bolt!
I'm out of mana!
Pretty sure I was born LARPing being a kid too. I never made the very common presumption, when most(?) people are young, that adults (or my parents for that matter, religious indoctrination immunity) knew what they were doing. Perhaps I came across older than I was, and now the opposite is happening the more grey hair I get!
No. I'm not.
but i like and enjoy my life. i don't regard it as a burden to escape from.
Neither am I, I just think I shouldn't be allowed to but a house or rent a car or use a chainsaw or raise a child unsupervised. That's something grown-ups do, not me (40yo).