I do this. I’ll be 28 soon, and I still look ‘young’ to most people, and I don’t have any physical reminders of my advancing age like weight gain, aches and pains, lack of energy, or gray hairs - but I just can’t believe I’ve been a self-supporting adult for 10 years now, and how differently my life has worked out than I thought it would when I was 20 (I was in a serious relationship then, hoping to have a family by now - these days I’m not nearly so focused on that). It’s just shocking every time I let myself think about it. I feel like childhood was so very long ago.
Part of it is that my boyfriend, and some friends and co-workers I spend time with regularly, are 5+ years younger than I am. Part of it is that although I work full time and pay my bills, I don’t have what most would consider a ‘grown-up’ lifestyle. Possibly never will.
It’s the feeling that you’re at an age by which you should have achieved a certain stability and have made some progress towards the family-house-career ideal, and yet you’ve made none. You’re older than you should be, with nothing to show for it. And you don’t know if that will change.
I think it may be more common now than it used to be, but I don’t know what I base that on.
I’m in my 30s, I feel like I get to be more condescending the older I get, so that is a huge plus for me.
Plus for me, I did start having health problems around 30. Mostly musculoskeletal, but problems nonetheless in various muscles and joints. So I did see my health take a hit when I left my 30s.
Rather than the age itself, it may be part of the transition between being a student to having a job. You’re spending most of your time doing something that’s probably uninteresting and mostly unrewarding; you have less time for your friends and hobbies; and you haven’t built up enough clout and seniority in your career to have much authority or influence. You’re looking around and noticing that you’ve become another random person with a random job whose weekdays are entirely taken up with that job. Now, you’ll probably have more money, more autonomy, kids, etc. in a few years; but until then, there’s a valley where you’ve given up your time but haven’t quite exchanged it for money yet.
I’m forty. I feel younger in body now than when I was 30. I eat better(I cut wheat), and I work out. Before I had all sorts of aches and pains from gluten intolerance.
Folks in their 30s are now entering the age when they aren’t young. No one is old in their 30s. But you aren’t young either.
Used to be that I could count on being among the “young people crowd” at work. Not any more. Even though I don’t have the trappings of middle age (not married, no children), I can’t relate to the fresh face embryos just coming out of college. It wasn’t that long ago when I could, though. So it’s weird.
I have a coworker who is 40. For the longest time, before she got married, she’d complain about how old she is. It was very depressing listening to her. When she got married, I thought she’d feel young again, and I do think this has happened a little. But now she’s talking about how she’s too old to have children. Not just in fertility terms, but also in terms of having the energy to raise them. I imagine a lot of people in their 40s are facing this reality. I don’t think 40 is that old (it’s just five years away for me), but I guess maybe I would feel differently if I saw nothing but diaper changes, temper tantrums, dance recitals, and the terrible teens ahead of me.
I’m 48, and I hear this a lot from people my age and younger. It’s strange to me…I’ve never felt old or depressed about getting older. I notice changes in my body and my stamina, etc, but it just seems like a trade off for not being young and miserable anymore.
The last guy I dated was 47 and constantly referred to himself as a “lonely old man” and a “bitter old fool” etc. It was ridiculous, but he really, truly saw himself that way. Drove me crazy!
Remember the old hippie catchphrase “Never trust anyone over 30?” When you’re in your 20’s, 30 does seem like a pretty advanced age. You’re not ancient, but you’re definitely a grownup. From the perspective of 50+, it’s easy to realize how great an age 30 really is, but when you’ve recently been in your 20’s, it’s not so appealing.
And it is true that our society does pretty much expect you to behave differently when you hit 30. You’re an adult, and probably shouldn’t be out partying every weekend and half the nights of the week. And while you’re still generally in great shape, that’s the age where you can feel the distant rumbles of age creeping up on you – energy levels drop off a bit, you start putting on just a bit of weight, and maybe even there’s a grey hair or two visible.
I think there are a couple of societal factors that are related:
-People waiting longer to get married, but houses, start their professional careers
-Higher divorce rates
-Companies have flatter organizational structures and less upward mobility
So what happens is instead of gradually progressing in life along with people in your age group - first job, marriage, house, kids, promotion, more kids, another promotion, so on and so forth - the lifestyle of someone in their 30s or even 40s might be very similar to someone in their early 20s. Now you are competing with younger people for the same jobs, the same dating pool and whatnot.
I’m 19 years old today and I do internally feel this way, although I don’t voice it since people get annoyed. I know it is very absurd, but I definitely feel like I’m not ‘very young’ any more.
But really, a lot of things in my life are changing. It’s a fact that I’m no longer a child any longer. I can’t get away with things I used to be able to. This is probably my last summer just having fun and not having to work.
Plus, it seems like time is speeding up. Try as I might to fill my life with interesting hobbies and activities, it seems like years are as long as months used to be. I’m not sure how bad this can get. Hopefully it’s not the cartoon image I have in my head where it feels like one day I’ll be 43 and the next I’ll be 44.
So yeah, I’m not sure if that provided any insight, but I’m off to enjoy being my birthday.
It could also be that the majority of my friends have kids at this point. I feel old just thinking about how exhausting babies can be.
I relate to most of what everyone is saying. I’m 31 and I don’t know if I want to ever get married or to have more kids, but I’m used to it always being an option. Now, even on the off-chance I meet someone to marry really soon and we get married in a year and have a baby the year after that…well, I’d be 33 which isn’t too bad, except my kids would be 15 years apart! Do I really want to be responsible for minor children continuously from age 17-51?
But this isn’t what I thought would happen. When I was pregnant with my daughter, I said that I’d give her her dad’s last name because if I gave her mine, I’d just end up changing it when I got married and then we wouldn’t have the same last name anyway.
I’m really glad I do have one kid though. I’d be one of those women panicking about her biological clock otherwise. Now it’s just more like the death of an option that I don’t know if I want anyway.
In my early 30’s, two major things happened: I got a mortgage like a real grown-up person and my body went from “Eat anything, burn it all” to “Brush teeth, gain 2 lbs” over night. Both contributed to a “You ain’t as young as you used to be” feeling.
I’m 40 now and it’s a back and forth. I can talk video games with my 14 year old and feel young. Or spend a half hour climbing a play set in pursuit of my 2 year old and feel ancient.
In my mid-30s, I started being surrounded by mid-20s co-workers who had no familiarity with the same pop-culture milestones as I had. It doesn’t take too many cases of someone asking “What’s a duke of hazard?” to make me start grumbling about whippersnappers, for instance.
