I am too old for this...the 40 plus thread.

rip men

The biggest threat facing middle-age men isn’t smoking or obesity. It’s loneliness.

Can't go out on Wednesday nights, that's Church Night.

I don't hang with my pals as much anymore because, yeah work and family, but also social media. Saw an old poker buddy recently in the parking lot, first time we'd seen each other in years, but it wasn't like one minute had passed because we tweet and Like and all that shit.

I worry about my son being lonely like that. The one standing event we have on the calendar each week is Cub Scouts. The format is so weird, and I likely wouldn't have prodded him in to checking it out had I known that it was just a roomful of boys, each with their mommy or daddy sitting behind them, working on projects independently. We've been in there since September, and I don't know if the boy even knows any of their names.

suggest inserting liquid mercury for the boy's pinewood derby entry

it won't win -- the mercury sloshes backward once you hit the level -- but it'll still be cool as hell

Don't even mention the pinewood derby.

lol

i was going to attempt to address the issues raised in the article but . . . my life is different from the author's in a great many ways

People even moving to a different neighborhood in the same city can make it hard to hang out. We try to hang out with another couple every month, usually we make it work out, but I don't have any non-work-related buddies to hang out with at this point. I'm lucky I get along with people at my job!

I figure if I can maintain a couple of hobbies that aren't exclusively drinking or exclusively solitary into my dotage, I should be okay.

"the human body wasn't DESIGNED to last this long"

Lack of meaning and enjoyment in life is the primary problem I would guess:
e.g. why are I going through all these empty routines, did I waste 20 years of my life on something I haven't particularly enjoyed, can I face another x years of this and what for?

Loneliness is a secondary problem because there's no support to deal with the meaningfulness questions.

I get irritated with probably well intentioned, but fluffy, articles in the media about how everything would be alright if only people would talk to each other more and had deeper friendships.

both those posts otm

I have family and close friends and work people I'm friendly with and a pub full of people I can generally chat to and hang with and ILX and the emptiness doesn't go away hardly ever

People conditioned to underrate salary, comfort, entertainment by the last twenty years of thinkpieces imo

hey if my salary was only a couple of thousand nearer the national median a lot of things would be notably rosier

but the rest of it is nah you're advocating for emptiness. tho I guess I have no ish with Emptiness. everything sent to try us mebbe.

no, second thoughts, those things are all fine in and of themselves but they sit higher up Maslow's pyramid than the absence of whatever it is that leaves the emptiness

There's that, if one subscribes that it's a pyramid and not a shifting swamp

just the usual bone to gnaw on a Thursday morning tbh

Not here mate, long weekend starts this evening innit

Maybe that's the environmental factors affecting results, check back with you on tues

I am not yet 40 (two years, two months to go) but I can identify with that article. I've done a lot of things over the last few years to initiate friendships - record clubs, board game club, cycling with different groups of people, football - and they're all about doing something together with a purpose rather than just 'hanging out'.

Nice to read that everyone else is alone too.

i'm not so much but other issues do kick in

If you start collecting action figures, you will never be alone again.

welp

ha i shared this article a few days ago with some friends of mine. it is definitely fluffy and a little dumb but some of it resonated with me. i'm not 40, i'm only 33 but i'm married w/ two kids, have a full-time job, and we're planning on buying a house soon so i am experiencing some of the demands of "adulthood" or some variant of it that can be stressful and isolating.

i think over the past few years i have realized how important it is for me to connect w/ people beyond my family. particularly men. i was going to post in the "serious discussion of men's rights" thread but i hesitated bc even a little association w/ men's rights feels like trash but i have found great value in meaningful relationships w/ other men

after moving back to my hometown last year i have recently reconnected w/ some friends of mine from my youth. we now have a regular thing, we chill on friday nights every couple of weeks. we cook some food and buy some fancy beer and smoke a few joints, and talk about music or politics or film. i've always had friends whether it's other couples or families we hang out with but im grateful to have this regular time w/ men who have known me since i was a kid, there is an ease and comfort hanging w/ them since we've known each other for so long.

it's weird because you still do have the "men's movement" thing kicking around which is sort of diametrically opposed to the "men's rights" thing

the trick appears to be finding a like minded community or two: people who run, do yoga, kayak, play poker, do macrame, whatever
having friends who want to hang is always iffy for adults but if you're part of folks who want to do a thing whether or not you're there, esprit de corps tends to occur naturally

meanwhile my closest friends really are people i know from the internet, usenet twenty years ago (the internet was _very_ different back in those days). but we keep dying. :(

i don't talk about this shit on ilx because different communities for different purposes but i had a death in the family last year that led to some major rifts in the family and that all kinda demolished me. but i was in a community that i had been part of for years but hadn't really acknowledged as MY COMMUNITY at that point but their support kept me afloat. people stood up when i wasn't expecting it and when i expressed thanks, what i heard several times was "you'll be called on eventually too but for now we got you." So that proved to be pretty important.

Wednesdays used to be my Happy Hour night, when I'd meet a few buds, go through a few pitchers, and tell a few jokes.

Then I got married, had the kids, etc., and you know? I'd rather spend my weeknights at the house than sampling the new Pale Ale.

One of my best friends lost his partner of 18 years this past summer, so we reconnected again a little bit. Good to see him. But a few months later, after the fifth or sixth time of playing "YouTube Jukebox" on his SmartTV, I was happy that he found a new girlfriend.

One funny thing - I hadn't visited him at his house in years, but we did use to hang out together on GTA Online.

the joy i get from oh so rarely finding an old friend or ilxor in an online game is totally unreasonable.

side note: i stopped drinking more or less completely about ten years ago and i'm here to tell you that (in conjunction with a steady relationship and no interest in picking anyone up) renders "going out to a bar" into a real horrible slog of an evening even if you enjoy the company. denying alcohol greatly limits sociability, like to the point where I've seriously considered taking up drinking again but the past experience and family history that put the kibosh on it in the first place has to take precedence.

I've written about loneliness from the queer POV a couple times this week, and it's endemic: society regards friendships as a distraction from work and biological families.

I'm lucky that my confirmed bachelorhood forces me to make dates with my bros as often as twice a week, but I'll admit it takes work. I'm also the sort of person also perfectly happy with alone-ness, a condition I distinguish from loneliness.

like to the point where I've seriously considered taking up drinking again but the past experience and family history that put the kibosh on it in the first place has to take precedence.

this being one of the big knots I can't get out of, except I have taken up drinking again, albeit with a deal more restraint than I used to have

I read at least one of your pieces Alfred and it gave me real pause - you're describing a loneliness that feels inscribed into the experience of queerness in a way that's on a whole other level from wherever my alienation originates

Comfort with alone-ness doesn't inoculate one against loneliness, mind.

absolutely - a lot of the time I am more than happy being alone on my own terms

I'm 45, been married 24 years. No kids. Neither my wife nor I has any real-world friends anymore - they're all dead. One guy, who I'd known since the fourth grade, committed suicide in 2004, and the other one, who I'd known since high school, was hit by a cab in 2005 and died a year later, in his sleep, from a traveling blood clot. She had been close with a former co-worker who was in her 60s or 70s, and they exchanged letters for years, but the old lady passed last November.

We go to movies a few times a year, or to art galleries or museums, or just go wander through a bookstore for a couple of hours. We enjoy each other's company, but we don't seek out other people. Neither of us is close with our families, either - I call my brother on his birthday, and he returns the favor. She's an only child and both her parents are dead; my mom is still alive, and I talk to her maybe a half dozen times a year. During the day, she paints and I write, and we connect for meals or if there's something one of us wants to show/tell the other. We read a lot, we have a few TV shows we watch together and a few we watch separately - it's a low-key life, but it suits us very well.

http://www.gq.com/story/the-last-true-hermit

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/mar/15/stranger-in-the-woods-christopher-knight-hermit-maine

For this 47 year old dude the biggest threat turned out to be a motion detector

Just read that same story linked on facebook. It's an impulse I can empathise with to an extent but would never follow through with myself.

The fact that the guy made his living by burglary is not a point in his favor.

#latecapitalism

Life just gets better as you go on. For me I just find myself giving less and less of a shit and that helps me enjoy everything that much more.

Life just gets better as you go on.

Oh, does it now.

I read at least one of your pieces Alfred and it gave me real pause - you're describing a loneliness that feels inscribed into the experience of queerness in a way that's on a whole other level from wherever my alienation originates

― Pengest & Corsa (Noodle Vague),

Thanks, NV. Here'st he piece if anyone's interested.

Hugs to posters.

I co-host a weekly potluck with friends that has been going on for 7 or 8 years, and I really can't recommended it enough. The consistency is the most important thing...everyone who would normally be too busy to make plans can factor it in and make time, it's always the same day/time. It's a nice way for us 30-somethings to see each other every week instead of constantly trying to make plans to meet at restaurants or whatever.

Life just gets better as you go on.

lol

Having just turned 46, looked back for my last entry on the thread and found this a couple of years ago:

Definitely downshifting on various fronts, only been to a few shows this year, etc. etc. Not complaining, though -- the part of me that was always "I'd rather just chill and read/listen/whatever at home" is now feeling plenty justified, while I still have lot of great show memories anyway.

This was about six months before my SF move, and generally speaking it carried through even up here -- I have much greater access to a wide variety of really, really good acts, touring and otherwise, in many fields, just from living in the city itself. But even combined with the fact I'm offered passes and guest lists as a matter of course now -- hooray being an established writer, I guess -- I don't do that as much as I thought I might. I've missed a few things I regret but I'm not really bummed about it. Funnily enough, though, over the next few months I'm already seeing something like...seven, eight shows to come? More? That's more that's been on my calendar for a while.

As for loneliness, not really a factor -- Kate and I are pretty content to chill at home, and we catch up with a variety of friends, hers and mine, as we do, including my sis, who also lives in the city. This said I do miss the weekly visit to dear friends down in OC that I did pretty much every Friday night when I was there, but nobody's really replaced that. Said some more about this on another thread revival lately, I think. I agree with Jordan re consistency, and I'm thinking of a bit of something along those lines for the near future that a few friends have expressed interest in -- I think it'll be enjoyable for us all.