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

See you in 12 years!

Yeah, didn't realize I posted in this thread 10 years ago. See you in 2 years.

i don't like going out much at night at all. but life has been extra life-like for months now and i need my energy during the day. i'm hoping it doesn't become a permanent thing though. i've always been a house cat but i have definitely been really happy when i have gone to things that it would have been really easy to not go to. i'm missing a good show tonight in town and tons of friends will be there and i'm trying to not make myself feel bad about it.

i always make time to dance with bob though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhCwM9Ebawk

But my solo friends? Man, they suck, it is so hard to get them to commit to an outing. And it's so hard to care myself about their problems. Because I am 42? Because Gen X? Because married with kids and they're not? Probably the last. Like, my older one is 12 and in 7th grade, I don't give a fuck about your stupid single life problems.

it's because you're an asshole and they don't actually want to hang out with you

yeah the "if you don't have kids you can't even KNOW" look is not good

xpost If only it were that simple!

Oh, come on. I didn't mean it like being a dick, and it's not something I invoke. I just mean that there is a degree of priority on my part, to people totally reliant on me, that is a totally different kind of life compared to people without kids. Which is cool, kids are not the key to the universe. But we do all the same shit other people without kids do, just that the kids and attendant responsibility are always there. I don't know what's so bad about observing that. When a friend without kids says, man, I'm wiped, I don't know if I can get a beer, that's fine. But whether I go out or not, I know exactly when I am waking up in the morning, 7 days a week, and what is expected of me from more or less sunrise on.

what's so bad is " I don't give a fuck about your stupid single life problems." That's being a crummy friend. And also a dick.

Also dickish: assuming that if you don't have kids you don't have responsibilities that have you waking up 7 days a week and doing what is expected of you.

xxp fuck you

damn dude yr kids sound like a burden, maybe get rid of them

Man, you all are grouchy. But I'm honestly sorry I offended you.

gah, thread took an ugly turn.

what i notice is that olds = grouchy.

hey! I resemble that remark!

Like, my older one is 12 and in 7th grade, I don't give a fuck about your stupid single life problems.

― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 17 March 2017 01:30 (nine hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can't

Uh

Can't believe you can't get these ppl to spend time with u man

Oh right we got to that in between. Fair enough.

Remember that one thread that lex revived

That was fun

Mulling it over this morning, I definitely expressed myself poorly, and was therefore misconstrued appropriately. I meant nothing personal, if that's (at least) where offense was given. I was just being flip, writing extemporaneously, because internet. I thought we were writing about the challenges of going out and hanging with friends as we get older, and I did a bad job conveying that kids can be a constant complicating consideration. That's all I meant.

So to the article I didn't finish reading: why is this not an equally significant problem for women?

motion detectors?

The main suggestion was that women are happy just to talk to each other (onj the phone, in person, over coffee) whereas guys need to DO something (watch sport, play records, ride bikes).

Key line for me was the one about photos of female friends being face-to-face but photos of male friends being side-by-side.

Josh, I know exactly how you feel. The "if you don't have kids you can't even KNOW" look may not sound good but most people with kids have been (slash are) there.

People with kids don't have more problems or complications than those who don't; the latter have different problems and complications on the same order of magnitude.

maybe one difference being that if you don't have children and fuck up, children (probably) don't suffer

i don't have kids but totally empathize w/ josh's parental frustration

but we don't have to look fwd to having our kids curse us in the unlivable dystopia of 2030

maybe one difference being that if you don't have children and fuck up, children (probably) don't suffer

unless you're Simon of the Desert, fucking up will affect a companion, nieces and nephews, siblings, or friends.

man, you guys have no imaginations.

yeah, let's be fair, people without kids are just as good at fucking up the world as people with kids.

Man, you all are grouchy. But I'm honestly sorry I offended you.

― Josh in Chicago

ban "sorry i offended you" from the english language

i'm not offended at what you said but i also usually try to make an effort to not complain about people with kids who can't talk about anything else but their kids

i do feel like there are certain pressures and fears that are unique to parenthood though. not having kids makes a LOT of things easier. depression, substance abuse, overeating, sloth, lethary, ennui, etc. all much easier hobbies to cultivate when childless.

"lethargy"

i was too tired to finish that word...

I've been tempted to use the "got kids" argument before, but then I see on Facebook other parents my age taking their kids to club shows, shooting pool with them in some rec room, or ziplining across the Ozarks with them. That's when I realize, Boy, I'm doing a real shitty job of raising these kids, maybe I ought to just go out and get a beer. They can play Roblox while I'm gone.

it only just occurred to me that ilx is one of the very very few things that has remained constant in my life, which either highlights the number of new goals/jobs/friendships/interests/obsessions i've cycled through in the past ~15 years, exposes how many of those things i've run away from because i'm terrible at staying invested, or puts a spotlight on my unusual choice of anchors

definitely not the combative arsehole i used to be though, which could be me learning how to be less shit or perhaps just a 40s thing

People with kids can (sometimes) remember what life was like and how they felt before they had kids, maybe even empathise with people without kids. Because everyone who's got kids has not had kids at some point (albeit for different lengths of time in different situations). People without kids (generally) don't know what it's like to have kids, though. I don't think that's an outrageous thing to say.

(pplains always, always remember that social media is a studiously edited highlights reel; those people taking kids to club shows or whatever are feeding them mcnuggets or shouting at them or whatever at some stage; no one is perfect.)

I'm not saying having kids is some kind of holier-than-though martyrdom and we need huge amounts of credit and respect - fucking billions of people have done it, how hard can it be - but it very definitely has a different level of responsibility to it than not having kids, in my limited experience (35 years of not having kids, two and a bit of having them).

So to the article I didn't finish reading: why is this not an equally significant problem for women?

― SFTGFOP (El Tomboto), Friday, March 17, 2017 11:48 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What article? Is this something I would have expanded 288 posts in order to see?

At 40, approaching 41, I am definitely more boring but I usu don't think of it as an age thing, I think of how my job used to be unfulfilling and also conveniently located to social centers so I had lots of mental space & energy to give to socializing and I was closer to friends. Now I have this consuming career as a do-gooder that exhausts my emotional energy, and also my living space is nicer than ever before so it's appealing to stay home.

I also went out a lot more when I didn't have the internet at home AND I was mostly single, is my other takeaway. Now I can ilx from the comfort of my couch and I have a partner who makes dinner so....

unless you're Simon of the Desert, fucking up will affect a companion, nieces and nephews, siblings, or friends.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, March 17, 2017 5:55 AM (eighteen minutes ago)

sure, maybe, but then again: tiny, helpless peoplets whose health & well-being depend entirely on you

I've got several bartenders whose health and well being depend entirely on me.

"I'm not saying having kids is some kind of holier-than-though martyrdom and we need huge amounts of credit and respect - fucking billions of people have done it, how hard can it be - but it very definitely has a different level of responsibility to it than not having kids"

it's just simple math. more people makes things more complicated. if you're fucked up and have problems on your own or with your partner it can be tough and i've been there and its no fun but i've also been fucked up and had problems and had to to tell children that everything was okay and going to be all right and make sure they were safe and me fucked up on my own or with a partner was a LOT easier. it's like that old saying: being a parent is like fucking fred astaire backwards. i think i'm remembering that correctly...

the kid-haver and non-kid-haver chasm can't really be reconciled imo, I agree with Soto that they're separate demos with equal but distinct sets of issues

simpler != easier imo

but being alone sucks too. i dunno, pain is pain. it sucks no matter what. kids/family can actually give you strength to get out of something bad that might be harder to get out of when you are alone.

only thing is though kid havers know what it's like to be a non-kid-haver but non-kid-havers don't know what it's like to be a kid-haver

That's not even true. Plenty of childless folks out there, esp women, who had a heavy hand in raising younger siblings

i'm mostly just jealous of people who don't have kids. i wouldn't advise anyone to have them. sometimes i feel like an accidental parent. i'd never even held a baby until i had one.

Which is why I said 'generally'.

xp(s)

IO: I mean the article that mookie revived the thread with. Yes it's above the line now.

My larger point is that the real error here is trying to make any kind of "there are only two kinds of people in the world" call re: offspring is UNPRODUCTIVE and we are all correct that JiC should have considered his words more carefully

SS also coming around to a good point that kids can be a good prophylactic against other ills and anxieties

My last point: us parents definitely need to stop believing our own press sometimes

only thing is though kid havers know what it's like to be a non-kid-haver but non-kid-havers don't know what it's like to be a kid-haver

Kid-havers don't know what it's like to want very much to have kids but never get to, or to spend a life convinced that it would be unwise to reproduce cause you're just too much of a fuckup, or (etc). Again, chasms.

haha well, let's just say the first part of that post is true and the second part isn't necessarily true

xpost re: banning "I'm sorry I offended you," I completely agree. It was honestly written in the spirit of "I offended you, I'm sorry," but again, poorly phrased.

Re: kids, I wasn't trying to make a distinction of superiority, just, like I said, constancy. I think people with and without kids deal with many of the same problems and frustrations, but the former also has to deal with absolute dependents - they're always there, and always need help, and therefore can be physically/emotionally exhausting in a way quite different from adults. Any choices I make, anything I want to do, from now and for the next many years, the kids will always be a consideration, a constant.

In terms of getting out, being social, it's hard to say whether most of our friends are married with kids because we are married with kids, and therefore we are all on the same wavelength, or because, as one gets older, many people tend to get married and have kids. I do know that, per someone above, I have hit the stage where a small handful of people I know are getting separated and/or divorced, which is another factor of getting older, I suppose.

Anyway, my kids are great, my life is great, I'm pretty happy. But I am also constantly reminded of sacrifices I have made for the sake of the family as a whole, sacrifices that have not necessarily directly made my life better but which have made *our* life better, which in a round about way ultimately makes my life better, just with some residual regret, resentment, etc., because we're not robots. Per Scott, I feel you, I hadn't given kids much thought before I had them, and the transformative experience in every sense is nothing I could have ever imagined.

i'm mostly just jealous of people who don't have kids. i wouldn't advise anyone to have them. sometimes i feel like an accidental parent. i'd never even held a baby until i had one.

― scott seward, Saturday, 18 March 2017 00:44 (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we have three nieces, one of whom we're pretty close to; it's nothing like having actual kids but it's great to be involved in their lives and be able to hand them back at the end of the day