For 40-60 years old: Can you describe any difficult issues in your current adulthood life?

Question

describe any difficult situations you stumble into such as mate seleciton, marriage, identity and intimacy, career selection, families, role of husband/wife ...

Answer 1

One issue I'm having trouble with: feelings of "Ohman, I'm X years old and where have the years gone to?" Not a matter of dissatisfaction with current roles and performances----just an incredible shock of how fast life can move (mortality shock?).

This time-passage definitely seemed to pick up speed after my parents died and I realized that now ** I ** was in the elder generation, and my eldest niece was just starting college. (My brother turning 50 was a shock; I'm not OLD ENOUGH to have a half-century-old sibling!)

Answer 2

Do you think Yahoo would allow us to give a book length answer? I've only been married 38 years to the same man so we are still waiting to see if that's going to work. On our last anniversary I told him I'd sign a conctract for another 38 years, but after that he and I are going to have to sit down and re-evaluate this relationship. He agreed, so we are on for the next 38.

Career selection is another story! I had ideas about a career and then I had three babies so my early career was chosen for me. When the kids were all in school I had a few jobs and thought I wanted to become a teacher. Instead, hubby job as a construction superintendent provided me with a job wherever we traveled as his field officer manager. Not the career choice of my dreams, but it pays well and I had a job no matter where we went. I secretly dreamed of being an author! At age 50 I realized I was never going to get my book written if I didn't just do it, so I did it and became a published autor and met a lot of very interesting people and was off on another wonderful adventure in life. I was finally beginning to find my own identity. Sure it was a bit late in life, but I had a lot of shoes to fill before I had time to find me!

Now at almost 57 hubby and I are still working together. He's my boss at work and I don't have one at home! :) My biggest problem today is realizing how much 'we' needed a wife while we both worked. We work 10 hours a day and go home and have to do dinner, laundry, feed the pets, run errands and on and on it goes. I informed the man we need a wife, one that will stay at home and do the dishes, cooking, laundry, pets, house cleaning, errands, and all the other daily chores we no longer have time for. I told him she needs to be willing to work for room and board and satisfied with staying home except to do grocery shopping or gift buying and she needs to be very careful of our budget as well. Geeze! The man doesn't think we'll find any one to fill the bill.

So to sum up a life time of living let me just say that life goes by way too fast, the health dwindles a lot past 50 and yet every day is a new adventure to start out on and we never get too old to enjoy that!

Answer 3

I'm 52. Both of my kids are now in college and I have spent the past 21 years as a work from home Mom. The empty house and the chance to begin life again is very exciting but it also comes with the reality that I now have 21 years away from the career path I started on before becoming a mother ( International Tour Business). The position I held when I left the industry would now pay me over $90,000 per year. That is if I had stayed in the business all this time and kept my contacts current. I would now have to go into a position as if I were a rookie and maybe work for a kid under 30 who may or may not know as much about the business as I did at their age.

While working from home, I have honed my marketing and design skills and continuued to educate myself and though I feel I could easily walk into a major tour operation and run it again with ease ( anything is easy after raising children), I have two obstacles that would keep that from happening. 1. The huge gap on my resume and my age. 2. We moved to a small college town in the midwest for my husband's work and it is many hours from any large city that even has a major tour company.
It's a new world now and I'm finding that it may be easier for me to figure out a whole new line of work then to try and re-establish myself in the Tour Industry

And then there is the marriage thing... when you've had kids home with you for 18 years or more, the relaxed and spontaneous love life of a couple becomes the hurried and clandestine love life of a mom and dad. With the kids gone, we are rediscovering who we are and it's different because we aren't walking around in perfect 25 year old bodies anymore. We have these "older versions' of our former young, vibrant and sexy selves and I wish I had my old body back.

Self image and dealing with the reality that I am more than half way to 100 is bizarre beyond words. When I close my eyes, I am still in my 20's and I still get "surprised" when I catch my reflection in a store window or a car mirror and I see that I am aging. It sucks. It is not fair and I now understand completely why the saying "Youth is wasted on the young." rings so very true.

I watch kids beating the crap out of their bodies with alcohol and drugs, poking holes in their faces and stretching their earlobes out with metal spacers, permanently drawing on their skin- pictures that 20 years from now they will HATE and they act like it doesn't matter because they can just get a new body when this one is too screwed up. Well, no you can't. You should treat your young perfect bodies like the temples that they are and care for them everyday.

You will be standing in front of a mirror sooner than you can imagine and looking at yourself in utter disbelief that you have passed 50.

Imagine if you were given a car at birth and it was the ONLY vehicle you would ever have to get around the planet in until the day you died. The cleaning and care and maintenance would become critically important, and you'd know enough to not "pimp your ride" because what's cool today is lame tomorrow. And once you get out the arch welder and change the structure- there is no going back to your original perfect vehicle.

Before people do permanent things their bodies, imagine how it will look when they are 97 in a nursing home and their gown has fallen open with their little grandchild watching and they are seeing grandma's giant flower tattoe on her wrinkly shriveled breast that now looks like a huge serious bruise. Yeah. Not pretty.

Being 52 in 2006 is surreal. Everyday, I hear music I listened to as a kid-redone by young artists. John Mayer- Bold as Love. I listened to Hendrix play that when I was in high school! The clothing, the hairstyles, the jewelry- all came righ out of my 1970's closet. Yet somehow-we-the very same people who were totally cool enough to have created and worn all the stuff kids wear today are considered "not cool". Odd isn't it?

Answer 4

Wow,are you ready????
ok,I'm 40 1/2 at 17 I started using drugs

Answer 5

Difficult issues: being a caregiver to an aging parent; being a caregiver to anyone, for that matter. Other difficult issues: dealing with illness and/or disease; dealing with health insurance costs; being passed over for jobs because of age discrimination, which you can't really prove, only you know it's so.

Answer 6

No, If that's would he prefers and is still making good money. If that's what HE wants to do and gets on well with his father than I don't see nothing wrong with that. If his father has a disability that might have something to do with it. Either way. No its fine, its probably more common than you think just people are less likely to admit it because no one else does.

Answer 7

I don't heal as fast as I used to and it makes me rather upset. Broke 4 ribs at the beginning of summer and they still bother me.

Answer 8

divorce and regret that i stayed in the marriage 10 years too long - you can't get those 10 years back.

Answer 9

years of hurt and sadness
health,sickness,the body slowing down,gray hair
raising grand kids.money,ssi,all kinds of things.
more crime is now then when i was a teen.