45 no kids drinking gin tonics on a rooftop bar in Malaga atm
It was strange being first time parents at that age, while meeting younger couples who were becoming grandparents
A big part of the reason we didn’t have a third kid was the “advanced maternal age” classification, and scary increases in potential genetic issues when the mother hits 40
Weirdly accurate. Early 40’s and about to get a divorce and start over. Losing the house I’ve been in for 12 years and will likely see my children much less. I’m excited and petrified of whats to come.
The journey is shit but the destination is worth it. Keep your kids in mind with everything you do and you’ll always be ahead.
Sorry but, isn’t the destination… Death? If so, I agree completely ❤️
I was specifically referring to the divorce journey, with the destination being more or less settled after it’s finalized.
Your interpretation definitely works though 😆
Damn, hang in there. That’s a lot to go through, but i imagine you’re probably getting out of a bad situation by the sound of things. Try to keep focused on the good parts, and cherish the time with your children all the more. Hopefully you can get established somewhere soon and begin anew. The end of some things will be the beginnings of others. You might just be starting a hot new era 🙌
After high school or college the training wheels are completely off and the guard rails imposed by parents and schools are essentially gone. You’re no longer surrounded by people of similar socioeconomic backgrounds and especially age.
Nobody’s telling you that the “successful relationship” assignment is due by 30, “marriage” by 32, “kid(s)” by 35, etc.
You’re on your own. You don’t have to conform socially anymore, you can get away with ignoring rules. Maybe it works and you become a trendsetter, or maybe you end up in a tent under a bridge. A lot of what happens is luck, good or bad, and a lot of that luck is going to come from how well off your family was when you were young. You’re far more likely to be exposed to other people’s randomness, too, and that can push you up the ladder quickly or wreck you.
There’s variables that you can control and even more that are outside your control once the guard rails are gone that will make your life very different from your peers.
Mid-forties are a decision point. It’s when you decide to either get healthy, and stay healthy the rest of your life, or… you don’t.
Your body starts falling apart faster if you don’t maintain it. Unlike the years before, the health losses are forever.
Fair warning.
44 is the average age we start to fall apart rapidly, then again at 60. There are periods of rapid deterioration compared to the 50s or 70s.
It’s the same thing as a growth spurt in your teens, except tragic and with crunching from the knees.
I’m lucky, mine started at 40. And then I had my first kid. Great combo!
Yeah, I’m at that latter age and my knees have been going for a while. However it’s just now that I’m noticing that by using my knees less I’m losing muscle fast.
I’ve completed the spending part of lifting weights. Last summer I cleaned out my garage to turn into a gym, then over winter got some equipment. Now I need to assemble. …… then see if I can develop the habit to actually lift
Starting to lift was the best decision I ever made at 40
Seriously! I have the best physique I’ve ever had and look five years younger. It costs me three hours a week and a little effort.
Same but cycling. Stumbling into a workout that I look forward to was game changing.
That is me with running. I feel like I could do a zone two run forever. Just such a refreshing activity.
I can only stay in zone 2 for a few minutes, but it’s amazing. Then it’s zone 3, which is fine… but within a mile of starting, it’s above that and I have to walk, let it drop and then start off again. I wish I could keep it in zone 2 or even 3.
I’ve been running for 12 years, 3-5x a week 3-5km a time and am not overweight… when does it get better/easier? I’m starting to think it’s just not for me, even though I enjoy it.
I ran. It took me a while, but I started to enjoy it. Then my achilles tendon and knee started to hurt and I stopped for a short while until it would get better.
That was over a year ago and I still can’t walk properly when getting out of bed. Friend said I need to lose weight to be able to run again. Well, yeah, how the fuck is that supposed to happen then?
Started in my mid 30s. I was never good at it, but I started to enjoy it, when my knee started to act up. Doctor said it was because of an old issue from a motorcycle accident and I could either have surgery with just a 50% chance of success or drop running. As I was doing (amateurish)Triathlon training at the time, I dropped running and focused on cycling and swimming. I enjoy this very much now and even get decent progress. I’m approaching mid-40s now and I hope I can do it much longer still.
Gotta work on that diet. Best way to lose weight.
Unless you’re already eating the perfect diet, then I have no idea. I suppose it would be time for a doctor at that point.
Do some resistance training to restrengthen your legs, and start building stamina through cycling (standing or outdoor). Cycling is great because it’s possible to go from extremely low intensity (barely faster than walking pace) to vomit intensity with no change in impact.
This happened to me and I was under weight at the time. It did eventually go away, but I’m not risking another couple years of painfully stepping out of bed. Brisk walking is fine.
What is a zone two run?
Zones refer to heart rate. Zone 2 is 60-70% of your maximum heart rate.
Think a distance runner putting out light effort.
Ah gotcha, thanks! I’ve heard you should run at a pace at which you could still keep a conversation going. Probably gets to the same idea
I just started working out again, after an injury, but I do upper body in useful activities. I’ve so much heavy work I need to do, it would be wasteful to mindlessly pump iron or whatever.
I’m just doing like crunches and squats, and getting back into distance running, as of yet. Might add some planks and idk what else.
Romanian deadlifts and leg raises have made my once crippled back bulletproof
Thanks for the tip, I’ve had constant back problems as I switched to heating with firewood, and all the bending over just jacked up my back constantly. Better now for the moment, although crunches don’t help it, leg lifts without the upper body rising are mostly ok.
Problem is, it takes too long to max out on leg lifts, I can literally spend 8 hours doing them on and off, same as squats. For the latter I was going to carry a log on my back, I will look like an asshole if a neighbor sees me but still.
Honestly the leg lifts are kind of just a courtesy exercise. Bracing during heavy compound lifts does a pretty good job on the abs, I feel like it’s the slabs of muscle on my back and butt and hamstrings that just really stabilized my whole back/core. I saw neurosurgeon about my back and he said the muscle was preventing me feeling like a cripple and to never stop lifting
I will try bracing, I have a brace somewhere.
The other thing, I’ve been harvesting wild leafy greens to eat masses of. Stinging nettles as of now. That is the key to building strength and muscle, it has natural steroid like compounds your body uses. Popeye knows what I’m talking about.
Careful with those knees, though
40s and 60s were found to be the ages that saw the fastest aging
Yeah, 44 for me, and I hear it happens again ~65. There should be a PSA.
I’m old enough to remember selling Tupperware as a viable economy.
By the way, Tupperware is crap now. They deserve to go bankrupt. When a friend started selling Tupperware, I saw stuff that my mother still uses and I remember seeing at home when I was a kid. Now, we bought some stuff that two years later I had to throw away. It’s super shitty now. Not worth the money.
Enshittification!!!
MAKE. IT. SHITTY!
I can still vividly remember the flex and pop of the seal of the old stuff, and all the old colors, too
Now it’s all about Pyrex anyway.
Plus I won’t microwave anything plastic, even if it says I can.
Same. My wife scoffed at my suggesting she stop and when my doctor sister mentioned it at a holiday family event without my prompting she finally took it seriously.
I remember my older sister getting laid off from the Tupperware factory.
At least somebody got laid
I remember when you could make a living out of it…
I feel like Tupperware, Amway, and Mary Kay were the Ubers of 1980.
All those old jobs are gone as a means of living. Al Bundy sold shoes. Door to door sales used to be viable
Me too, thanks
52 now and I’m so glad that I picked up weightlifting as a hobby when I was younger. It’s like cash in the bank for when I get older.
One of my health issues is bad knees. Around your age I did get evaluated for knee replacements and the doctor recommended it. However he didn’t actually provide any useful info so I didn’t. Now I see that by babying my knees to reduce pain, my leg muscles have atrophied to the point where I notice as an issue. I wish the doctor had been willing to talk about things like that
So now I am trying to get started lifting, to see if I can recover, or at least see if I can be more ready for replacements
I just wish I’ve had more kids. It’s a shitty world but children makes it worth the ride.
But if it’s a shitty world, why are you bringing new people into it? They will have to deal with it as well.
Because we’re gonna need not shitty people if we ever want to fix it. I still have hope.
Did your children ask to have that responsibility foisted upon them before they were born? Shouldn’t those of us who are alive already be working to fix things before bringing a new life into this world?
Get lost… My kids are bright, happy, creative and already better persons than I could ever have dreamed of. And I’m right their with them trying to make the world a little better with my everyday actions. Nobody’s asking you to make children, don’t tell people how to live their life.
As if this isn’t true for pretty much every age group.
Being 12 is wild, people your age are living completely different lives. Some have loving parents, some are only children, some have divorced parents, some have known only abuse their entire lives.
It’s super obvious that Lemmy is predominantly elder millenial and gen X men lol
We can pick almost any 12 year old in a developed country and know a lot about them. They go to school (unless they’re home schooled), they don’t yet have a job (though they might babysit or run a lemonade stand), and they’re at or near puberty, complete with all the things that come with it. Some may be further along than others, but they are more or less going through the same stage of life. None of them are getting married or taking an early retirement or what-have-you.
After a certain age, those similarities disappear. Although we were all on the same page as each other once upon a time, by 40 our paths have diverged in such extreme ways that looking at others of the same age can be surprising.
If you’re not old enough to relate, that’s fine, but it’d be silly to dismiss the experiences of others just because you’re not there yet. I’m not 40 yet, but I’ve seen enough by my mid-30s to understand what this post is trying to capture.
I love that your own examples came with a bunch of exceptions. The puberty one has exceptions too - puberty blockers, early/late onset puberty, and so on.
This is just a collection of high probability things. Same is true for people in their 40s, like most in their 40s probably don’t live with their parents, just as a random example.
You’ve just forgotten, or never realized, the disparity of life experiences of being a kid, and y’all like to imagine that being in your 40s is somehow unique or special as a way of coping with getting older
As a 44 year old, I remember my aunt throwing Tupperware parties.
Also yes to all the branches of lifestyles. I’m single and enjoying my freetime consuming media. Meanwhile a mutual friend of a friend I know has 3 kids, a wife and pets, and a weekend timeshare out near the beach.
It’s p wild.
I’m the guy who didn’t sleep right for the last 3 years. Anyone wants to trade? You get a lot of extra time that you don’t spend sleeping!
I have the superpower to be able to nap at almost any time during the day if I have time to lay down. But if I wake up too early in the morning, I can almost never get back to sleep to get the last hour or half-hour of my sleep time in before the alarm to get up.
Same here. It’s now evolved into sleeping at random times. Not ideal.
Similar here. My nightmares wake me up when i want to sleep, until i am too exhausted to stay awake. Currently i am often afraid to go to sleep because of those IMAX-Style hyperreal dreams, which makes the problem even worse.
I am an elite sleeper, I sleep less than most, but waste the extra time usually. I wile away with extra hours doing useless things like reading about the world.
Reading about the world isn’t wasted time - it learns you about the world!
Ah just like me then lol, i welcome you my brother
46 here. I just got engaged, never been married no kids. My bff is 47, her daughter graduates high school this year. His bff is 47, his kids are in elementary school. The oldest child of my friend group just graduated college, the youngest was born last year.
Can confirm, 42 here.
By 43 some fathers are raising toddlers.
A man can sire children until he dies of old age.
Most women are “functionally sterile” - as defined by medical science - by their early 40s, and will not be able to conceive a child and carry it to term without medical assistance. Hell, pregnancies after 35 are called “geriatric pregnancies” for that very reason - they occur at the very tail end of a woman’s fertility window, and so carry with it a constellation of higher than normal risks to both mother and baby.
Remember: women’s fertility begins declining significantly in their early 30s and drops off a cliff by their late 30s. This is Science fact. Sure, some women still be able to have a naturally-conceived child into their late 40s, but these are the very rare exceptions. Very few in their 40s are successfully bearing naturally-conceived children without modern technology doing most to all of the heavy lifting.
what kind of “correction” is this? plenty of people in their 40s of any gender are parents to toddlers. holy frig
It’s very manosphere coded
extremely
I personally know several women who have or had toddlers at 43. It’s not as uncommon as you think. Most women don’t start going through menopause until much later.
