Isn't 35 a bit young to be considered "middle aged" ?

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BirdInFlight
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23 Jun 2017, 3:30 pm

I don't remember ever hearing the 30s spoken of by society in general as being a person's middle age time. It's always seemed to be talked about in terms of starting in someone's 40s, even decades ago.

I've only ever heard individuals who aren't clear on the concept call someone in their 30s middle aged, usually because they were younger than that.



kraftiekortie
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23 Jun 2017, 4:25 pm

There's someone here who is in his 80's, and posts semi-regularly.

People in their 60s are not that uncommon here.

I'm 56.



lostonearth35
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23 Jun 2017, 9:36 pm

Younger people sometimes make me feel like a senior. Especially when they don't have a clue what a record is, or don't remember what telephones used to look like, or know anything about classic cartoon characters. That last one is probably the worst of all. Superheros, on the other hand, must be more popular than ever and they've been around just as long.



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23 Jun 2017, 9:38 pm

lostonearth35 wrote:
According to some of the age jokes I've read, I should be huddled in a rocking chair right now while my whole body wastes away. And I'm like, give me a break! :roll:

But since all people on the spectrum supposedly don't live past 50, then I guess we are middle-aged at 25. :?


What? are you kidding me that would mean I am already more than halfway through my life....screw that. I am certain I will live past 50 unless someone kills me.


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jrjones9933
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23 Jun 2017, 9:40 pm

It depends on how grouchy you get.


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shortfatbalduglyman
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23 Jun 2017, 11:27 pm

some people die when they are 10 years old. some people die when they are over 100. the midpoint is middle aged, for them. but there is no way for them to know how long they will live, so they do not know when middle aged is.

i am 34. strangers still call me "youngster", "young man", "kid", "teenager". a couple weeks ago someone told me i go to high school.

maybe i look young. to them.

however, i have not reached many of the "middle aged" milestones. for example, did not get married. did not have children. got jobs and got fired. did not get promoted. got a degree but whatever. and et cetera.

although in some ways, i am pretty old already. for example, i am exhausted and barely have enough energy to do the slightest thing.



EzraS
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24 Jun 2017, 3:32 am

Middle-aged adjective (of a person) aged about 45 to 65.



Higurashi
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24 Jun 2017, 1:55 pm

I'm 23 and I don't consider 35 to be 'Middle Aged'. Most people that age are still in their prime and can physically pass as 20 somethings or even late teens. They're Millennials like me (born between 1980 and 1996). They're not too different from me.

Many people live to their 90s nowadays. Some even live to 100 and beyond. In those cases, you're not even halfway there.



jrjones9933
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24 Jun 2017, 2:35 pm

I'm 48 and not especially grouchy, hence not middle aged.


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ASPartOfMe
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24 Jun 2017, 5:04 pm

Middle aged started at 35 when I was growing up when the monkier "Don't trust anybody over thirty" was in vogue. Pretty much everybody was married, started a family, owned their own home, had thier lifetime job well before thier 20's were over. It was rare for person over 30 to dress casually or listen to acid rock music. People did have more unhealthly lifestyle no adults running around in sweats until the late 70's or so. If you did not eat the whole portion given to you and take seconds the hosts got visibly insulted. The popular 60's phrase "generation gap" had a lot of truth to it. I notice here on the what type of music you like threads people of all ages like and often prefer music from decades ago. That rarely happend then. No kid would caught dead listing to thier parents "square" music. There was much more of a difference in the pop music from 20 or even 10 years earlier then there is today.

As for me I always felt much younger then I was until a few years ago. Then two things happened 1. Health problems which I had managed to avoid came all at once necessitating assistence associated with the elderly. 2. My autism diagnosis and WP becaming my main social life. As has been mentioned there often is a big difference in world view between those who were diagnosed very young and those of us who found in yes middle age. I do feel I have more of an even prespective from experiencing life as an autistic more then many here and I do feel a real responsibility to use this experience help and guide wisely. A few years I felt the opposite because I was the opposite with much less real life adult experiences then 95 percent then my NT peers.


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rvacountrysinger
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13 Jul 2017, 7:21 pm

BirdInFlight wrote:
From what I've gathered, the term "middle aged" was never intended to mean literally the middle age of an average life expectancy (such as half of 70, for example) -- but instead it's apparently supposed to refer to stages of life, also because it isn't just one year of life but an entire period lasting years and years.

Thus it ought to more accurately be named "middle stage." It's meant to refer to the section of life that is no longer youth or the young years, but not yet elderly and the end stage of life.

Merriam Webster defines it as between the ages of around 45 to 64. Most definitions similarly place it as starting in the mid 40s also.

So it's said to last until about retirement age, yet 64 is half of a lifespan of 128! So clearly it's not about literally the middle age of your lifespan, but about a phase, a stage that lasts for a whole period of time.

Years ago I was only 31 when a 21 year old friend of mine called me "middle aged"! ! I exclaimed that 31 is NOT middle aged! He replied that he figured he was going to live no longer than 60 so in his mind I was middle aged at 31.

I told him that's not the definition of middle aged. . .


According to a lot of Scientists, human lifespan should be much longer than it is currently. They presume it really should be an average of 120 years. If that is so, then 60 years old would definitely fit middle aged.



BirdInFlight
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14 Jul 2017, 6:54 am

Once again, the term "middle aged" was never supposed to refer to an actual middle number in a lifespan.

"Youth," "young adulthood," "middle age" and "elderly" are terms that are supposed to cover entire stages of life to do with general experiences, activities and life-events associated with those stages, not literally specific ages based on impossible assumptions about actual lifespan.

If you google these terms you will see that most descriptions show an age range and also make reference to stages rather than specific ages. "Middle aged" is supposed to indicate not a precise age but a whole phase that can no longer be thought of as "young adulthood" but is not "elder" either. It's in the middle.



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16 Jul 2017, 12:14 am

I am the type of guy who considers fifteen middle aged some days because people bite the dust at every single number you can assign to a human. Sliding that away however and you acknowledge by summoning a hardened nugget of wisdom that it is very young - especially if you've had a tough time of it making any kind of life. If you have little reason to observe it in that manner. Some people only find themselves in their fourties. I wouldn't consider myself middle aged until/if I hit my fifties to be honest, it's all relative. I've put the time in so it would ''make sense'' physically sure but mentally nah, I've had to wait it out which is nothing new for many of those dealing with our issues. Time is a weird scale to apply. I know it's 'logically' halfway to seventy but once you've overcame adolescence to me time is flexible in the mental layer, the body load, depends how you handle the debris and manage your overall steering. So yes one hand it is middle aged, the other hand, it's a helpless term, if you have a fantastic decade after 35 and a crappy decade prior, or the other way around, you'll feel different about where you're at.



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16 Jul 2017, 12:55 am

Saying "Middle-aged" is assuming when they're going to die. As for me, I will never be middle-aged at heart; I will stay immature in a good way forever. Denial? No. You can't always control what your body looks like or acts like, but you CAN control your mind, so I choose to stay youthful. (I'm ALMOST middle-aged according to the person who thinks 35 is middle-aged... and these days 35 isn't middle aged... thye say my generation will live to be in our 90s...)