Anybody feel much younger than you are?

Post Reply New Topic

That was so interesting to read thanks for sharing that! I I feel parts of me capped for sure. I wonder if nostalgia (ex: I am obsessed with the Goonies) has anything to do with me seeing them as peers in some way? In 85, when it was made, I was 2, but now feels like I'm still in the age group, at least Brands age.

i love the 80s so much!

That first sentence resonates with me the most. Where I volunteer I feel like I always defer to others because they're the adults. But in many cases, I'm older than they are! I've been going there for over three years but I feel like I'm the upstart kid.

I feel like I'm 18 sometimes.

My situation is very sad. As a young adult and into my late 30s, maybe even early 40s, I was always hoping to find a permanent boyfriend, a soulmate, and I even dared myself to imagine there was still hope at finding a HUSBAND. However, I had always bombed in this area. I just couldn't get a man. It floored me how some women would have a boyfriend within a month of moving to a new town. I spent tons of money on personal ads, played pickup volleyball, worked out at gyms, always had my eyes open for a nice young guy ... and it just never happened.

The wrong men were interested in me. And the men I was interested in never reciprocated. Things never aligned. No, I wasn't picky. I asked a LOT of men out, and none were interested. And many of the men who showed interest in me were MARRIED. One's wife was even pregnant. Another man was a drug dealer. The others, I just didn't feel any connection. I never believed in going out on a date ONLY because HE was interested. I, too, had to feel something. If nothing was there, then no date. And to this day, there is NOT ONE regret of having turned down any men who asked me out. I eventually gave up looking in my early 40s, totally hanging up this venture and resigning to the realization that finding a soulmate was never in the cards for me.

Now here's the crushing blow: Only this year did I learn I'm autistic. I NOW know the reason I was never able to get a man: My search was in the NT population.

Had I gotten the diagnosis 25 years ago, I would've immediately joined an autistic dating site and also requested an autistic man in the personal ad section of newspapers. I'm still reeling from this MISSED opportunity. I COULD HAVE found my soulmate many, many years ago had I only looked in the right demographic: Autistics.

It's too late now. I'm at an age where the only men who'd be interested in me are old geezers. I'm no more interested in a man my age than I was 25 years ago. That's just the way it is.

I'm so mad at my family for not cluing me in, 25 years ago, even 20 years ago, that I might be autistic and to get evaluated. There's no way now I can get a 30-year-old man, not even a 40-year-old.

I FEEL 25. My body looks way younger than my bio age. I lift weights, I hike, I go to a climbing gym, I don't take any medications, both knees are strong, both hips and shoulders are strong, etc., and FU#K, I DO NOT WANT AN OLD MAN.

But since a young man would never be interested in me, I refuse to seek romance. It's completely off the table. Prior to my diagnosis, I just figured that finding a soulmate was never meant to be. But NOW that I know it was because I looked in the NT population....and all along I could've found my ideal men in the autistic population .... DAMN, this is one horrid blow to take.

It is normal for autistic people to have certain discrepancies to the NT experience of aging. It is even one of the common qualifiers, the "little professor" vs "immaturity" in diagnostic criteria.

I have at the same time been considered "wise" and "infantile". It is due to NT-perception and thats how we also learn to describe ourselves and our inner experience through their mirrored views of us.

I do not believe I am any more wise than I am immature. I am an autistic person, therefore I have the common need to extrapolate a lot of data and process it differently from NT's which gives me an aura of "insight" to them. That's just my normal, perceptiveness in autistic people is not related to maturity.

I am an autistic person, therefore I have strong autistic interests that do not align with many NT adult's interests, a trusting nature and clumsiness of social rules that to NT's makes me "childish". I am not, I'm just autistic.

I refuse to be defined by neurotypicals othering of us. I do not choose that as my identity anymore, I think it is harmful to us.

I don't "feel" any age really except by how my body feels slower, but even that is not so much age-related at this point of my life as it is a question of life lived.

Last edited by Trachea on 08 Sep 2022, 9:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

A relationship is not something that fixes your life and makes everything better, a lot of people are never going to be happy, relationship or not, because of how they view life, not because of how life treats them.

I know we are told that love is the greatest thing of all, but it's not. It's just a feeling, yes, a great feeling, stong enough to keep the species going, but there are no soulmates. There are just people and you end up with someone, and it sticks or doesn't and it's nice and isn't. It can be great and it can totally ruin your life too. There's no special magic there that you are missing, it's lust and some friendship and a decision to deal with the other person, it can end at any time for any reason.

There is no fairytale. Why are so many adult people so HUNG UP on this, its so hard to understand. How can YOUR life REASON be another person??? No, it should be YOUR life that is the priority. People need to stop believing the tv shows and movies and music. They are fiction, romanticized art, not reality. Just like the paintings of royalty, they were not as beautiful as they were painted, that is the artist's skill you see. The art rarely really shows the shitmarks in the toilet and someone snoring in your ear and the droning conversations about what to eat from year to year. Sometimes they do show the cheating and the heartbreak but that is even the romanticized version of the droning every day that is a reality both single or relationship. People just conveniently choose to forget all about that aspect.

Maybe it's just easier to pretend your life is not up to you but controlled by some outside power and if you only had this one thing, then life would be peachy. Trust me, when you have that one thing, you find another thing to say this same thing about and still will not be happy. Probably saying "I wish I never got married" like most people and getting divorced and then " I wish I was married again". Never being happy, always searching. Happiness is not outside of us. Chasing it outside of us leads nowhere.

Live your life with the things that bring you real happiness and let go this expectation it is making you miserable.

This has been a very good discussion, with some interesting responses.

I'm also 39 and feel like I'm somewhere between 16 and 23. In many ways, I'm young for my age, and in many ways, I'm an 'old soul.' I've never fit well into whatever age I was at the time, except maybe when I was 5. That was a very good year for me.

I'll try to make this as short as I can and not ramble on.
I'm 39. Without thinking about my actual age, I think I'm 22, maybe 23.
Emotionally, I'm maybe around 10 or 11.
Intellectually, morally, ethically, I'm in my 90's. I would say over 100 or even 1,000, but that isn't reasonable. Maybe "off the scale" is a better term. Sometimes I feel like an ancient being, like the trees are young to me. Sometimes I feel like I've seen a thousand years pass by.

I look younger than I am, except my hair is graying prematurely (I don't mind). I think I look 22. At the gym, I think I'm one of those young bucks just out of high school who can throw the weights around and put on 10 lbs of muscle just by looking at them, until my body and joints remind me that I'm not that young.
Socially, I always seem to end up grouped in with the younger people. I think I fit in until they start using Reddit words like 'yeet.' Online, most of my 'friends' are in their early 20's. I think of anyone who is 30 or up as older than me, and most people seem to treat me that way.

My husband is much older than me (he's 61), and all our friends are his age, so most of the people I hang out with are older than me. We've been together for 20 years, so the dynamic between him and I, and between our friends and I, is that I'm the naive young 19 year old baby of the group. I'm still treated that way, and I kind of like it.

I play really well with kids between 5 and 8 years old. I relate to them and play on the same level they do. Kids love me, and I actually have fun with them, not pandering adult-style fun like grown ups do when they play with little kids. I become mentally a little kid on their same level. But I purposely avoid children even though I really enjoy them because I don't want any accusations of having inappropriate intentions (it's not like that at all, but adults think EVERYTHING is about sex, and I just don't need the hassle). If I had my choice, I never would have aged past 5 years old. I would have stayed in kindergarten forever. I still watch a lot of kids shows and cartoons.

But I'm also an old man in a lot of ways. I get told often that I'm an old soul. I have high moral standards and ethical values, I have very good logic and reasoning skills, and I have a lot of 'wisdom' for someone my age. I had a lot of wisdom at 16, I had a lot of wisdom at 23, and I have a lot of wisdom at 39. I find myself giving advice to my friends who, as I mentioned earlier, are all 15-20 years older than me. I like quiet and calm and reading books on actual paper and going to bed early. A lot of my tastes run toward the older generation, like I prefer to wear cotton button-up shirts like both my grandfathers wore. They're comfortable and breathable, and the older I get, the more I like to have my arms covered. I drink black coffee and unsweetened iced tea. When I drink alcohol, I like "old man" drinks like mint juleps, whiskey sours or old-fashioneds (whiskey/bourbon is my taste). I have a refined, mature palate for foods. I don't like a lot of sugar or a lot of salt (that doesn't mean I like things bland, either).

As other people have related here, I'm a mix of different ages. But if someone asks me my age, my instant reaction is to say 22. I have to stop and think about what my real age is, and then, 39 seems wrong. I feel like a little kid pretending to be old.

I'm 77 and have often been told I look much younger. I don't feel any younger with a host of aches and pains to contend with although still in reasonably good health in comparison to others of my age. My main grumble is how alien I feel. There is sooo many social trends I do not agree with. I have often made the comment to my wife: "this is not my world and I want to get off!" I am not going to take this opportunity to compile a long grumpy list of my disillusionments. Perhaps by burying my head in the sand I will become contented with the status quo and retain my "youthful" looks?

Last edited by emellish on 22 Oct 2022, 5:16 am, edited 1 time in total.

Idk sometimes I do feel like that, but sometimes I also feel much older than I am. Though I have not experienced being much older so that one is probably not as accurate.

I don't feel any different than I've felt for decades. I don't have much of a handle on how I'm supposed to feel at different ages. Physically I've picked up a few mildly uncomfortable sub-clinical ailments but they don't seem to have much to do with old age - no significant back pain, no obvious dulling of brain function, physical stamina probably down a bit though not by much, no aching joints, vision still good, hearing is good, teeth acceptable, no obvious frailty. Mentally I think I'm still as willing and able to learn as I ever was. Playfulness and general enthusiasm for life dropped a bit during my 30s, so I'm not like a puppy any more, but probably no more of a lethargic old dog than I was at 35. I see myself as still being young at heart, especially when I'm with my musician friends - I feel like clowning about so much that I have to keep a conscious brake on myself so the music doesn't suffer.

you have the george clooney look. he had a young look and the salt and pepper hair. that's cool

I am 52, and I feel like I am 30.

I’m 19 but it feels like I’m still 14. It’s strange, I want to do childlike things and have no interest in what peers are doing (going to festivals, getting blackout drunk, using drugs that kinda stuff). I’ve also been called childish by a literal psychologist when I was in a mental hospital. She was super mean, and ableist.

Not a great fit when you need to support a bunch of depressed, insecure and often autistic teens.

When I was a teenager, I still play with barbie & ken dolls, I had barbie dream house I was 14, I had a playroom in my childhood house. I remember doing naughty things with barbie & ken, my mom didn’t like it. I had more dolls & little figures dolls, I also made paper dolls, I talked to pictures in Sear wish catalogs, like paper dolls, I was very very lonely & WEIRD. One of the best times of my life

I’m 52 too, I feel like I’m in my 30s, I still look very young.