Does anyone feel like an actual adult?
Does anyone feel like an actual adult?
Even with a good career and all the "adult milestones" I don't feel like an actual adult. I feel like I'm pretending to know what I'm doing. Anyone else experience this?
212 comments
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Only when I go to stand up after squatting for a time.
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Yep. I sneezed and now my back hurts.
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I weirdly like this experience. All the squeaks and cracks and static legs.
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i feel like an adult when people any younger than me speak
folks be making up words nowadays im like a month behind every trend but i keep it hip and classy by using the words ironically until its in my lexicon unbeknownst to me
im only 21 tho
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This. I’ve got a family, a mortgage, debt and everything else that goes with adulthood. My aching joints are the only thing that makes me feel like an adult.
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No one has any idea what they're doing.
I'm 35. I've got two kids. I make it up as I go along. There's no plan, no blueprint. There's just the day to day crap that life has for us all. I wake up, I go to work and my only real aim is to get home to my kids and partner.
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41 and a total of 5 children (some step) here. Still not sure what I want to be when I grow up.
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Hey, I felt like this when I had a job that I hated. I was constantly trying to figure out what I was going to do next, as if I hadn't actually started life yet.
I was 36 when I just up and quit my job and went to trade school.
Best thing I've ever done. In the last 5 years I met, and married my wife, bought a big new house with her, and have actually felt like the adult I am. None of that would have happened if I never took a plunge.
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Agreed. I’m 40 and I’ve reached a point where I feel like an adult. The biggest piece of that is that I understand that we’re all just making it up and figuring things out.
Imposter syndrome is also an intrinsic part of feeling like you aren’t an adult. Most of us experience this frequently - we have that feeling that everyone knows more than us and it makes us feel like we are fakes. But in reality, we just know more about ourselves and the gaps in our knowledge. We assume that they they know more than they do because we aren’t in their head and they aren’t expressing all the uncertainty and doubt hiding in there.
I think there is a pretty big difference between hearing people like you and me say “everyone is just making it up” and really internalizing that. I think internalization comes with time - you can believe something conceptually but often need to see it in practice over and over to really believe it in your bones.
There are other factors, too, which come with age and experience. Adults on the younger side are constantly running into new adult things and not knowing how to do those things is going to created this self doubt. “If I were an adult, I’d know how to do an insurance claim” or whatever. With further age, you will learn these things and have fewer of these doubts.
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Copium
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There is a paradox of confidence.
The people most confident in their competence tend to be the least competent in practice.
The Dunning–Kruger effect.
Self-cheerleaders tend to be morons, the most intelligent people by their nature tend to second guess their own abilities. Idiots just stroll through life taking whatever credit they can grab.
“The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and i am no quite sure that i know that.”
-Socrates
"Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.'
-Donald Trump
See the difference? By genuinely doubting, aka examining your abilities, you are in more competent company.
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more people oughta read about and pay attention to philosophy shit is actually pretty interesting. if nothing else just to see how predictable the uneducated monkey brain is.
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I've always considered the "why" to be the most important question for me.
In our society, the answer is almost always money, which is a means and not an end, and so western culture seems to be miserably grinding itself into the dirt, usually without ever looking up and asking what the deeper point is.
It's really very tragic to me.
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The problem is the way we are told to treat adults as kids.
We go all the way through school repeatedly being told that the adults have the answers, they understand everything that we don't, they know how to tackle the things that seem to big for us, and, most importantly, they don't make mistakes.
So now that we're adults, even though we cognitively know by now that it was all bullshit, it's hard to turn that training around. We make mistakes, don't have the answers, and sometimes struggle with parts of the world that we'd expected would make sense by now. We know that the adults before us were no different, but it's been so long that it's hard to internalize that we, now, are just like them.
Your imposter syndrome is programmed. It's not your fault.
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It's not quite the same but this line of thinking reminds me of a couple of scenes from How I Met Your Mother. Marshall tells the story of when they were travelling as a family when he was a child and his dad was this beacon of heroics who could magically see through the heavy fog. Later we get the story from his dad's perspective who tells that he couldn't see a thing, was terrified out of his wits but just kept on going and hoped for the best while keeping a brave face for his family. I know it's fiction but it's such a good little story that pulls back that curtain.
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This is put very eloquently, thanks
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My answer is still the same as this question was asked last time. I still feel no different than my teenage self until I meet some actual teenagers, and and there is nothing that makes me feel more like an adult than when I realize they are just kids, immature and wide-eyed, and the me of now is actually nothing like the teenage me I still think I am.
Being an adult means having grown-up responsibilities, you can no longer be the selfish, carefree child you used to be when there are people depending on you in this cruel, cynical world. Yet in spite of all this, you don't have to give it all up, there should still be times where you can take a break from being an adult, and with the life experiences you didn't have before, rediscover that sense of wonder, hope, and sincerity that you thought you've lost in a brand new light.
And that's what Barbie was really about.
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Early 50s here and no, absolutely not. I still feel like I’m an immature teen inside my head, wondering what the hell happened.
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looks in the mirror
...fuck
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Congratulations!
By pondering those things and asking the questions that you did, you are now officially an adult!
Nobody knows what we're doing. And we're all just bouncing around and slamming into experiences like a bunch of dopes.
Eventually, you're going to bump into some folks that just sorta stick. They're going to like some of the same things that you like and be interesting in a multitude of ways. You're going to find that life gets a little easier when you've got some friends to help spread it around.
It's life. It's weird and serious and silly and sometimes pretty sad. Hold on tight and enjoy the ride.
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That's part of it but I think there's a bit more than that.
Getting older I see a clear development among my acquaintances and friends. The ones I would call "real" adults, they dedicate their lives to something that gives it meaning. Some set big goals and got involved in government, some regularly volunteer, some dedicate their lives to 'simply' providing as best they can for their kids and family.
For me that is the mark of an adult. Not your competence or your intelligence but what drives you outside just your own desires.
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It comes in bursts. Like after doing your taxes or buying a car, you think "That was totally adult of me. Now it's time for video games!"
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This sums it up nicely for me.
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Im 30, have a full-time salaried job, two kids, own a house... I have no idea what the fuck I'm doing I just want to play games and touch myself.
You are not alone at all.
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Same at 40
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I feel like we are what we are, and that will probably never change lol
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Yes and No. 48.
There was never a horizon or dividing line I crossed between youth and adult. It just happened.
I'm still the same person I was when I was 10/20/30/40. Still like cool things, still confused about why we're all here.
Other than my body getting real creaky and doing all kinds of weird old things, the only real difference between youth and adult is the realization that this very thread addresses. We're all just making it up as we go. There's no such thing as "adult". There's no Council of Super-Smart People running the world.
The only thing that makes you an adult is the realization that you have to be the change you want to see in the world. That you have to be the super-smart person running things.
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Clearly you’ve not been invited to the Council, we’re adulting super hard smartly over here
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That or when people assume you’re your kids grandpa. I’m only 40, just…so… tired.
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Not once in my 45 years.
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Just turned 30. I have a house, a kid and a wife. I still don't feel like an "Adult"
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show-off
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As far as I can tell:
- age <16: "Oh boy, I can't wait to be an adult and do whatever I want!"
- age 16-19: "Look at me! I'm an adult! I'm the adultiest adult that ever adulted!! I reject all that is childish and embrace all that is totally-grown-up! Middle ground is for losers! I need everyone to know how ADULT I am and approve of it!!"
- around 20-ish: "....fuck. I'm an adult. I have responsibilities. I have to do taxes. Why does everything cost money?"
- 25+: "I have legit no idea what being an adult is supposed to be like, but I'll figure it out one day ... I hope. Also my back hurts and I have a favorite spoon and lost the lid of 2/3 of my tupperware."
- 45+: "I'm an adult. I can do whatever TF I want. Ohh you want to convince me that videogames and cartoons are "too childish" for someone my age? Go ahead and sue me, lol."
I'm nearing that last stage and I honestly care less and less about what being an adult is supposed to be like. The world is already a shitty enough place without ruining your own fun on arbitrary grounds like stuff being "too childish for your age" or the pressure to have found your purpose in life by a random age. I stopped trying to find "my calling" or a bigger meaning in life and just enjoy the ride instead. Not everyone is predestined to achieve some groundbreaking milestone in history. Maybe my purpose in life has always been to be that weird funny uncle that cracks insufferable puns at the worst times but actually listens to problems of loved ones, no matter how trivial they may seem. Maybe just winging it without actually knowing what the end result will be ... is perfectly fine. It is okay to not know everything. It is okay to have silly little hobbies. It is okay to be a bit awkward. And it is okay to feel a bit lost sometimes. Adults are just old children with a driving permit.
Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
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Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is optional.
So much this!
I see myself a bit in all those stages, but i don’t think i ever really ever (temporarily) outgrew “childish” things. Always liked cartoons, always read comics, always played games, and always told those that chided me for not growing up to fuck off. Now entering my 50s, the biggest difference is that people don’t have the courage to bother me about it anymore (and in the rare occasions when they do they don’t argue back after being told off :P )
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I feel like a decaying 16 year old.
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I feel like a decaying 16 year old.
So much this. You don't get old, you break down.
Your mind still thinks you're young, and then gets rudely reminded of the truth from time to time, that reminder coming more often as you wear down more.
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Wake up, Jump out of bed excited for the day.
Horrific crunching noise from your knee, and a snap from your back that sounds like an industrial 3 foot thick rubberband snapping quickly bringing you back to reality as you collapse against the foot of your bed in agony. shaky hand reaching desperately for the tylenol and bottle of water you keep on your nightstand just for this moment, before hobbling into the bathroom to take the first of several morning shits, each more horrific than the last.
The spirit is willing, but the flesh is decrepit and aged beyond usefulness.
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One day you'll feel like a decaying 30 year old 😌
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Learning to fake it is part of growing up. Eventually you forget you're faking.
You become an adult the day you realise that what everyone else was doing all along.
Special milestone the day somebody refers to you within earshot as "that mister", the fabled stranger-based punishment of exasperated mothers everywhere.
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Teenagers have started refer to me as sir and that was it for me 😂
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I make steady but friendly eye contact with anyone asking for ID from my younger dining companions. The challenge is there, are you telling me I look old enough to drink! (Im balding and completely grey on the remainder, there’s no pretending any more)
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Really all you have to do is hang out with some co-workers in their early 20s. Nothing makes you feel like an adult like sitting at the kids table, listening to their problems. Realizing you can't relate.
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Hard agree. Im 52 and most of my friends average about 30ish. Thing is I can relate, but due to extra time in the game of life, I have made a peace with the challenges younger people still fight with. Still the proximity of youth is a valuable perspective. I treasure my younger friends for this and many other reasons.
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Still the proximity of youth is a valuable perspective. I treasure my younger friends for this
"Out of the mouth of babes" is a phrase that is usually associated with very young children speaking to adults, but really it means a younger generation talking to an older generation, and makes a lot of sense to listen to.
New perspectives and new ideas influence and help growth for all.
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The “actual adults” we were sold as children were never real.
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Its not just you, everyone waking up , going to work is pretending. Thats what adult life looks like. You pretend to keep your boss happy, society happy and people around you happy.
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Me (41yo) asked my dad (74yo) Me: Dad, when does that adult thing of knowing what you are doing kicks in? Dad: When I find out, I will let you know.
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I'm turning 40, I have 2 kids, and my self-image hasn't changed since high-school. I have to consciously think about it to realize that other people see an adult when looking at me. Like my first reaction when I do something "grown-up" is to woder if people are impressed by a kid acting so mature, and then I realize that I'm not a kid anymore.
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Thinking I can do things, start doing it, then my body complains. Looks in the mirror, sees a 40-year-old looking back.
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Just to prove I'm an adult I like to have ice cream for dinner and leave all the windows open because that's what my parents said I could do when I was grown up
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None of us know what's going on. It's ok.
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Life is like quantum mechanics. Anyone who says they understand it is lying and shouldn't be trusted.
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Keep it up nobody can tell.
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I think we're all taking the "fake it 'till you make it" approach to some extent. I know I am. There is no script to follow.
Remember that part of being an adult is getting to decide what "adult" means.
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Just actually hang around kids that are the actual age you "feel". You'll realize some differences pretty quickly. Also, I have this idea that what really "ages" us is all the loss we accumulate. The longer you live, the more death comes for your loved ones.
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At about 24 years old I finally started feeling like an actual adult. Living alone, taking care of my things and my pets, having a stable relationship. Part of growing up is just accepting that there's some of parts of you that will never grow up, I'm still a goofball and that's just part of me.
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I started too, but then the spouse started to complain that we were acting like our lives had plateaued. So I've decided to stop acting my age and not grow up yet.
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A choice that will bless you the remainder of your days. When you grow up, your heart dies. No one really grows up anyway, some just make the sad choice to harden up and become closed to growth and new experiences.
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I don't really feel any different in my 40s, I've just changed my perception of what an adult is.
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People glorify adulting as some kind of ultimate maturity for ones self. It is not that. Adulting is predicting what can and won't be your life. Surviving better each day. While also keeping after yourself in a healthy manner.
We are always growing until we die. Adulting is accepting what can be and what can't be and living with yourself.
Perceive reality as it is and accept the successes and failures along the way.
One day you will see people for what they are and are not. That day your awareness of the world will change.
I've noticed it has become easier to see liers as I've gotten older and mentally ill people.
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"I've noticed it has become easier to see liers as I've gotten older and mentally ill people."
Sometimes I wonder if we are all mentally ill. Some might say those thoughts stem from depression or such but it makes more sense to me that sanity is a spectrum where 0 and 10 are near unreachable. We make decisions that won't help ourself, but we excuse it because we think it will make us happy at the time. Chasing happiness ultimately seems like an act outside of sanity.
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I believe it is easier to see mentally ill people because I was depressed at one point and noticing the behaviors is easier. While I don't subscribe to the "we are all mentally ill" frame of mind, I do believe that it is a good majority of humans.
I believe that chasing happiness is ultimately impossible. However, being happy with ones self and coming to terms with your reality and accepting what you can and cannot change is possible. Do not dwell on what you cannot change and change what you can.
I have noticed through my own actions and the action of others that we limit ourselves through self sabotage. If we sabotage ourselves and stop ourselves from actually failing then we already know the outcome and cannot be more discouraged than if we actually try. This is why I say accept failure and learn from it. "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life" -Jean-Luc Picard
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I find all of this talk about being an adult weird. It doesn't matter how old you are. What matters is that you can take care of yourself.
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I suppose it depends how you think of being an adult.
No-one is going to save me. I am huddling with my family for warmth and hoping we all make it to death without disaster striking. If disaster strikes, our survival depends on us and people will be looking to me to take charge.
That sounds like adulthood to me.
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Thinking of yourself as an "adult" is just a mental construct that was embedded into most people at a young age. When we were kids, we saw adults as these elevated beings that had transcended childhood and became something more. When you grow up, you realize you're still the same person but with more responsibilities. It's not the paradigm shift we thought it would be as kids, and that's okay. I'm almost 40 and my idea of a perfect saturday is sleeping until 11am, waking up with a nice blunt and coffee on the patio, making some cheerios and watching cartoons until mid afternoon. Then spending the rest of the day playing video games or board games with friends. Adult life is just life, with extra steps.
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as an “adult” is just a mental construct that was embedded into most people at a young age
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When you grow up, you realize you’re still the same person but with more responsibilities
... and kids can step up to responsibilities way earlier than we prefer to admit. They might not be as good at it as somebody more developed but they can do it.
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What finally made me feel like an adult was raising a teenager. Any last semblance of youthful energy and optimism I had was destroyed between 15 and 18 years old.
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Congratulations, that worry is you being an adult
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PENIS
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COCK! I'm 40 btw. If I'd been born in the stone age I'm pretty sure I'd have been the one carving a fuckload of granite dickbutts to troll contemporaries or future victims alike.
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I see adulthood as a gradual undoing of the damage that the process of going through childhood and "growing up" does to us. Not necessarily from any specific trauma, but just that almost all of us will reach our 20s and beyond with quirks and mental health issues just by nature of a very complex and at times traumatic world. And an ideal adulthood is the ability to eventually move beyond merely coping but regaining some of the lost joy and innocence of childhood but with the increased responsibility of the self and others that comes with adulthood.
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I came to say exactly this. I have a career, have hit life goals, and done all that stereotypical stuff, but I didn't really feel like an 'adult' until powering out with my therapist through childhood trauma and weird mental things, like handling my ADHD and coming to terms with my mortality.
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Early 20's. I work with a lot of people nearly double my age who call me a kid (endearingly and lovingly if I may add). Make decent money and have a great partner.
I pay taxes and pay bills, I have a car and I go to work everyday of the work week. I tend to ask myself "is this it? This is what I wanted so much as a kid? This is being a grown up?"
I mean I can eat ice cream whenever I want I guess, but I dread when the actual adulting comes along. Seriously, does anyone else know when the adulting comes? Is it bad?
Apologies for the rambling, but the title question always hits with me as of late. Thanks.
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I'd call 'actual adulting' having responsibility for another's welfare. Whether a dog, cat or human, they are all varying levels of "if I fuck up, someone else suffers".
I still don't feel fully like an adult, but I do feel the responsibility of ensuring there is food on the table and a roof over our heads. My partner is also responsible for these things so it is a little less pressure.
All said I do not feel as adult as I saw my parents when they were my age. They seemed very grown up and very responsible compared to how I feel today. I was 11 when my dad was my age.
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You're perfectly fine. Really right now you're a young adult and your older peers are just calling you a kid because they're at a different stage of life development than you and so don't relate to you anymore, hence they treat anyone outside of their little clique with derision to enforce their unwarranted sense of superiority. In short, if they're being mean about it, they're ageist bigots; remind them they will never have the youthful beauty, potential and opportunities you have when they do it and watch them fume.
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As a 41 year old, when I call someone in their early-mid 20s a kid, there's no derision intended. Think about how you relate to someone who's 12 or 16 when you're 20 or so - they might be quite capable, even fun to hang out with; but their life experiences also give them a clearly different outlook. And, like as not, you feel a little more interest in making sure they're getting along all right (at least I do!)
As you age, that doesn't really change - but the "target age" where that comes into play follows you up! So at 26, you feel that way about people just coming into high school; at 30-35, about people getting out of college and starting their careers. My oldest kid is 6; and I feel this way now about most of the parents of my kids' classmates! Makes for a fun juxtaposition, when they have older kids and know more about what we're in for than I do :p
It can turn into something condescending, depending on the person; but I think it's usually more of a statement that "I remember being where you were!"
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I believe no one is and it's kinda Auto-Pilot of preventing bs from happening to yourself
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But bs happens all the time, and sometimes it's not even my fault
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Most of the time though it is my fault
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What? You don't get the instruction manual?
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Same here, 56M. Realised a long time ago that everyone's just figuring it out as they go along, and those stronger personalities that project "right" and "wrong" are just as much pretending as the rest of us.
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In my experience, pretending you know what you're doing is what being an adult is.
School/experience is getting enough background to fake it without blowing anyone up in the process.
Being a good adult is taking responsibility for the things you did without knowing what you were doing.
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Now you know why southern men call each other "old boy"
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Good for you.
You might, once the back pain sets in. Or other old people's aches and pains?
What would you expect it to feel like? What's keeping you from that?
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I do. It happened somewhere in my mid-late 30s. The two main contributing factors have been:
- Years of therapy so that I'm able to have my shit together
- Having a kid so I've got a reason to have my shit together
Order of those two is very important!
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I figure it's just different responsibilities.. if I didnt have kids I'd be doing more of what I want to do (like fireworks and motorcycling).I had to put that on pause for 12 years or so, and just now I'm starting to do more for me. It was a joint decision that I would be a present dad rather than career focussed. And to be honest it's been great being able to switch off work and enjoy my personal time. Family circumstances have changed and ironically I've had to be even more present but with COVID changing the work force expectations,at least in my business, to be more flexible, that it all works.
I still feel 16 at heart and think I can get out of a chair really easily, but I can't..my joints are stiffening and that really sucks.
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I had to put that on pause
for 12 years or so
i cried
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I don’t feel like an actual adult. I feel like I’m pretending to know what I’m doing.
That's the first step. The next step is looking back on your "mundane" adult accomplishments:
- Finding and negotiating your housing
- Making sure you (and possibly your family) are maintaining basic nutrition
- Managing your finances well enough that the first two are not in imminent danger
- Navigating though various "adult" BS such as contacting a bank or merchant about a process or payment in error, and chasing it through various channels until its resolved.
- Identifying your next need and the starting point for how to go about getting it resolved.
Then you glance to your left and your right and see some of your peers doing magically better, but more importantly you see a chunk of your peers not able to accomplish anything in the list above. You see what you now recognize is your growth and maturing and their lack of it.
The second step is to realize that you are indeed an adult. This is what being an adult is. The situations change, the difficulty in scope or scale increases, but its variations on what you've done before and the second, third, fourth...hundredth iteration aren't as hard as your first attempt in your early adulthood.
You realize that there isn't a single defining threshold you crossed at some point in the past where you went from "kid" to "adult". You also realize that some people make it all the way into their 60s and 70s without ever becoming an adult.
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Maybe I'm rare but I made a bucket list in high school of things to do as an adult. Some lame but some cool.
Accomplished
- Travel to Europe
- Live in Europe
- Get Married
- Have a kid
- Win the lottery (won $50K on Powerball in 2021)
- buy a brand new car
- eat at a world class restaurant
- take a cruse
- visit Walt Disney World (worked there)
- be a tv director
- buy a house
- leave my shitty small town
- live debt free
- golf at St. Andrew's
I had maybe five I haven't completed yet but should be able to in a few years.
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Growing old is mandatory, growing up optional.
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My brother told me the first time he truly felt like an adult was when he had to go shopping for a washing machine.
I think for me it was when I suffered a back injury whilst sleeping.
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I feel like I'm pretending to know what I'm doing.
No one knows what they're doing but it's provocative.
But seriously though, no one knows what we're doing. As kids, we see adults and think they know what they're doing but they're only pretending. A lot of us also still act immature. We are still children in some form or another.
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Definitely not. I still feel like an immature 20 year old trapped in an older body.
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We all just have to do stuff all the time. That's it. Welcome.
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I'm sitting here procrastinating doing books with stacks of paperwork for the business spread all over the table, but all the bills are paid and I'm in the black so yeah, a little bit.
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You'll feel like an actual adult when you stop chasing after what you think society expects a successful adult to be.
Not only will that mean you yourself have the self-confidence of an adult and the adult ability to set one's own milestones, but modern day society is pretty shallow and immature and not really design for people to be self-driven and independent (look at celebrity culture, look at how politics use Tribalism so that people react very much like they do with sports tribalism were the stakes are nowhere near as high, look at consumer society powered by marketing using manipulation strategies taken from Psychology).
If you're lucky it might happen when you have your middle life crysis (though many, maybe most, just seem to become infantilised) or as result of some life-changing event.
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Some of us are not chasing it, but instead are actively running away.
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Yeah.
Once people actually figure themselves out and hence their objectives in life, from the ground up, they often stop trying to be whatever they are told or led to believe are society's metrics for success, mainly because social messaging nowadays is very manipulative and self-serving, so anybody who unquestioningly guides oneself by those metrics is more likely than not just serving somebody else's interests and egos.
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Oh, I didn't make my bed and the world didn't explode. Seriously, does anyone clean their house to the extreme your parents did? We only do if someone is coming over.
212 comments