Despite access to thousands of people’s life experiences, we tend to not really understand something until it happens to us. There is really no proper substitute for just living through something, but the magic of the internet allows us to at least try.
Someone asked “What’s a truth about aging that no one prepared you for?” and netizens shared the surprising examples. So get comfortable as you read through, upvote your favorite stories and be sure to share your own experiences, ideas and thoughts in the comments section below.

#1

When you get a flashback of a good memory and you realize that was over 10 years ago.

Bonschenverwerter:

I saw a former classmate the other day. Did the maths and realized I hadn't seen them in about 20 years. I'm only 35.

Image credits: thrivingandstriving

#2

It’s not just you who is getting old.

Your parents are getting even older.

Image credits: iVikingr

#3

How your mind stays young while your body starts to slow down. You still feel like the same person you’ve always been but suddenly you notice little things changing.

Kremidas:

When I turned 40 I was asked by a younger person what that felt like. I told them I just feel like a 27 year old who has been hanging around and doing stuff for 13 years.

Image credits: Melodic_Researcher53

#4

You start to realize the older you get that the end is closer than the beginning and you still feel like you have so much more to do.

Image credits: Putrid-Stage3925

#5

No one prepared me for how much energy and time it takes to maintain everything—like health, relationships, and just staying organized. It’s way more work than I expected!

Image credits: Milaabbyxx

#6

Remember when you were younger and you’d ask your Dad: “What’s wrong?” And he’d say: “Idk, I must’ve slept funny.”

That’s you now.

Image credits: willyv4pres

#7

It’s really lonely being an adult. I mean you have friends and co workers etc but it’s just incredibly lonely because you only ever have surface level conversations with most people.

Image credits: Totes_agirl

#8

It will hit you unexpectedly, you think you're still young but your body just won't cooperate and will show some signs.

Image credits: aslynnxhalee

#9

The world becomes more beautiful and people become less necessary.

Image credits: Duffman_O_Yeah

#10

Things that seemed so important when you were younger, really are not important.

Image credits: Excellent_Earth_9033

#11

Doors start closing once you reach a certain age.

Frozboz:

Ageism is real. I just turned 50 and am in a young person's career (software development). I feel how hiring managers look at me when asked to turn my camera on, during an interview that was going very well and suddenly it's "we'll get back to you".

Image credits: Witchaven_AoC

#12

Just how horrid menopause is and how little the medical community cares about how much you’re suffering.

Image credits: cbmcleod70

#13

Your friends start to die. It's something I never thought about.

Image credits: helcat

#14

Hair grows where you don’t want it and falls out where you wanted it.

Image credits: MntEverest77

#15

How much time you wasted in your life trying to make others like you.

Image credits: richb83

#16

Time for the hard truth.

One day, and yes it will happen to you, you will see a box… and you won’t just throw it away because IT’S A REALLY USEFUL BOX.

Image credits: Justaredditor85

#17

If you choose not to have kids, you may end up losing your friends. I turn 40 this year, and my partner and I don’t see many folks these days. Parents like to hang out with other parents. And I don’t have a grudge, I totally see the value for playdates, etc. But it can be a little lonely.

Image credits: OcularVernacular

#18

Ego death and identity crisis.

I lived a wild ride through my 20’s and 30’s and it’s happened a few times in minor ways.
But nothing like right now, a few months shy of turning 40 and everything feels so different and like I don’t know where I fit.

#19

Adults aren’t real. At least not in the way they’re viewed when you’re a kid.

When you’re a kid you can’t wait to “grow up” and then you do and you’re still you, just older. That voice inside your head doesn’t change, but what you see in the mirror does. Only now you’re just older and saddled with bills and stress and all of life’s “surprises”.

On top of this, everyone is winging it. Absolutely everyone. Because the idea of order and a civilized society is an illusion. We’re all playing by made up rules and making imaginary money and all the rest of it. A one dollar bill costs just as much to print as a hundred dollar bill. Hell, ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLAR BILLS used to be a thing (not in circulation, but they still represented their face value). Same principle applies.

In short, everyone is just doing whatever until we die.

#20

Your body really does just start hurting out of nowhere.

Image credits: CelticMayhem73

#21

I’m 61 and sometimes I feel like this world is not for me anymore. I feel almost like an imposter. For example, I can’t find clothes I like that fit correctly, tv is abhorrent, only old music sounds pleasant, shoes are uncomfortable, I don’t recognize most celebrities or famous people in the news or tabloids, and I don’t understand the need for most new and supposedly exciting products.

I’m an educated person, I still work and have an active life. I’m not a recluse. But a little at a time, I feel the world is moving on without me. I finally understand why, in her final years, my mother only watched movies from the 1950s and reminisced about the past more than she talked about the present. Her world was long gone.

Image credits: Odd-Telephone9730

#22

Time f*****g flies.

nor_cal_woolgrower:

The days are long but the years fly by.

Image credits: CaucasianHumus

#23

You become invisible to much of society.

mosquem:

People in their early 30s have this weird right now because the peak of our social influence was cut off at the knees by COVID, and by the time we were out of it Gen Z was taking over.

#24

For me it’s that you lose motivation to do things. You think you will always be chasing the newest travels, the best places, the hottest guys, but I’ve found these things start to become very unimportant later. For me also chasing relationships, romantic ones especially but also friendships, I enjoy my alone time more and more and romantic relationships are absolutely not on my radar anymore. Your wants and needs change!

#25

The fatigue ?‍♀️?.

Resistant-Insomnia:

I haven't felt rested in over ten years. Always tired. The moment I open my eyes I'm exhausted.

#26

You will realize that you hate planning meals and making food every single day. It’s boring and to easy to fall into monotony. But you have to make lunch again and then plan for dinner again then make dinner again and what do you want to eat tomorrow so you plan for breakfast tomorrow and get up and make breakfast again and then plan for lunch again…..

I am so tired of planning and making food.

#27

You start to tolerate rough emotional states, such as crippling anxiety. You will still feel it 100% but you somehow learn to just live with it. When younger, the feeling was just unbearable and impossible to go through without taking some actions or it having an enormous toll on your everyday life. Nobody prepared me for this, the quiet tolerance of inner pain.

#28

Everyone on earth relies on you in your 40’s and 50’s. A mid-life crisis has nothing to do with you. It’s about your kids and your parents and your in-laws all relying on you emotionally, mentally, and financially. It can be exhausting.

#29

How much it hurts to fall.

I fell off the roof of a house as a kid and just got up and walked away.

Now I’m careful when stepping off of a tall curb…

#30

As a woman: how many younger dudes start fetishising you as this p*rn stereotype milf-cougar-thing.

I was always told I'd become invisible once I hit a certain age. I was not told about the horde of horny twenty-year-olds who suddenly descended on me the day I got my first grey hair.

It's not just me either, I'm pretty mediocre-looking. This just seems to be a common experience for women over like 30 or over 35ish.

#31

Household appliances start getting really exciting. Had a vacuum delivered a couple of months ago, it arrived while we had dinner guests and everyone was super excited lol.

#32

Things like drinking, eating unhealthily, smoking, spending … they will catch up.

When you’re young you think you’re different, or you think that when it does catch up you’ll be old so who cares, I won’t care when I’m old anyway.

You will care though. You’ll still be you. Those things won’t seem like an issue right up to the moment they are. And then it’s too late to take them back.

Put more simply: the years will f*****g *fly* by. So, so fast.

#33

Waking up at least twice a night to pee.

#34

I just had to ask the waiter to read me the jelly packets because I forgot my reading glasses. ?.

#35

That as a woman your value completely disappears, no matter quantity nor quality of whatever you happen to have to offer. Freshness is forever gone and believe me, it shows.

#36

The point where you start evaluating friendships and find that most friendships are merely transactional. I’ve dropped a lot of “friends”.

#37

Your gums change colour and grow weird spurs. Not me freaking myself out with Dr Google and wasting £100 for a dentist to tell me “yeah, that happens” ?.

#38

Everybody thinks you’re respectable if you keep a rose garden and a vegetable garden…

…no matter what you used to do at Burning Man.

#39

I’m middle aged and a funny thing is the way younger people get self-conscious or apologize when there is no need. For example, they will apologize for swearing around me or mentioning something like (gasp) drinking, or d***s, or sleeping around. I think it’s funny. Why would being on earth longer make me easier to scandalize? I’ve seen and done things that would shock them, lol, but to them I’m a very proper looking classy older lady.

#40

You’ll never have those yearly 3 month summer breaks ever again.

#41

That it seems to happen overnight.
I was young the day before yesterday.
I’m turning 60 in two months.
WTF.

#42

Your energy and motivation generally decline as you get older.

I never understood it as a kid, but now I do when my parents and other adults around me told me to “study hard in school” or “work on extracurriculars”, while I’m young, because looking back, I don’t think I could even last a week in that grind now, let alone for several years.

There are exceptions though, and more power to them but I think many of us can agree it’s much harder once you’re older from a motivation and energy standpoint (e.g. people going to higher education at age 40 is much harder than age 20, learning how to drive at age 40 is much harder than age 20, etc.).

#43

Healthy living is just one part of living longer. Genetics and environmental influences are the two other puzzle pieces. 

Healthy living only gets you so far. The last three funerals I went to were for people in really amazing shape before their illness/death. Cancer, cancer, heart attack. 

Absolutely, do all you can, but denial of mortality isn't helpful as you age. 

#44

The key to aging healthily is to get your hormones checked and balanced.

Sometimes it hurts to move as you get older. But if you don’t move and work on strength – you’re going to hurt significantly more.

The body does want to heal itself. That healing process gets slower as we age. Movement, eating healthy foods, fighting inflammation, and keeping your hormones balanced are keys.

If you’re a women over the age of 35 – you must be your own advocate at the doctor’s office. Get your hormones checked and go on hormone replacement therapy as soon as you can. Perimenopause is no joke. It’s often dismissed by doctors. If you don’t get it treated, you will lose years of your life to discomfort.

#45

Your face looks older than your body, your soul feels younger than your mind …

#46

I started to appreciate lonelines and peace. Priceless..

#47

I’ve reached a sad inflection point where I’m attending more funerals than weddings. I need to get a new black suit because I’ve become too fat. On a positive note, friends are starting to welcome grandchildren into the world. Life goes on.

#48

I’m mid 40s. I used to always think aging is a mindset and for the most part I still do.

I also used to think I wouldn’t be someone who lamented about aging. I felt I was better than that. Yet here I am in the last year bothered by it a lot. It’s not that I even look particularly bad or aged, but we are so surrounded by people selling us things, people getting Botox and fillers. It can be defeating.

#49

How much I wish I had been more understanding and loving with my parents and grandparents. They have been gone for years but I still tear up when I think about things I did or said – or didn’t do or say. “I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger”.

#50

Saw the recent study where you age significantly at 44 and again at 60. I got hit hard at 62, my energy level has dropped significantly. I’m working out harder and eating better and taking all the vitamins. Losing energy is such a bummer.

#51

I’d just turned 40 and wasn’t happy about it when I happened to talk to a couple in their 80s. Oh 40 they said, eyes misting up. What I wouldn’t give to be 40 again. Made me feel better and now that I’m 60 I’m beginning to see their point of view.

#52

The fact that one day you will s**t your pants because farts become untrustworthy little jerks.

Bonus truth: Hangovers are also worse.

#53

The perception of time changes.

When i was a child a decade felt like eternity. A decade now feels like 3 years. as you get older time feels faster. I thought it would always feel the same constantly and literally 1 day im 18 and blinked and now im 32.

If this rate is true im guessing ill be 40 next year.

#54

That you can f**k up your shoulder by playing air guitar to the point that you need steroid injections.

True story.

#55

Clothes just don’t fit like they used to!

#56

Being stuck between worrying about aging parents and kids, that for a lot of us in this age range, are worrying about teens/young adults. I didn’t expect to worry more about my kids as they got older.

#57

I had open heart surgery at 36. Two years on, the toll it’s taken on my body is unreal. I look old, my skin has started to crepe, I’m tired ALL THE TIME, my hair is turning white. I didn’t expect any of this.

#58

Worst thing for me is the change in eyesight – I’ve always been short sighted but used to having really good eyesight for close detail, now it’s hard reading labels or even focusing on the car radio information when driving with my specs on.

I won’t give in and get varifocals quite yet though.

#59

You never feel “grown up”. Even though I have adult children, I am still my mother’s daughter. Even though I have a house, car, and great job I still feel like I am learning how to navigate life.

#60

How much I don’t give a f**k anymore! In a good way.

#61

At some point, you will have your last pain-free day.

#62

The recovery period. I like to say that I can still do almost all the things I used to when I was young, but not as often, and usually not two days in a row. At 20 I could wake up at 6, play tennis until noon, eat a whole pizza for lunch, wait 20 minutes then go play a baseball game, ride my bike 20 miles, come home eat a steak, then go out dancing for the evening and come home at 3 a.m.. Then get up the next morning and do it all over. Today, doing that two days in a row might kill me, if I could even get out of bed the next day.

#63

As much as you dreamt about being an adult and being older so you could do whatever you wanted, some days, you’d give anything to go back to being a kid.

#64

Once your brain tells your feet to walk to the bathroom you have 26.8 seconds to get there, or…… womp womp.

#65

How the desire to get into woodcrafting grows each year.

#66

You start worrying about death A LOT sooner than you think.

#67

I can no longer eat a full Deep Dish pizza I’ve had switch it up to Thin n Crispy. Even then it’s touch n go if I manage to finish it.

#68

Your knees get weaker and your tolerance for alcohol goes down. People warn you about this nowadays, but I feel like those things don’t sink in until you feel them physically.

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