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I can’t say I’ve experienced that with all friends but some health issues have required 3 friends to exercise caution. When I visit friends who have gone through heart attacks or dealing with post surgery or Parkinson’s my focus is enjoying their company, offer support and doing what they can within the limits imposed by health circumstances.
Our bodies and sensitivities change. At 50 I developed chemical allergies and it’s the weirdest thing ever. heavily scented detergent / fabric softeners/ dryer sheets , Fabreeze and some scented candles make me Ill in seconds.
Some people seem to get weird are not necessarily to do with age but being isolated socially and emotionally.
That's the sort of thing I've noticed as friends, relatives get older: food allergies get diagnosed, or pre-diabetes or a heart condition develops, so suddenly people are on different special diets, making it impossible to coordinate a dinner gathering. Multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS) is becoming more common, and requires a fragrance-free environment. At least the medical system in the US is beginning to acknowledge these food allergies and chemical sensitivities. That didn't used to be the case, and still isn't in many other countries.
Well, if it's any consolation, this experience I've had with some of my long time friends and family members getting weird on me isn't so much a bummer as a curiosity. Also a kind of warning to stay a little self-critical about patterns of thought or behavior if I see myself developing them. It's harder to stay flexible and adaptable if one starts to feel they're always right, reasonable, justified.
Haha. Sometimes we just get a little nuts, but we don't have to be rigid.
I haven't become hyper sensitive or try to over-control everything in my life. I like a little recklessness and unpredictability. That said, I may be on the old side (68), but I don't have health issues, I'm not isolated, and I feel fairly confident in the fact that the world isn't out to kill me... not yet anyway.
But people are different. And people can change however they want. What I was talking my way through in this thread is only that I've noticed some friends/family members change over the years. You know, like get weird.
I think A LOT of people totally lost it over Covid, and I don't think they'll ever recover. As for me, I would say I become more "feral" as I get older.
Totally agree. I know some people that cracked and I don't think they'll uncrack.
I was trying to keep myself from thinking along these lines. I feel bad when people are alone as they get older, but I try to be careful not to think of them in a way that imposes any projection of "sad and lonely" on them because I worry I'm being presumptuous or something. But of my friends who have gotten weird, they are either long time singles and have no kids, or they (like my brother) have a spouse and child but otherwise are quite reclusive and pretty narrow in what activities they're willing to engage in, and it's getting narrower all the time.
When I say "getting older" I also want to say these are people in their 50s and 60s... so not really old and not yet dealing with infirmity and so forth.
Anyway, I suspect you may be correct!
I'm going to be 65 on my birthday. I think some of it IS getting more and more infirm....but it sneaks up on us. My hearing isn't what it used to be. I'm not deaf, but I often ask someone to repeat themselves. Sometimes my knees and legs hurt. I blame it on my shoes...but maybe it's me getting older. My eye sight is actually improving, so I can't speak to that...but if my senses are slowly but surely deteriorating...then how I function in the world is going to change, and I will rely on habit more than a younger person experiencing their life and independence for the first time.
My husband and I have turned in to people who go out to eat around 4:00 in the afternoon. You know...old people hour. LOL Why? To avoid the crowds...and we don't like driving at night. Why don't we like driving at night? Cause our senses are changing.
Also...I think as we get older, we 'collect' PTSD.
I'm in my fourth decade of driving. Recently, I started thinking that I really don't enjoy taking long drives alone anymore. Local trips aren't a big deal but driving for several hours alone is a drag. Last Wednesday I took the subway
to the city to attend a friend's retirement dinner. There's a lot of craziness on the subways these days but it wasn't a bad trip. This past Saturday, I had to drive 2.5 hours to a bridal shower. On the way there, I was thinking, "I wish this was in the city like the party on Wed. I can take the train and not have to drive." I may be visiting a sister next weekend. She lives 3 hours away. Sigh.
I thought I handled the lockdown pretty well. As an introvert, I felt cocooned. It was a little nice not having to
go certain places and I felt very healthy - not even a cold.
I'm in my 40s and I find myself less enthusiastic about doing things that involve being out super late or huge crowds. Does that make me weird? Maybe I was always weird in that way. I've never really been a social butterfly, and not that I'm older I don't really care about looking cool to people.
I had a really, really good friend in my 20's-30's who was so fun to be around. We had great times. Turns out, in his 50's he's very bitter and has decided since I'm a different political party we can't be friends. I tried to reconnect with him a year or so ago and he was downright nasty. It's a real shame as I don't care about his lifestyle (he's gay) or his politics (very liberal). It is what it is. I just hold onto the good memories from when we were young.
Is it getting older and all the transitions that come with that? Is it all the isolation people have experienced in the last few years? Is it the internet? Or maybe these friends were latent weirdos all along and they are just now emerging into their true selves... like pod people.
No, it's a lack of perspective, maturity, and too many generations of being worried about what others think. Age has nothing to do with it. I am 66, and indeed there are adjustments to be made -- as with any age, but I am perfectly able to keep my head level. If anything, I blame it on social media -- media of any sort. Every news outlet seems to be another Enquirer publication. We used to only see the insanity at the checkout line in the grocery. It's pathetic.
The older I get the calmer I get. As we age, we find that so many things aren't important as we thought they were. There may be a few things we won't accept but mostly we're willing to change if the evidence is there.
But we still get weird in our own ways. Your normal may be my weird when compared to the way we were in the past. As long as it's harmless and doesn't affect anyone else I wouldn't worry about it. A lot of it is just making life easier for ourselves.
A lot of the stuff posted here sounds like normal changes with aging. The OP's friend is extreme, some people lose it like that, like going over a cliff.
If someone becomes more vigilant due to gained knowledge and experience, that is sensible. Paranoid and extreme? Maybe due to mental changes, PTSD or a personality that is susceptible to it.
I'm thinking of Howard Stern holed up in his basement since Covid and still won't even see his co-workers. He was always kind of OCD but Covid pushed him over the edge and all his millions of dollars can't fix that.
For many, those traits have always been there but mostly hidden and life wears us down, then they come to the forefront sometimes in a big way. I know with aging we tend to lose our filters. Look at a really old person- not much filtering there. lol.
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