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Ageism - your thoughts...

Started by 23 Daves, February 06, 2006, 01:02:12 PM

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23 Daves

Now, this forum is generally a pretty broad church, and so I don't expect too much in the way of bigotry here, but I was wondering if any members had noticed more ageism in society recently and a new generation gap opening up.

My thoughts on this aren't entirely career related, though this does play a small part.  On another thread recently, there was a mini-debate on whether non-editorial staff over the age of 30 really stand much chance in the British media, and everyone firmly agreed that the odds of success are slim.  This isn't just because younger contributors are seen as being more energetic, optimistic and not as sour as their older, more battle-worn cuzzies and bros, but often because recent graduates are quite more willing to accept more rubbish pay and live in damp bedsits until things get better.  Cost, rather than experience, has become a keen factor for employment in the modern media.

Outside the media, though, I'm currently being asked more and more questions about my age from employment agencies, whether I "really want" to work with a "young team", whether I don't see myself in a more "professional role at my age" (indeed dear, but I have to pay the rent in the meantime, yes?) and other such assumptions.  Normally made by a fresh-from-university HR employee in their mid twenties, I might add.

Then there's another thing that worries me slightly – the fact that just recently, I've noticed that age-related social groups are forming much more.  I hate to use the phrase "back in my day", but back in my day the social groups I was a part of varied wildly in age.  At the age of eighteen I had mates as old as thirty and as young as sixteen, and the same applied to most people I knew.  It could just be my imagination, but these days I don't see that quite so much.  Back when I worked at a major university last year, the mature students appeared to be a separate social group, cut off adrift from the others.  I also overheard many students there referring to anyone over the age of 28 as "old", or expressing extreme surprise if someone like me (aged 32) went out clubbing or listened to something other than James Blunt.  There were moments where the discussions almost got a bit heated, though I think I was most insulted by the insinuation from one cheeky cow that Pulp were an "old people's band" and not worthy of investigation for that reason alone.

Ageism to me is the most ridiculous and self-defeating of all the isms, because unless you're very unfortunate it will become a stick you're beaten with yourself eventually – encouraging it is tantamount to writing off your own future..  Most of us on here will, at some point, become old.  So I ask you... how well do you think you relate to other generations?  If it's badly, do you think it's their fault, or possibly yours?  And have you been a victim of any age-related prejudice or assumptions recently (which of course apply to the young as well as the old)?

TJ

"Ha ha, you're old, you don't know nuffink!" is becoming an increasingly accepted 'argument' (I first had this used when I was barely turned 21 and expressed a dislike for Cast), which isn't helped by cretins like Chantelle from Big Brother using it in public and not being taken to task. Sadly, it seems to be on the rise everywhere, including around these forums.

Borboski

Quote from: "TJ""Ha ha, you're old, you don't know nuffink!" is becoming an increasingly accepted 'argument' (I first had this used when I was barely turned 21 and expressed a dislike for Cast), which isn't helped by cretins like Chantelle from Big Brother using it in public and not being taken to task. Sadly, it seems to be on the rise everywhere, including around these forums.

Heh, you would say that, being old and all.

It's funny, when I was a lad I used to hear the other much more - "ahh, when you're older you'll understand the world a bit more" - which was so incredibly frustrating.  I guess "youth" is even more exploited as a marketing image these days, and it's possible to be a grown adult and not really engage with what I'd called the adult world... you know, you can work in a bar (or an office for that matter), and read nuts and zoo, watch the soaps, still go out on the piss every friday night - not much has changed from when you were at school.  Christ it all seems very infantile*.

*snob.

23 Daves

Quote from: "TJ""Ha ha, you're old, you don't know nuffink!" is becoming an increasingly accepted 'argument' (I first had this used when I was barely turned 21 and expressed a dislike for Cast), which isn't helped by cretins like Chantelle from Big Brother using it in public and not being taken to task. Sadly, it seems to be on the rise everywhere, including around these forums.

Well, I have to admit that I do sometimes wonder if it is in some way my fault.  If, for instance, Chantelle was arguing that someone was old and therefore didn't understand or make any attempt to understand recent trends (which I accept is a bit too complex an argument for her to make), then that may be a valid point.  If a new generation gap is emerging, then it may not necessarily be the fault of the younger members of society, but the older ones who are treating teenagers and people in their early twenties as having low attention spans, or just plain being a violent threat.

Also, the comments that make me chuckle the most about music come from people who worshipped at the alter of John Peel but feel the need to say that older music lovers "don't get it".  Or, as in a more recent case, a bunch of Internet idiots who were holding a Scott Walker meet but would rather it were "just young people there" (thereby excluding Scott if he wanted to turn up, presumably).

Carlos Tevez

I'm 21and I don't even know anyone younger than 19 or older than 22. It's an appearance thing, really; my friends all look around the same age and anyone who doesn't will always look out of place. I'd say that my peers are more accepting towards younger people than someone who's, say, 25 or so as they always try and assume a dominant role which pisses us off. Either that or showing a resentment towards those in their teens/early-20's due to the paranoia of not falling within the ever decreasing 'young person' parameters. I myself am becoming increasingly preoccupied with age, even going as far as doing things like finding how old my favourite musicians were when they made it big and seeing if I still have time left. It's sad to think that you hit 30 and it's all over in some people's eyes despite the fact that you've still got another 50 years or so; you always hear people in their late 20's moaning about how it's all downhill from there and I agree it's damaging. I'm becoming increasingly disillusioned with the whole 'do it all now while you're young' culture that pervades areas such as education, art, sex and friendship and I find it very oppressive in the ways I want to lead my life; if I want to work hard in school then become a party animal in my 50's or something it'd be hard finding friends to do this with because of the way people are hemmed-in by what you should be doing at what age.

23 Daves

Quote from: "Sef"I'm 21and I don't even know anyone younger than 19 or older than 22. It's an appearance thing, really; my friends all look around the same age and anyone who doesn't will always look out of place.

Er... well, who gives a shit?  If it's you, then shame on you, if it's them, shame on them.  Indentikit gangs are always a bit rubbish anyway, there's always a silght element of peer pressure about them.

QuoteI'd say that my peers are more accepting towards younger people than someone who's, say, 25 or so as they always try and assume a dominant role which pisses us off.

But yes, some people do this, and it's patronising and irritating.  I'd never assume that anyone knows less than me, regardless of age - I'm continually shamed on here and on other forums by people who are considerably younger than me.  On the flip side of the coin though, I'd also say that (from my personal experience) it's also sometimes imagined on the part of the younger person - there is an insecurity on their side occasionally as well that all the older person wants to do is to lead or domineer, and sometimes it's just that they're less hung up on group opinion and therefore more inclined to say or suggest things that go against the general flow.  I am speaking from personal experience here, though I'd rather not go into the precise details.

The problem with all this is, though, is that everyone has to deal with older people eventually at work.  The more alien they are to you, the more they're going to seem unfathomable in a working relationship, which I've experienced and I don't think is especially healthy. More to the point, employers are increasingly complaining about a widening generation gap in offices (The Economist did an article on this recently - I'll try and dig it out if I can).

QuoteI myself am becoming increasingly preoccupied with age, even going as far as doing things like finding how old my favourite musicians were when they made it big and seeing if I still have time left. It's sad to think that you hit 30 and it's all over in some people's eyes

Well no, not necessarily.  You can still play and perform, and a lot of genres aren't ageist, just rock and dance in particular.  And even in the case of dance music, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty weren't exactly spring chickens when The KLF broke.  It all depends, I guess.  But yes, generally it's a bit of a pisser, even if I am more confident and outgoing now than I've ever been in my life, ironically enough.  It's OK though, because I've realised in my mature wisdom that I don't actually want to be famous anymore.

Purple Tentacle

On the train opposite me and the wife the other day were some 50-ish year old rockers just back from a gig. Sat next to us were a group of 18 year old miserable faced goths.

Here let me demonstrate:


Goths____ Rockers
Goths____ Tentacles

Do you see now?


Anyway, the 'old' rockers were talking loudly about how silly youngsters looked wearing makeup and black nail polish, but admitted that they looked pretty stupid in their day with flowers in their hair, and live and let live and all that, and even remarked that one of the goths looked like Jethro Tull.  Fair enough.
Then they started talking about how young people today have no sense of political awareness, and that there were a lot more rebels and protests back in their day. Also fair enough.  But the main guy started shouting that all youngsters are 'brainwashed' all of them, and pointed at me as an example, which made me start laughing, as at 26 I don't really consider myself a 'young person', especially since I still have no idea who the Arctic Monkeys are and couldn't name a single act in last Sunday's hit parade.
He asked me why I was laughing, and asked me to prove him wrong. I insisted that I was no representative of all 'young people', and that the 18 year old goths sat opposite (I think he assumed I was with them) were in a whole different world to my married, mortgaged existence. And yet it went on, him telling me that I was brainwashed and had no interest in the world around me, me telling him that on the contrary I had a great deal of political interest, hated Heat magazine and was in my late twenties anyway, round and round in a loop until he patted me on the head and said 'one day you'll understand.'

It really was most bizarre, and something that hasn't happened to me since I WAS an 18 year old goth mouthing off about politics like I had any fucking life experience. I think there's a natural urge to distance oneself from people a different age to you, certainly people younger than you, but this guy had got it into his head that I thought all 'old' guys were fogies who knew nothing, whereas in fact I loathe that attitude and know that a guy who still goes to gigs and has a massive scar on his face has seen a lot more of life than I could ever want to.

I'm sad to say the goths said nothing during the whole amusing encounter, except to whisper 'Who's Jethro Tull?' after the rockers left.

swarfmonkey

I hope you told them that he invented the seed drill

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

I'm pushing 32 and still trying to scrape a living c/o temping agencies - I'm increasingly aware that anyone who hasn't got a career 'arc' worked out by their early 20s is viewed with suspicion. People want to know how on earth someone can have a degree, go through about 20 different jobs, and still emerge unemployed. Although that's probably less an age thing, more a 'not getting your life planned out by your 21st birthday' thing.

SweetRosalyn

Depends what you count as social group, exactly... I interact on a regular basis with people aged 17-70-something, but I don't tend to go clubbing with those from the latter half of that group...

I work in a pub, a mostly old-man's-pub.  I know and like most of my regulars, and often stay out once I finish my shift drinking with them, or swing by when I'm having a night out.  That isn't the same as them being in my social group, though.

The people I consider my friends range from 17 to early thirties.  I'm 20.  And their age makes no difference to how close they are to me.  You do notice the age gap sometimes, Hell, I rub it in their face sometimes (in revenge for them rubbing it in mine), but it's not generally a problem.

I've never really been friends with anyone over 40 odd.  I can chat with them and be friendly with them, but I've never got to the stage where we actually hang out elsewhere, go around each other's houses, tell each other deep and meaningful things about ourselves.  They just seem to live in a quite different world from the one I'm in, we don't seem to have many frames of reference.  Bear in mind most of the people I meet over this age are those that frequent a small Welsh pub.  I'll help them with their sudoku, explain to them how e-mail works, chat about the weather, and try to ignore them when they talk about 'bloody Jews' 'shirt lifting gay Lib Dems' (I was impressed to learn they voted Lib Dem, less impressed to learn that they now wished they hadn't, since they were all a bunch of shirt lifters, and gay.)and so on.  They have a curious way of excluding the personal - ie one of our staff is a very much out lesbian, and they have no problem with this.  But the Lib Dems... bunch of gays.  Bloody students... oh except the ones that serve them drinks.  They're alright.

I think they're genuinely nice people, most of them, but they've absorbed a lot of prejudices to the extent that you really can't argue them out of them, it's too built-in.  And our lives don't have much overlap.  I don't really have much I can talk about with them.  We'll sit around and drink together, joke around a bit, but never get beyond small talk.

I don't know if this is due to their age, or their situation, or both.  

I wouldn't consider myself ageist, I don't write people off for being older, but I feel like after a certain point you lose too many frames of reference and simply can't feel close to them.  

I'm sure there must be exceptions, there always are, I just don't know them personally.  

I don't feel like it's only age that causes problems with frames of reference, though.  One of my own sisters (26/7) seems to live in a completely different world from me, we can't discuss anything beyond the surface because we seem to see everything so differently.  Yet my other sister is only a year younger than her, (25/26) but I understand her life, we live in the same sort of world, and so does my younger sister, though she's only just 15.  

About the only definitely age-related problem I seem to have is that I do find myself needing to spend time with younger people as well to balance out the older people - older people have a habit of assuming an 'I know best' position, whereby they act like they've been through everything I have and thus everything I do is void, unimportant, because they've already done it.  I'm sure, in some ways, getting older does provide wisdom, because, in some ways, I feel wiser than I was 5 years ago.  But I also think individual experiences are different, and that it's not just a linear scale going up to all-knowing.  I tend to feel like someone who thinks they know best just because they've reached the grand old age of 25 is inherently less wise than me because at least I have the wisdom to recognise my own ignorance.
Older people do this in varying degrees, and I'm sure I must do it to some degree to those who are younger than me.  It's an age gap problem rather than an age problem, if that makes sense?  60 year olds are no more likely to do it than 25 year olds.  It's just a 60 year old has a lot more people under them to do it at, than a 25 year old.  

I dunno, it's possible this is just a facet of my particular social groups, for particular reasons, rather than a universal thing.  *shrug*

Gazeuse

*Limps in, parks zimmer, directs whippet to bowl of water, drops flat cap on chair, stretches, says ouch, grasps back, orders pint of mild and bitter and sits gently on rubber ring*

Well, I suppose it's time I popped into the thread. Yes, some old sods are always telling you what to do and how to live your life. I'd suggest that you get used to it because I'm 44 next month and I still get it from 70 year olds. I suppose they get it from 100 year olds. Some people, no matter what age, like to boss others about and they often see those younger than themselves as an opportunity to give some 'advice.' This is more to do with the fact that their 'sods' rather than 'old.'

23 Daves

The last time someone tried to boss me around they were ten years younger.  The temptation to stick the boot in and tell them they were a posh sod who had never even worked in a day in their lives was immense.  I'm a bit sorry I didn't now, actually.

I'm also at the age now where some of my bosses in some of the jobs I've had have been a bit younger than me, and they're even worse if anything.  I think because I'm a bit older they feel the need to puff their chests out and exert their authority even more.  "I didn't get where I am today...", etc.  You'll always get people who think they're leaders of the gang, and the fate of Gary Glitter should act as a harsh warning to all those fools on that score.

On the subject of what SweetRosalyn wrote, I'd say that's the most reassuring post I've read yet.  I don't really expect someone aged 25 and someone aged 50 (for example) to be bosom buddies, but the fact that people are able to drink and socialise under those circumstances is perfectly natural and healthy.  Much healthier than "I don't even know anyone over the age of 21" anyway, which is just fucking terrifying.

Carlos Tevez

Quote from: "23 Daves"Much healthier than "I don't even know anyone over the age of 21" anyway, which is just fucking terrifying.

Awww, won't the young guys hang out with you anymore? ;)

hencole

Young people hang around with young people because they are the only people they know. Once you start working you mix with people from all ages and therefore you are more likely to socialise with people older than yourself. You realise as  you get older that you still feel as young as you ever did, you just have more personal and social responsibility. When you are a teenager you see that in older people and can't comprehend that the old folk all want to be young and carefree again.
I don't think you can go around blaming youngsters for hanging around with other youngsters, experiencing all the new things that you discover at that age. Why do it with someone who has been there and done that? Mortages aren't cool, and working 9-5 isn't cool.

Emergency Lalla Ward Ten

David Beckham, Kate Winslet, Matt Lucas, Daniel Kitson...all those people are younger than me, and yet I think of them as older. Simply because they're famous I think. Age is a strange illusion. I'm never quite sure whether I feel six or sixty - probably both at the same time.

23 Daves

Quote from: "hencole"
I don't think you can go around blaming youngsters for hanging around with other youngsters, experiencing all the new things that you discover at that age. Why do it with someone who has been there and done that? Mortages aren't cool, and working 9-5 isn't cool.

Ah yes, but plenty of people over the age of 25 (for argument's sake) don't work 9-5 or don't have mortgages (I certainly don't have a mortgage, before anyone asks).  There are young musicians, comedians, gig promoters, writers, artists, etc, all out there doing their thing, and all not living a particularly conventional life.  The 9-5 thing is increasingly hard to avoid, but I know plenty of people who have managed to skip it.  Saying that it's the only choice for oldsters is actually another age myth.  I'd work freelance like a shot if I thought I could have a successful go at it.  I was the only non-freelancer in the last house I lived, everyone else went to bed at about 3am and got up at noon... and they were all in their late twenties.  Just like those Toastie Boys.

Also, I suppose I could add that as an eighteen year old there were certain local musicians I looked up to, so hung around with them hoping to cop a few tricks off them.  Some of the "been there, done that" stuff isn't so bad.

That point aside, there are no reasons I suppose.  My fear is just that I don't think huge generational gaps have always existed, and when they do exist it's normally a signifier of something gone slightly awry in society at one end of the spectrum or the other.  The 1950s, for example, saw the government actually broadcasting public information films to let the fearful folk out there know that young people are OK.  We're seeing similar things now with "hoodies" and "chavs" and people waffling on about how unemployable young folk are and how short their attention spans are.  Not good.  I'd prefer to believe in the kind of world that SweetRosalyn inhabits where the old people might not necessarily be best mates, but they're still there to converse with and be equals in the community.  It's healthier.  That's the kind of society that doesn't consider young people as threatening, and by the same token doesn't see human beings generally as being redundant at forty.

My other beef, as addressed in the first post, of course, is that the working world is increasingly regarding certain industries as youth zones, and if young people aren't effectively managing to communicate with older people, that's only going to get worse.  The pressure is presently on to "be a part of a young team" rather than just "be a part of a team", and in recent years I've felt I could very easily have fitted in to certain office environments were it not for age prejudices, which are fairly meaningless by themselves.  

Besides which, older people always have the best drugs.  The ones young people take are always shit, cos they're so naive and don't know where to get them from.

TOCMFIC

I'm all for ageism. Young people suck.

Age perception is funny. I turn 35 at the end of this month. My wife turned 32 earlier this month. So 3 years age difference. Nobody bats an eye lid.

When I was 14, my girlfriend was 11. (I use the term girlfriend in the loosest sense. This was a boarding school, she liked me, I liked her. It was either kissing her, or having to socialise with the assholes in my dorm.) I took so much grief for the same age gap. Hell, my girlfriend when I was 19 was 16. Nobody batted an eye lid to that either.

Oscar

At least part of the age separation thing is that people don't have the community and extended family ties that they used to have. Back when my mum was growing up, (and in her early twenties) she mixed with her parents' friends, her grandparents' friends, the next door neighbours, the butcher, the baker and so on. Her friends were usually her own age, but she knew people of many different ages.

Now, most people (especially younger people, I think) hang out only with friends, and most of us choose our friends because we have a lifestyle in common (eg. we meet at university, or clubbing etc) with them, and are therefore likely to be the same age.

Sherringford Hovis

Quote from: "TOCMFIC"When I was 14, my girlfriend was 11.

When my Dad was 14, my Mum was 1.
Used to freak me out - now I'm 32 and eyeing up 18 year-olds, I kinda understand the ol' man a little better...

Littlejohn

I won't trouble the intentions of this thread too much, being the discussion on old - ageism it is, but with respect to the young there are:

- Legal (including disrespect of individual development, i.e. non age - defined)
- Social perceptions (and generalisations)
- Multiple rights based
- Poor judgements of capability
- Scientific

Examples of negativity. Overall, non adults in my opinion are the most maltreated section of our society, but this is hidden, and the supposed rightness of the current status is taken for granted, as the very idea of what a youth is has become twisted, in a way that actually influences the young, the way they present themselves and in turn reinforces our opinions.

QuoteAre you tired of seeing virtually every dead-tree rag and talking head discussing young people as either hapless idiots or malevolent demon-spawn? Are you tired of living in a society that talks big about equality under the law, and yet has no voice calling for equality for youth?
(ASFAR)

And then go even further in redefining youth, immaturity and showing just how shaky and malleable those of all ages are.

Maybe the society as a whole is the most disadvantaged 'group', with the pompous, authoritarian lawmaking that disregards self determination of personal and communal behaviour (and spending of taxpayers' money on inflammatory campaigns of state violence).

humanleech

Being 43, I'm a bit bothered by the seeming ban on fancying 18+ year olds. I don't want to have sex with them or marry them, but they can still be attractive to me without me being a dirty old man.
When I've done courses at university I'm terribly aware of my age, and I know almost all 'mature students' feel that way.
Also, a lot of people in their 40s+ seem to have insulated and petrified themselves in so many ways. I think that's why it's so hard to make friends at my age. My major aim in life is not to become like that.

23 Daves

Quote from: "humanleech"Being 43, I'm a bit bothered by the seeming ban on fancying 18+ year olds. I don't want to have sex with them or marry them, but they can still be attractive to me without me being a dirty old man.

Well, yes... I think the problem other people have with this is that you (or I) might act on it.  There are after all men who do that sort of thing, and women as well - there's a club in Portsmouth full of women aged 40+ trying to bag young men, and trust me, I found it all quite petrifying when I was 22 or so and lived there.

But on the other hand, regardless of how incompatible someone is, it doesn't mean to say that you're not going to find them physically attractive.  Housewives are still going to have a soft spot for certain famous people, or find their son's friends desirable, and middle aged men are still going to find their pulse pounding at the sight of someone young in a bikini.  To ask all concerned if they'd like to apologise about it and stop it is like trying to neuter dogs.  

A mate of mine used to bump into this fifty year old man on his daily commute, and one day he confessed to him (really quite sadly) "It's alright for you, you know, if you find someone else attractive it's because you're a red blooded young man, if I do it's because I'm filthy".

goldfish

I've started feeling old over the past few months. Or perhaps not so much old, as completely out of touch with my social group. I'm the only female left in my group of friends who's single: all the others are married/ living with a partner and it's become very much a scenario of couples socialising with other couples. It's strange, I really didn't expect everyone to be settled by their mid-late twenties.

I still think it's much more accepted for older men to be attracted to/go out with younger women than the other way round. Both the times that I've gone out with younger men (even with a age gap of just a few years), I got some serious stick for it.

23 Daves

Quote from: "goldfish"I've started feeling old over the past few months. Or perhaps not so much old, as completely out of touch with my social group. I'm the only female left in my group of friends who's single: all the others are married/ living with a partner and it's become very much a scenario of couples socialising with other couples. It's strange, I really didn't expect everyone to be settled by their mid-late twenties.

Yep, I had this for awhile, and it's quite hurtful, actually - you find out after the weekend that everyone apart from you and Nigel the IT geek had been invited to a dinner party, and seemingly the only reason you weren't invited there is because you're single.  Or, worse still, they'll invite you and try to pair you up with Jennifer, a really dull librarian they thought might be "your sort", because, y'know, she likes books, doesn't she?  (Cue everyone paying very close attention to you and Jennifer's conversation all evening, like zookeepers watching Pandas to see if they'll breed).

I think it's about the age of 25/26 when this stuff seriously starts to kick in, and as I remember it all happens really suddenly as well.  I do think a lot of people spontaneously decide they're not going to be single anymore, and seem to leap into quite bland relationships very quickly.  Good luck to 'em, I suppose, it was annoying at the time but these days I can laugh at how unimaginative and idle they all are, whilst me and the wife still go out doing the kinds of things we always did.  Apart from copping off with other people, obviously (not that I did much of that even when I was single).

Nobody ever uses the phrase "we're having a dinner party" before they hit their mid twenties either, do they?  Even now it makes me cringe.

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: "23 Daves"

I think it's about the age of 25/26 when this stuff seriously starts to kick in, and as I remember it all happens really suddenly as well.

Well, quite. I'm 25 in a few weeks and on my generation in my family (myself and nine cousins), I'm the only one not living with their other half. Everytime another relationship goes belly up, my mother sighs deeply as wishes that that particular one would be the one to settle me down/give her the grandchildren she craves. Huh.

Thankfully, the only people I know around here socially are both younger and as equally socially inept as me, so hopefully it'll be sometime before the dreaded invite to the dinner party to meet Nicola/Emily/Anne who's 'someone you should meet' etc etc.

gazzyk1ns

I was just looking at the main VWs index page, checked what the newest thread/post in GD was, and misread the title of this thread as "Apeism - Your thoughts". I honestly started to think "Bloody hell, I know there's some weirdos on here, but now we've got someone who is really hairy like an ape." before I realised what had happened.

Jemble Fred

If it makes anyone feel better, I'm 27 and I don't think I know anyone anymore who's in a solid relationship – all my contemporaries are either continually single, or newly single.

As for being set up on dates by friends – chance would be a fine thing. I can't see what would be wrong with it.

TJ

Quote from: "gazzyk1ns"I was just looking at the main VWs index page, checked what the newest thread/post in GD was, and misread the title of this thread as "Apeism - Your thoughts". I honestly started to think "Bloody hell, I know there's some weirdos on here, but now we've got someone who is really hairy like an ape." before I realised what had happened.

This just made me laugh. A lot.

SweetRosalyn

I'm only 20 and half my friends are engaged, married or having babies. :/ 'Tis rather scary.  I've not been in a relationship for over a year, and I keep finding myself wondering if there's something wrong with me, as everyone else in the world seems to be settled down with their life partners.  And then I come to my senses again.  A year is not a long time to be single.  Not really.  And it's not like I haven't had lots of sex in that time.

I was at a baby shower the other day, and of everyone there, only me and two lesbians weren't in long term serious relationships.  And talking about said relationships.  Constantly.  The fact I was at a baby shower at all scares me...

goldfish

I'm just getting a wee bit tired of the pitying glances from some female friends. As though being 27 and single were on a par with having a terminal illness.

My male friends, thankfully, seem to be in no such hurry. However, this has also led to a fair bit of sniping from female friends about me only socialising with men and how this might be perceived. Bitches.