People Are Opening Up About The Hardest Parts Of Adulthood, And Wow, It's Thought-Provoking
Recently, Redditor u/RowBowBooty asked the internet, "What is one thing that you don’t like about adult life?" People opened up about the struggles they face in adulthood, and honestly, it's really thought-provoking. Here are some of the top-voted responses:
1."The cost of living and supporting myself on minimum wage."
"I just recently moved out five months ago, and I haven’t graduated college yet. I make enough to survive, but my meals are always a struggle. Whatever I can find that’s edible, I’m eating. I can’t buy in bulk, and I only spend money when I absolutely have to. I just barely get by."
2."Realizing the impermanence of everything you do."
"As a child, things seem truly permanent, but as you get older, everything you create has a shelf life to it, and will degrade. As a child, maybe you work with a parent to build a little tree house fort, and from your perspective, it will last forever. As an adult, you pay one or two months' income to replace your furnace, your car's transmission, etc., and realize that you'll just have to do this again in 10-20 years, because everything wears out. Then, there's the big impermanence issues — realizing that everything you do at work is a two- or four-year product/solution that will become garbage in the near future, or that no one will know a single thing about your life other than maybe your name in just a couple generations."
3."Figuring out what to make/eat for dinner every day of your life."
4."The unlearning of the lessons drilled into us as kids about fairness and equality."
5."Feeling pressured to have sex."
"I’m a virgin, not because of any religious/moral beliefs, but because I simply haven’t found the time and the right person to do it with. I don’t want to do something so intimate with someone if I can’t trust them and/or connect with them. Society’s way of talking about sex and including sex in media so often makes me, a 21-year-old woman, feel unnecessarily ashamed for not having done it yet. I have been shamed at by men for saying 'no' to their offers, and their 'small' gestures to lure me in don’t help either."
6."There's never enough time off. It's work, work, work almost the whole year with a couple of weeks where you can relax for a second and catch your breath."
7."Filing taxes."
"On top of paying for everything yourself, you also need to pay for simply existing in a society."
8."I really hate those moments where I get a reality check about my childhood/teenage years. Since becoming an adult, I’ve been noticing problems in my family I would have never been able to see with my childhood naivety."
"Also, a certain music scene used to be a big part of my life. I’ve been an adult for close to a decade now, and half of the people I admired turned out to be very sh*tty people — with some even convicted and stuff. Gives me a really bad feeling about what/who used to give me a feeling of belonging and comfort in my teenage years."
9."Chores. They take up so much time if you don’t want to live like you're in a pigpen."
10."Honestly, a big one is having to relearn a lot of things that I thought I’d never need in school when I was younger. Turns out, you do end up using a lot of it, just not in the ways you expected."
11."Dealing with other emotionally incompetent adults just pisses me off. Like, seriously, my kids are more mature than some of my colleagues."
12."Like…the kitchen is just always dirty. I clean and clean, and I look up, and the sink is full of dishes again. It never ends."
13."I think the toughest part is realizing that life can be absolutely brutal for no reason and out of nowhere."
"I think many of us were raised to believe that if we did things a certain way or achieved certain things, we’d have a level of protection against the worst life can throw. Like, working hard or getting a decent job or finding a good partner. And the next thing you know, boom, you’re in an accident and bedridden for months. Or boom, someone you love gets a terrible addiction. My sister had her first big 'boom' in her late 30s, and it almost destroyed her. I think she thought she had life figured out, and suddenly, her world got flip turned upside down. It’s brutal, and no one escapes, I don’t think."
14."Yard work. It’s the absolute worst."
"Why do we all have to have grass and plants in the front our house? It serves no purpose, but it just adds another layer of responsibility onto your life. You constantly mow/trim, hire someone else to do it, or you feel shame for being THAT HOUSE on the block. Can we all just agree it’s a waste of time and repurpose that front yard space for something else?"
15."Money. Money sucks, and I hate having to worry about it all the time."
16."It's frustrating how people expect you to have your sh*t together, even though we all know none of us truly have our sh*t together all the time."
17."No summers off. I would cut my salary in half for that."
18."Having the knowledge, but not the time, energy, or enthusiasm to learn all the cool stuff you always wanted to know how to do as a kid."
19."Knowing the fact that one day, you won't have your parents to help you anymore."
20."People/jobs expect you to not have a life outside of work."
21.And finally: "The next step seems so far away. There was always the next grade level, or next school (middle school, then high school, then college). The next graduation, the next step up. Suddenly, retirement is the next step, which is 40 years away."
What are some other things you don't like about adult life? Let us know in the comments below.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
