When did you really feel like an adult?

[TheRedGoose]

For me it was when I learned as a teenager and young adult to stay away from people and situations that cause constant drama. I see it on here all the time with people talking about new partners or friends who bring a heap of trouble with them. It made me feel like I had truly grown up when I was able to identify this and just go no way do I want to be part of this.

What about you?

This is going to sound mental, given what I used to do for a living 🫠🫠🫣😂😂 but a lot of the time? I still don’t feel like a “proper adult” and I’m a married, 30 year old, mother of 3 😂
I do all the normal adult things, but I still look at people older than me and think they are the “proper adults”.

52 and still waiting to feel like a real proper grown up 😬

I'm 38 and I don't feel like an adult

Mid 40s and still feel like a fraud tbh

The first time I flew from one part of the UK to another for work. And walked out of the airport and into the hire car office where my work had arranged a hire car for me. A fast mondeo. (it was 2000 😂)

And I didn't blink at the absurdity of it aged 22.

When I was 16 went to work full time and had my own money. Left home etc

I’m 57, married mother of three, I still don’t feel like a grown up.

How can you be married with kids and not feel like a grown up?
Is this some cutesy girly thing?

Being the person dealing with the death of family members.
I'm in my 50s, have kids and grandkids, but I feel like up until that point I was just blagging it.

I would say when I realised my parents were flawed. Doing their best yes. But perfect and all-knowing no.

No, it’s more a feeling like you’re winging it 24/7 thing.

The adult-adults as I call them!

Well now I need to know what you used to do for a living!

Right? 😂

I mean, those people are probably no different to me, in that they also feel like they a sliding through life by the seat of their pants……they just appear to really have their shit together on the surface 😂

But everyone is winging it. Being an adult is realising that.

I joined the army at 16, fresh out of secondary school.
Spent a few years doing that. A job that you’d think is a very “adult” environment, doing very “adult” things…..and it definitely was.
But I still don’t feel like a proper grown-up most of the time 🫠😂

When I had to clean out a drain for the first time😅See also first time draining the washing machine

Probably when my dad died. Due to circumstances at the time I was with Dad. I had to tell my mother and my siblings. I had to then go into "helping mum and siblings mode" and get into death admin.

But I've regressed to being non-adultlike except at the times I need to like for my children, work etc....

People have said I appear to have my shit together. I really do not. I just come from a generation where we did not tell everyone about our fuck ups and anxieties and just got on with it.
None of us know what we are doing. We all do the best we can. If you are holding down a job, feeding your kids every day and sending them to school reasonably clean, and keeping your house looking okayish, then you are holding it together as a responsible adult. Lots of adults can not achieve this.

Since my father died and I found myself looking after both my own children and my disabled mother. I am 53.

Same here. Not a cutesy, girly thing for me, I just didn’t. However, going to Costco for some reason felt more grown up to me than having kids, buying a property, promotions etc, even though I know those other things are more grown up.

Losing my mum suddenly - that was horrifically grown up, as was trying to comfort my gran (her mum).

Yeah, but the question that was asked in the OP was “When did you really feel like an adult?”…….
And lots of us are doing all those things you describe but have still never had a real “eureka!” moment where we’ve thought “I feel like a proper adult now” 🤷🏻‍♀️

I’m doing all the adult things, but there’s a weird bit in the back of my brain that still feels like I’m 18, and I’m waiting for a proper adult to come in and take the reigns.
Then there’s the odd moments that pop up occasionally that make me think “omg I’m old” - like when a song comes on the radio and it’s introduced with the year it came out, and I can remember being at school or in my dad’s car when I heard it for the first time.
Maybe it’s not that I don’t feel like a “proper adult”…..maybe I’m just in denial about aging 🫠🫠😂😂😂😂

But that's acting like an adult which IMVHO is completely different to feeling like one. I'm almost 60 and I've never felt like an adult...what does being an adult "feel" like anyway?

Arranging a funeral. That makes you grow up PDQ.

I’m 52 have three adult daughters and one grandchild. Still wonder how on earth it all happened 🤣 Facing the menopause and having some medical issues around it has brought it to my attention but I still sometimes feel lost and want to be told the right things to do. Sorting out my estranged father’s funeral last year was another thing. Realising I’m the next generation. But yeah still winging it as my name suggests 🤣