I've come to realise I'm slowly drawing away from society

[Allfurandnowhiskers]

I'm F age 51. DH & late teen DC
These days Im happy just pottering at home. I could spend the whole weekend at home, only leaving the house to go running (alone) or pop to the shop (which i dread as I don't want to be around crowds/people/busy places .. I find it all too overwhelming and triggering. Im literally in & out the shop as quick as, I only go for top up items). I recently went to London for the day at the weekend .. OMG ... there were so many people out there doing stuff .. this is alien to me as im usually at home, in the quiet, hone comforts, peace.
I don't feel like i'm missing out. I am not agoraphobic . I don't want to do things like theatre/shopping days/city days out/arts/galleries.
I'm happy to go away - uk or abroad - but the rest of the time I'm just happy at home .. I'll bake.. or read .. or do home diy projects.. or pop to a quiet country pub near my village.

Anyone else resonate?

They’re not ‘searching’ for anything. They are simply enjoying themselves in ways they know they like!

Mostly agree. I think I get out more than you, but it’s for hiking, NT, gardens etc, where I can mooch about undisturbed. I used to live day trips to London etc but not a chance now. I absolutely love being at home. I’m just conscious to do things that keep my brain alive, not just sit about aimlessly.

I'm exactly the same. A few years older, ds at university, ex left a long time ago.

I am perfectly happy with the occasional pub quiz, running, reading, cooking, gardening, DIY. I run ParkRun and see my friends but haven't been to London in more than two years.

We have a small theatre, a sports club that is quiet during the week, a little jazz club. I just don't enjoy huge crowds anymore.

Exactly! As above I would consider myself an introvert but find the superiority of some others as annoying as the opposite. Preferring company to being alone doesn't mean extroverts are constantly searching for external stimulation or are devoid of inner satisfaction. They can be perfectly happy in themselves but gain energy from social interaction.

Also not entirely sure why people are even bringing introverted/extroverted into what OP is asking, which is more about experiences and lifestyle. You can be an introvert and enjoy travelling, culture, sightseeing etc, or can be an extrovert and never want to leave your home town, because that's where all the people you interact with live.

Yeah I think OP is just talking about staying in and being alone, with no external cultural/societal input, forever.

It does strike me that what she's describing is exactly how the tech bros want us to be - asocial, inert and intellectually isolated.

As a PO says, keep an eye on it.

My mother was always an introverted potterer but it really intensified as she got older. Markedly after retirement, dramatically after the pandemic, and exponentially after her partner died.

Once nobody needed her on a daily basis, she left the house less and less. She began to put off going to the shops. She couldn’t tolerate being in a restaurant or café as everything was too noisy and crowded and she needed to rest for a day afterwards. She’d always been a homebody, but she began to really dread spending time with anyone, even her dearest friends, and would fret for weeks about someone coming round to service the boiler.

Somewhere in her late 60s she told me there wasn’t really anything she enjoyed anymore apart from staying home watching Netflix. She said that with her DC grown and her partner gone, she was pretty much done and hoped she didn’t live too much longer. She died at 77.

What began with liking the comforts of home deepened into reclusiveness and immense anxiety once she didn’t have to go out and do things for anyone else.

Make sure you’re doing some of these things for you, so you’re in the habit once DC grow up.

Absolutely resonates. I'm late fifties, don't have agoraphobia, I just like being at home or in quiet places after working f/t during the week and constantly'on'. I still go to my night class and socialise with my close friends and really love being at home. My brain and body crave quietness nowadays.

I can count on the fingers of my hands how many times I've left the house in several years and that was largely for medical stuff. I'm carer for my bedbound DH.

Didn't choose a small life, actively stay in touch with friends and it's reciprocated and perfectly able to go out when I can, because that is me and I refuse to lose my personality through circumstances. Really love my own company, always have, but engaging with a wider world is healthy.

As far as other people go, they have been stalwart for me and I've really tried for them. They understand. There may well be the day when you really need someone and they won't be there, unless you put the effort in.

What's your daily life look like then?

I think it’s important to be careful not to make one’s life too small when you retire. My sister has done this, retired at sixty, stopped going on holiday, then stopped trips out, stopped going to the gym (that she loved), gradually dropped all her friends and now just stays home. She’s early seventies and is just slipping away mentally.

I’m not ‘searching’ for anything, I do the things I do because I enjoy them!

Quite- there’s a big difference between being an introvert and a recluse/ misanthrope.

Why do you have to be surrounded by people to have a fulfilling life? I sometimes worry I’ll never have time to read all of the books I want for example - culture and a well-rounded life can be more solitary.

Personally I find most people too loud, too selfish, too self absorbed and have had numerous experiences and trips out ruined by them. I do travel and enjoy different experiences but I’m happiest in my smaller world.

I’m 50 and very comfortable pottering at home. It’s definitely become my happy place. But I do try to break it up by consciously booking in social stuff fairly regularly.

The world can become a very small place as you get older if you don’t get out and engage. I see it in the older folk around me. Those who get out and about, see people, engage with the world, are healthier and seem younger.

I’m an introvert but having a few quality friendships means a lot to me, I don’t think you have to be out all the time but I do think having some social contact outside of those in your own home is good for the soul. I’m in my 40’s but decided to become a parent in my late 30’s and I’m a natural homebody. Being forced out of my comfort zone with child related social commitments has been good for me to be honest.

I think it's natural - you've been parenting a fair while, there's a lot of responsibility. Once the nest is empty there'll be a bit more bandwidth.

I have friends who i see regularly. I go to local places with my friends. More going to friends houses for drinks.

I'm a home body/home town person

The younger me had huge fomo and was out every weekend night clubbing.

I'm loving a much more quieter scene/pace these days.

What do you think these people are searching for?

Do you expect them to eventually realise that they are better off staying in all the time?

It doesn't sound healthy to me.
Why is a shop 'triggering'? What does it trigger?
The problem is that the more you avoid people and places, the worse it will get.

it’s the norm.

Only in western society are you and your kids meant to go at 1000 miles an hour spending tons along the way. Splurge thousands on Christmas and eat until you can’t breathe anymore, buy tons of landfill to gift, buy lots of decorations, go out shopping every weekend spending tons and eating out feeding grease and sugar to your kids, do every day after school activities every day, both work full time, each have a fcking therapist, all develop adhd, endlessly have parcels turning up and leaving the house, buy as big a house as you can afford, lease expensive cars, consume shitloads of e-content and have a huge cinema sized tv as the centre of your house always on relentlessly pumping out needless info and showing stupid screaming people to kids so they pick this up, get a cleaner too as you’re hardly in anyway, buy buy buy do do do consume consume consume, become more and more depressed and detached and emotionally withdrawn and lonely and hardly see your little kids, complete with your husband, buy sugary cake like hot chocolates whilst you’re already spending money shopping in town, pay to pay and enter a so called Christmas landfill market and take your little kids to loud ample crowded firework displays where you can buy more liquid cake with marshmallows so any remnants of anyone’s sanity are undermined even more as it draws closer to midnight and its work and school the next day….

argh. You aren’t wrong. Exhausting and so backwards. other parts of the world don’t live like this, at all. It’s normal to be home and not spend any money and not have your eyes hurting from a screen.

Looking forward to all the replies telling me I don’t have to buy hot chocolate.

"it’s the norm."

Being triggered by a shop is not the norm!

Well, that certainly looked like a ‘triggered’ response..😃🙄

It certainly isn’t ’the norm’ in any society, anywhere on the planet, to live as a shut-in who never leaves the house.

On the other hand, no one has you at gunpoint to own a tv or a house of a certain size, go to Christmas markets, have a lot of parcels coming and going , or lease a car. I don’t own a car, I walk, cycle or use public transport, I have a modest tv that lives in a cupboard, I can’t remember last time I went shopping for something other than groceries or school trousers for DS.

And tbh, you sound like you might benefit from a good therapist.

I think 'triggered' has become a much overused word that now has little meaning.

It’s important to do what makes you happy in life and not what you think you ought to be doing. Just because others are out and about and very busy, it doesn’t mean you have to be.

Personally, I hate staying home and I fill my life with all the things you mentioned - socialising with friends, theatre, museums & galleries, gigs etc. As The Smiths once said, I want to see people and I want to see life. This ‘fills my cup’, so to speak. 😊

What about the OP's post made you think she's inert and intellectually isolated?

She sounds busy with stimulating things at home - her family, reading, projects, cooking.

There's a brilliant old quote - “We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon instead of enjoying the roses blooming outside our windows today”

Seems like OP is enjoying her roses to me.