To ask what's an adult problem that nobody prepared you for?

[Midge1978]

For me it's keeping the bathroom clean. I don't think I ever saw my mother clean hers but it was always immaculate and rosey smelling. I can't seem to keep on top of the mould monster in mine!

Agree with having to think about dinner (so dull) and assuming that work would be easy as I'd been good at school

Feeling a bit ground down by middle aged life and this thread has cheered me up!

Not feeling completely safe anymore. As a kid I knew that my parents could take care of all my problems. I felt like an adult when I realised for the first time that my dad cannot fix everything.
I did make him drive up to my house to get rid of a spider the other day though

As you get older, the constant fear of the people you love dying.

The fear of something awful happening to your child - she's four and I still wake every morning panicking that something has happened in the night.

Being a parent without your own parents around. It's heartbreaking when I think how much they would have enjoyed each other, if I'd only had her when I was younger. She never knew them, but still asks about them all the time, and was crying today because she "missed them"

How to deal with both parents passing away and organising funerals and emptying house etc. Realising I was now technically an orphan.
A miscarriage
Two cesareans, first was an emergency and very scary (sorry for spelling)
Almost dying when some supposedly straightforward surgery went wrong
Ending up with MH issues including PTSD, anxiety and stress.
Holding down a full time job and running a household whilst mind is more focused on all the other things mentioned.
Life at school was, as others have said, “you try hard and you do well and you get a good job and have a nice life”. Death and depression were not things I was aware of, or prepared for.

Another here for how boring it is.
Work eat sleep.

@EnglishRose13 YES!

73kittycat73 yeah my mum didn't teach me anything about grooming or hygiene, i got the biology talk but beyond that i was on my own. The bikini line pisses me off, i only do it if I'm in swimmers and try to stay tidy down there but utterly hate getting it done at the salon. I'm 35 and will never get used to a stranger touching and looking at my bits.. DH just goes with it and is pretty grateful for what he gets so thankfully no pressure there!

I'll echo the relentless admin. And dealing with all the physical crap that piles up in our house. Oh and how you think you've got it sorted by direct debiting everything and pre-ordering and then you need only one thing to go wrong and you're fucked.

Also realising that not everyone is trying to do the right thing and the world is full of arseholes..

I didn’t realise that being an adult is essentially just winging it.

I didn’t realise that the love you have for your dc is literally like nothing else.

Having grown up not believing that MH problems exist and that I simply had to pull myself together, my first breakdown hit me like a speeding bus.

I didn’t expect prenatal depression, nor having to be on suicide watch when pregnant with ds2.

I didn’t expect pregnancy to make me so physically and mentally ill, and that I’d still be puking just before labour

Your social life dropping off a cliff when everyone around you has babies, or is constantly “busy”

twounder1, I was there, in your shoes.
I wasn’t even fully aware of just how much I needed some help. Only when things started getting seriously wrong for me did I think: whoa, time to go and see someone.
The guy looked at me in sheer horror, I was simply listing what’s been going on: an extremely traumatic accidental death, divorce, moving town and buying a house in the space of 12 months. I was functioning ‘just fine’, it’s just that I became insomniac, I couldn’t sleep for more than 1-2 h. For a year.

I took the antidepressants and counselling route, for 6 months.

Two years on, I’m absolutely fine, love my life.

Do go and get some help, it’s ok.

Being a radiator...i still don't know how or why you even need to do it hmm At 27 I should know

Becoming a mother equating to, “thou shall be judged on everything you do from here on out”

The relentless need to earn money that's been going on since I was 20 and is still going on now I'm sixty.

One other thing: we grow up with a very distorted and wrong idea of what to expect from relationships/marriage. It’s seen as an end goal for some reason, the prince who sweeps you off your feet and makes everything perfect. The fairy tales forgot to mention the fights, the boundaries, the cups by the sink and learnt helplesness, there is no footnote on cocklodgers and financial and emotional abuse. They make sure we learn that there are EXPECTATIONS.
We’re being taught about wifework and shamed into it, as a prerequisite to a happy relationship.

I’d much rather been taught about independence, boundaries, finances, shared responsabilities.
Oh well, we live and learn!

That "Do what you love, the money will follow" isn't necessarily true.

Realising that you have a responsibility to younger people after you reach a certain age. In this internet age, the change can be bizzare considering how people don't reveal their ages on the internet.

How much you are alone when you are an adult and how much responsibility you really have.

8fencing, that sounds like your personal experience watching the adults around you interact. I saw the latter in my parents’ interactions.

That after being so overjoyed at 17 to pass my driving test and be able to go anywhere I wanted , that at 47 I'd be thinking "Can I just not drive anywhere for one fucking day ? "

That nothing you do or say is ever good enough, for yourself or those around you.

That you can try really hard but still fuck up and lose everything.

That keeping all your balls in the air - work, kids, relationships, marriage, money, health - can be an insurmountable task.

My life has turned to shit since I was 30. My health has failed, I lost primary custody of my beautiful ds and every day I am annoyed that I woke up. The only reason I'm here is that I couldn't put my loved ones through me killing myself.

Being an adult is just something I can't seem to get a handle on.

The hair, oh dear God the hair that sprouts from bloody everywhere that needs plucking, preening and at times deforestation.

The fact at 40 when I've had a shit nights sleep, which is at least 3 hours not long enough at any point, my face needs ironing.

That it takes twice as long, twice as much effort and half as much food to lose even half an lb these days.

That I'm the adult, I'm always looking for a grown up, but then realise it's me and we're all doomed.

Coat hangers in a pile.

I can't even...

Yes to being another product of schooling in the 90s who was taught next to nothing about actual careers or the world of work yet was told that I would get a good job in a great career because I got As in my exams. Yes to being another person who discovered a lot of it was about 'fitting in' and 'being in with the right people' and that being a socially anxious introvert would mean your first couple of jobs would really not go well...

Paddington I used to work in a coat hanger factory. A conveyor belt would come past me piled with a massive constant tangle of hangers....my job was to pick them up and insert them into "the hooker" to have their hooks put in. You'd have loved it!

From the constant CLACK CLACK din of the people picking up the hangers to the misery of those people working in the place....it was wonderful.