To want to become a partial recluse - or is that odd ?

[awobabaobob]

Background: I'm 51, married, 3 teen DC, WFH full time.

I'm not agoraphobic (that I know of). Since lockdown, I enjoy and appreciate more and more time at home. I don't want to go out out - although I don't know if that's because I have put on weight/feel down/have realised that I'm starting to lose my looks/have anxiety looming over me for something else going on in my life right now which is longer term problem and a huge worry.

WIBU to want to just stay a home as much as I can ? I get food shopping delivered anyway. and always have done. I am not into clothes shopping and prefer to order on line. Lately, I find too many people too much eg. busy supermarkets and people dithering/walking so slow in the shop why they try to decide what to buy & people getting in my way annoy me. Lots of traffic on the road which makes me angry/cross/annoyed at taking soooo long to go anywhere & a 10 min journey turns into 30 mins. Queuing makes me annoyed. Shops being out of stock of what I want/need and my journey through the traffic and the busy shop has just been a waste of time. I just get soo frustrated with it all . Some examples:

Go to the shop during in advertised opening hours, to find the shop closed for lunch. There were no closed hours advertised in the day. Due to my own time constraints that day, I couldn't wait/go back for the shop when it re-opened. Journey to the shop was a waste of time.

Go to supermarket and join queue to pay. Told the queue is closing. I move to a different checkout, The one I was queuing at then re-opens and everyone at the back of my queue - who had only just joined my queue to pay - joins it.

Go to cash machine. 3 people in the queue - sigh - my turn and the machine has run out of cash. Other people in front of me have got cash out. Waste of time queuing.

Go to shop and pay using self-service checkout. It turns out that someone had already scanned 4 items at the check out I was using and then walked off/abandoned their shopping (but the shopping had been cleared away by the staff, although the till had not been cleared). I pay without realising, Notice the bill is £££. Check the receipt. Spot the error and then it takes another 20mins to refund/sort.

It's just all tooooo much

I think this is the menopause?

The less you go out the less you'll want to.

Yes tech has made some bits of life more hassle. But think of the things that are easier now. It's a balance.

If you are grumpy and irritable over every little thing get your hormones checked.

My MIL was a bit like you, she only needed her children and my FIL. She was really happy with her life.

Then her children left home and moved hundreds of miles away and then my FIL died suddenly and relatively young. She is now retired with very few friends, has no local network or hobbies, and has retired. She has lost a lot of confidence and by her own admission is incredibly lonely. It’s really sad to see as she is a lovely person.

DH and I have sworn to try and keep involved in our local community as much as we can, even when it feels like too much, because we want to avoid being in that situation.

Feel like this completely. It's nice to have our own world's just as we want them and not have to justify it to anyone 🙂

Yabu we are social creatures by nature.

Exactly, lots of nice things you can do out of the house

But not everyone is , who is it being unreasonable to ?

You are menopausal Op.

Absolutely! I think I was actually always like this but somewhere along the way forgot I was an introvert.

I'm very selective who I spend time with and how long. I spend as much time as I can out and about walking in the woods. I only go shopping when it is quiet for for very short bursts (i.e. one shop) if it's busy. I also do online or click and collect. I also mainly shop in Waitrose because I'm happier to pay a bit more as there are generally far fewer idiots and screaming children.

You just have to work out what suits you and engineer your life to accommodate that.

I do everything online if I can Saturday is my hibernation day in the winter at least no parcels delivered no doing the bin we have a bin room here. Oodies slipper socks and I love it. Sunday is church and wash day. Other days I’ll say hi coffee mornings etc.

I’m 51 and feel the same way. I wonder if it’s a peri menopause symptom 🤔
I wear the same 3 outfits on rotation because I can’t be bothered going shopping.
I don’t go out for coffee as I’ve got coffee at home, so why pay a fortune for someone else’s.
I don’t like wondering if there will be enough parking if I go somewhere.
‘I want to be home by tea time so I can have a bath/shower by 7pm and get in my Jim jams. I love getting in bed at 10pm and reading.

Before even reading other replies I too was thinking this is menopause related. All of the examples you list are highly irritating but not a reason to become reclusive. I’d hazard a guess wfh full time is also causing this- them
more you stay in the more you want to.

There’s no shame in living your life the way you want to but I’d say there’s probably a number of reasons you feel this way, hormones, effect of wfh etc.

Excellent post.

I'm a huge introvert but in the long term nearly everyone needs a social and emotional connection. My grandad ended up alone, leaving the house once a week to shop, not knowing anyone in his town. I think it's worth pushing yourself a bit to do things that are meaningful. By all means do your shopping online. You're unlikely to make a new friend buying broccoli or pants.

Whilst hormones can affect how we feel about things - are all those immediately jumping on the menopause wagon extroverts? Curious!
some of us are just naturally introverted and life is sometimes just too full of dealing with frankly twaty people. I can’t blame menopause as that was 30 years ago! But I have run out of ‘fucks to give’ as I’ve aged for dealing with irritating situations and people. Advances in technology etc allows us introverts to rebalance our lives to accommodate our natural wish to avoid too much ‘peopling’. Sometimes it simply is down to peoples character traits and nothing more. Extroverts seem to be looking for excuses why not everyone wishes to live their life like them.
It is fine to want to exercise alone rather than in a crowded gym, shop online rather than on the high street, stay at home on a weekend rather than join the throngs at a theme park/pub/garden center etc etc.
there are places for extroverts, let us introverts have ours too!!

I buy practically every single thing online.

Food
Clothes
Kindle
Craft Stuff

l never use cash points as l never use cash as it’s all paid for online.

The only shop l ever go to are DIY shops because you have to look for stuff. That’s bearable.

Problems solved.

Avoiding shopping and seeing people you don’t like- great.

Never leaving the house at all or having any interactions with other people- likely to damage your mental and physical health pdq.

In your shoes I’d be onto the GP to talk about mental health or possible menopause.

I’d rather never go out again.

I’m peopled out. I’ve worked with the general public for 35 years and nice ones are now few and far between. I go to work, I come home and I’m happiest inside. I avoid all the work outings and parties and feel cold terror when a seldom seen friend messages to arrange a meet up. If I won the lotto so I could give up work I would just stay home pottering in my garden, going for walks and sitting reading a book.

Me too.
I’m retired, as is DH, and apart from walking DDog, meeting friends once a week at a group and a couple of fortnightly/monthly events I don’t go anywhere.
I haven’t been into a nearby city for 3 years now (I used to go at least once a week), or the nearest town more than 6 times this year.
I can’t remember the last time I went to a big supermarket to food shop, and I don’t miss it one bit.
Crowds make me uneasy and slightly panicky too.

This with bells on. It’s not the menopause - it is just what happens to some people when they get older.

There’s a big difference between doing things alone and never leaving your house.

Yes and no.

I can relate to this in as much as I have become much fussier about my social interactions, no longer feel the need to do things out of FOMO and cherish my down time with my child and partner. That's inevitable for people with busy lives and jobs who are trying to fit too much in, and there's nothing wrong with saying no to stuff you'd only doing for the sake of it.

On the other hand, I think shrinking your world too much is something you do at your own peril. I've read literally thousands of posts on here during and after the pandemic from people celebrating the fact that they basically no longer interact with anyone outside of their "little family". While I can see how this has come about I think its a dangerous tendency and not one we should be celebrating or encouraging.

Yes if you're run ragged with work and kids the tendency to shut anyone out apart from your "little family" is seductive. But longer term it's a fool's errand to assume that these people can sustain you indefinitely.

You see so many posts from women in late middle age whose marriages have failed or whose partners have died or whose kids have flown the nest who suddenly wake up and realise they have literally no one to talk to or to support them. They are lonely, bored and frightened.

I do think its important to keep your hand in a bit, to maintain a network with a few close friends outside your family and just to play a part in life generally. Partly as insurance against the above. But also because its important to have outside perspective and other interests other than your husband and kids. The more your social circle shrinks, the more your world shrinks. I don't think its a terribly healthy way to live.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I am an extrovert and so love a bit of interacting. But I also read a lot of history, and really until the industrial revolution, a lot of people did live in much smaller rural communities and a lot more women had lives mostly lived in the home. That was awful when they were FORCED to live like that, but probably was lovely for some people.

I love books like Lark Rise to Candleford (the non-fiction memoir, not the fictionalised tv show!). She demonstrated that lots of women lived their whole lives in tiny hamlets with small and presumably close-knit communities of those in the hamlet around them. Hell on Earth for some people I’m sure, but maybe a kind of lifestyle that would delightful for some!

Isolation - bad, especially if it spirals into lonely old age. Calm, peaceful ‘small circle’ lives not filled with mental noise and overstimulation - nothing wrong with that!

Your comments are me to a tee, it's the menopause. Your change of viewpoint on many things including the irritability with everything, you are menopausal whether you acknowledge that or not is down to you.

Absolutely agree.I’ve been an introvert most of my life but had to “fake it to make it”in the working world.I’m married and have two adult children.I’m lucky enough to have been retired for 11yrs and last year when my husband retired we moved out of a town to a tiny hamlet in the countryside,I am surrounded by fields and I love it.I cycle round the lanes and walk in the woods.on my own.My husband on the other hand is more sociable and belongs to a few groups,so we are both very happy doing our own thing.

I definitely feel the irritation you describe and the frustrating situations you encounter are connected to the menopause. I'm a bit older and only just beginning to feel less irritated by everything and everyone. Looking forward to the gentler, benign happiness and appreciation of small things that many older people seem to find.

Really should proofread before posting. I meant to say 'I feel THAT the irritation you feel etc is connected to the menopause. '