Lack of independence in some adults

[Violaviolin]

I am always amazed that some adults seem completely incapable of independence. The last week or so has shown up so many things.

1. A friend saying her husband puts petrol in the car for her as she 'wouldn't know what to do.' She's been driving for over 10 years.

1. A different friend saying there's 'no way she could fly by herself.' She's 36.

1. Friends/family constantly having to check what partners are doing before agreeing to meet (not a childcare situation).

1. Colleagues saying they can't drive to x and asking for a lift (miles out of my way) despite the fact they can drive and have a car. I'm nervous driving in cities but you just have to get on with it don't you.

1. People who say they couldn't live by themselves.

AIBU that too many people lack independence?

PrehistoricGarbageTruck · Today 12:10

Well y'know some of us aren't raging feminists with a point to prove, we're just doing our best to get by in life.

I don't think you need to be a 'raging feminist' to want to be competent as a adult. I don't want to do women down, but (I'm sure due to cultural conditioning) it is often women who find excuses to duck out of doing certain things, and I include myself in that (changing the oil and checking tyres etc).

I can't sympathise with the young woman mentioned by a pp who wouldn't/couldn't get her act together for independent travel - train or car - for her job. That's just not acceptable if you're an adult in a job where it's necessary.

Slightly off topic, but linked, having read some of the responses here: one school I worked in asked for staff to 'go along and support' Y10 girls who were scheduled to have injections that day. I asked what sort of support was needed, assuming the students in question had some disability or condition which required it and was told 'oh, no - all the girls - they are in tears and some are hysterical'. These were 15 year-old girls - I'd have been much more sympathetic had they been 5! Talking to other staff members it seems the girls had simply been conditioned to think that it was 'feminine' and 'cute' to make a drama about such a routine thing (and my God, injections now are NOTHING like they were when I was that age!! You hardly know they've touched you). Apparently, they got a lot of attention from the boys by weeping so ostentatiously.

This is how it starts!

I love flying alone and enjoyed living alone. I wouldn't drive in a city though. I hate driving in new places and cities are too stressful. I'd have to find a way by public transport instead.

Thank you!

Yes, I've been thinking this all through this thread. What is the big deal about taking bins out?

@Naunet ok 🙃

I’d love it if my partner put fuel in my car, I find it the most tedious chore ever. But I also fill up 4 times a week so I doubt he’d be overjoyed by the idea 😆

Never fully understood the driving in new places thing, each to their own. I’ll happily drive anywhere (hence the 4 tanks a week) but if people would rather not go somewhere or get five trains it doesn’t make much difference to my life.

I’m assuming it’s taking the bin bag from the kitchen bin and taking it outside and depositing it in the black bin? Or the recycling from wherever you keep your recycling into the recycling bin? Rather than just moving the bin to the road on bin day.

Because yes that’s not my favourite job. The bin bag can be heavy and smell and I have to lift it to shoulder height (where I notice the smell and weight more) to put into the black bin. Sometimes I find the food waste bin really quite revolting.

I do take the bins out personally but I don’t mock women that have decided to divide up household chores and opted out of this one. There are other jobs I’ve opted out of (eg mowing the lawn, though weeding I do) because I simply don’t want to do them. And so what? I doubt there is any able bodied woman that couldn’t take the bins out were she unexpectedly widowed, but if she gets out of a job she hates for a few more decades then this is nothing to do with the rest of us? Why would I care?

I’m late 30s and finding myself agreeing with all points. I’m pretty ashamed about how bad I’ve got, actually.

I have lived alone when younger but hated it. When my husband isn’t here now, I can’t sleep. I feel my mental health declining when he goes away for long stretches for work. My anxiety starts going up. If I had to do it again though I would get on with it.

I barely drive anymore. It stresses me out too much. I’ve been like this for as long as I remember. I avoid driving to the point I feel like a prisoner in my own home sometimes.

I have never flown alone and can’t imagine coping well with it. But if I had to, I would. As long as I could ask people what I needed to do and where I needed to go.

i used to do petrol fine but haven’t for years cus we barely use our car and when it needs petrol my husband takes it and fill it up in an evening when it’s quiet (local station gets v busy) this is just something he’s always done.

I do have pretty bad anxiety and am planning to talk to the doctor about it as it’s getting worse. I often wonder if I’m already perimenopausal.

In fact, somebody just knocked on my door to try and sell me new doors and windows - it was five minutes ago and I’m still feeling jittery about it. I should forget about it but my brain is replaying the convo. I feel like I’ve let the guy down. He looked let down. should I have said something else etc etc. Yet really, he was quite pushy and wouldn’t let me end the convo, was intruding on my afternoon, made my dog bark and nearly woke my sleeping toddler.

I really don't have any time or patience for those who daren't drive in a new place, or daren't travel alone, or are too nervous to be alone in their house overnight. I guess they must have reasons for this behaviour but I refuse to enable them {glares hard at MIL}. It's my private opinion that living like this is only living half a life.

I think it's more the attitude of independence. If I'm faced with something I'm not sure about I will just look up how to do it. Some people will ask for help first. If something scares me I will avoid it for a bit but I feel like I have to overcome it or go without. I don't think it's always a strength. At all.

Never fully understood the driving in new places thing

I'm not very keen on driving to or in places I don't know @SquashPenguin , I'll try to explain my thinking. I get nervous about getting lost, I don't have a great sense of direction in a car and if I don't know the town I find it hard to re-orientate myself. I also get worried that because I'm hesitant and/or trying to read road signs I am delaying others and causing them to lose patience with me. I don't get any enjoyment from driving as an activity (which I know lots of people do), so for me it's all about a means of getting somewhere and if that goes wrong, it causes me stress. That said, I still do it because my desire to see friends/go to a gig/watch the DCs play sport etc overrides my fear of driving to new places.

Also on the flip side, I am ultra confident on trains or the London tube, for example. I've lived within an hour's journey of London most of my life and have been travelling there on my own since my early teens. I have no nerves whatsoever about having to change train or tube lines numerous times. I am also perfectly happy flying on my own and have done so for both work and pleasure.

So I'm not a nervous traveller per se, I just don't much enjoy driving. Does that help?

The poster already said they/their dp wheels it out so no idea where your sarky 'does it take itself to the kerb' comes from
As for the rest - everywhere in the UK recycles differently, lots of places don't have 4 bins or need sorting. In my house we have recycling/food/normal and people put the item in the right bin as they go along, so there's no 'job' of sorting them needing doing. full bin liner comes out of indoor bin and into outdoor bin. New bin liner in indoor bin. Repeat for food bin. Recycling just goes straight out in the liner.

Once collection has taken place I move the 2 outdoor bins back about half a foot to where they are kept.
Whole process takes 3 mins max once a fortnight.
And no, I've never cleaned my outside bins!

I agree with @coldmarchmorn - "Bins" are barely a chore, if they are they are the easiest one going! People who let men get away with that as one of 'their' jobs and think it in anyway is equivalent to cooking or cleaning several times a day have screwed themselves over!

The thing about driving anxiety is that avoidance only feeds into and makes it so much worse. When I started driving 14 years ago, I absolutely hated it and would have done anything to avoid it. I was anxious, shaky, scared but I knew I wanted to be able to drive to see my parents whenever I wanted (300 mile round trip mostly on motorway) and the only way I could do it was to force myself to do it! And everytime I did it, it got a little easier and now I fly up and down the motorway with confidence.

For people who are scared of motorways, try doing a few trips at 6am at weekends when the road is quieter. Stay in the left hand lane and use Google maps if you’re afraid of getting lost. It gets easier, honestly..

My mother doesn’t drive as she’s too anxious and my sister will only drive within a 5km radius of her house so I’ve seen how their lives are restricted and how they rely on others for lifts. It’s not great.

Last year, I took my teenage DD to New York for a few days. We had the most amazing time, it was fabulous. I was telling my friend about it and she said she’d be too scared to travel to New York without her husband.. 🙄

👏

Yes, it’s pathetic to not be able to do simple things like filling up a car alone. It’s also dangerous.

People who aren’t good, competent, confident drivers shouldn’t be on the road, end of story.

YANBU It's ridiculous.

I met someone (a school mum) the other day who won’t talk to people she “doesn’t know”, won’t walk her dog alone, won’t go anywhere alone in the dark, besides the fact she’s pathetic, I feel sorry for her really as in my eyes she’s not behaving like an adult. More like a teenager still living at home. I suppose a lot of people never evolve beyond that mentality.

If your bin is so big that it's heavy, if your bin is so big that it's taken so long to get full that it's smelly, if you need to lift it to shoulder height..... you need a smaller bin in your kitchen!

I never in my life have seen anyone lift a bin bag up to shoulder high. Is it some industrial giant bin liner? 😅

Oh for God's sake the utterly predictable "the very worst crime is judging other people even in the abstract"

It isn't.

I won’t change a tyre because I don’t trust myself to do it properly and it would be a danger to me and to other drivers. Last time I called the AA out to do it the guy congratulated me on being sensible.

I’ll do pretty much anything else but I’m being kinder to myself than I used to be. I’m visiting a friend a four hour drive away soon. I don’t want to drive y myself so I’m taking the train.

Exactly. And as you say in the next post, the things men decide they’re incapable of (like operating a dishwasher, somehow a mystery to some men who are still able to do complex responsible paid work), work to their advantage. The things women believe they can’t do are limiting.
This bollocks doesn’t happen in our household so my kids haven’t grown up believing women can’t do manly jobs like changing car wheels or fixing bikes, and men have to be looked after by women because the Y chromosome prevents them being able to cook or clean the toilet.

Op a lot seems to irritate you about your friends!

That’s sensible of you (the tyre) but it’s because you don’t know how to do it properly, not because you’re female. I’m happy to do it and have done it quite a few times. I got my first car when I was a teenager waaay back, learned to do basic car maintenance because I couldn’t afford to take it to the garage all the time, and was taught to change wheels properly by car mechanics who were family friends. But I also like to be independent.

it’s because you don’t know how to do it properly

No, I know exactly how to do it, it’s because I don’t trust myself to do it properly. It’s different. I also have arthritis in my hands and I sometimes can’t even open a jar, let alone tighten screws on a wheel!

I left home when I was 15 and had no support from family so I've had no choice but to be independent from a young age. I'm also single so I have to do 100% of everything all the time. To be honest I'm completely fed up and exhausted by it all, and envy friends who have parents or partners to do stuff for them. I would LOVE to get a lift somewhere instead of having to drive myself, especially when it's something stressful like a hospital appointment. If I don't know how to do something then I have to get on and learn how to do it otherwise it won't happen. If I ever meet somebody decent maybe I will turn into one of these helpless people, it sounds very appealing right now