To not like being around other people the older I get...

[Totallybannanas]

I’m approaching 45 and have noticed that my people-pleasing tendencies have faded. Lately, I find myself feeling more irritated by others and have little desire to be around people I don’t know. Today at the supermarket, my frustration kept building—I caught myself tutting and muttering under my breath. Between people blocking aisles with their trolleys, chatting in large groups so I couldn’t get to the shelves, and kids getting in the way, it was all just too much. The rising cost of food and frequent empty shelves only added to my annoyance.
I’ve even started avoiding my neighbors because I don’t have the patience for small talk and need a lot of alone time. Meeting up with friends and family feels more like an obligation than something I enjoy. I’ve always been introverted and made the effort, but now I just want to stay home, even spending time away from my husband. I genuinely enjoy my own space and just relaxing.
Can anyone else relate? I know I’m not perfect and probably irritate others too, but the irony is that I find most people inconsiderate, rude, and unpredictable! 😳

I do talk to people & am happy to see them, occasionally. But the majority, even family, irritate me to a point where I feel violent towards them. My meno was many years ago, perhaps I’m having a very long one,

Its not uncommon to be easily irritated and lacking in patience when you are peri/menopausal: I feel like this a fair bit. It’s pretty common.

But this fetishisation of misanthropy is really self indulgent and childish and I am really sick of it. I see so much of it on here and elsewhere, the endless threads about “introversion” the people celebrating their retreat into the family, the people who claim to “hate people” and the constant whining about the most minor social obligations.

I am really tired of people thinking their inability to manage hormone induced emotional imbalances or to properly cope with their anxiety makes them interesting.

You live in a society. You don’t have to be a professional extrovert or the life and soul. But your life will be far easier and smoother and ultimately more rewarding if you don’t go out of your way to piss people off.

Try living in a place where people really are hostile to you because you are different or because of poverty or instability for a bit. Or trying to extricate yourself from an abusive marriage where you aren’t allowed outside contact. Or just being chronically lonely and isolated. And then try moaning that you “hate people”. People who “hate people” should be careful of what they wish for.

Well said @Thepeopleversuswork ! The irony of the people who hate people being rude and nasty to the people they perceive as rude and nasty.

If you want friends OP, you're welcome to come and have tea with me and we can laugh about the inconsiderate people we come across. I mean, yesterday I was in the supermarket and there was this woman who would have been in her 50s who parked her trolley across every aisle, every time she stopped. Multiple people moved her trolley or asked her to move it. Yet she did it every time. You think she'd have worked it out after the first couple of times? I thought it was so weird and wondered if she was actually doing it on purpose. Maybe her revenge on the world.

Thank you! We may have been in the same supermarket 😂

I’ve just got to add that on hearing some people say using peri menopause and menopause as an excuse is not acceptable; well, unfortunately it is a scientific fact that the change in hormones affects your moods and an unfortunate side of it does mean you get irritated easily. Just because one woman isn’t affected in the same way as another doesn’t mean they can act holier than thou. Hormonal imbalances massively affect a person’s body and mind. I’m not sure if I’m in the peri meno stage at the moment but I know myself I can get awful PMT symptoms. I feel like an entirely different person at times.
Women are always shamed and made to feel guilty.

Oh bore off.

She's entitled to express her opinion. For what it's worth, I agree with what she said. Are you going to tell me to "bore off" as well?

Exactly this! I couldn't be bothered to argue with them as clearly they lucky enough to not be experiencing the effects hormonal changes!

Yes

I see you're incapable of constructive reasoned disagreement then. I'll "bore off" if I feel like it, not because you say so. 🙄

I recommend online shopping. Saves the huffing and puffing.

Also, when you are in your castles with a moat around them and the drawbridge up, remember Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa.

I am a little bit younger than you OP but I feel the same way. Very irritable at the moment.
I would go even further and say I just don’t trust people at all these days. I’ve been let down so badly by men and so called friends over the years that I find it difficult to know who I can trust!
It’s very sad. I used to be so warm and open hearted, used to really believe in true love and good friendships but the rose tinted specs have well and truly gone now

I teach people to drive, in order to do this with a modicum of pleasure and success I need to get on with people. There’s always something to like about someone, always, even if at first it doesn’t seem obvious or they are quite brittle in manner.

When we drive I try to point out the people who are being kind and courteous to us, rather than focus on the people who are being aggressive and rude. Through that we see that kindness really outweighs the unpleasant.

At the end of the day most people are vulnerable, we all just want to survive what are currently horribly stressful and uncertain times with as little unpleasantness as possible. I’m not sure going around tutting at people is helping you or other people. Maybe looking out for the good stuff is the way forward. It’ll make you feel better to try to have pleasant interactions.

I do think the way other people treat you is a reflection of what you’re sending out to the world. I am not feeling like you going around a supermarket.

How is it everyone on MN is always the polite one, and everybody else is rude and inconsiderate? Don't the rude ones ever post here?

Ok

Of course they do but most people are also lacking in self awareness

For once, just once, I want to see a post saying "I am a really annoying person and I annoy everybody around me. I know everybody else wants to move to a desert island and avoid me."

I'm the shame. I crave my own space. I find the world today so overwhelming and stressful.

I must have completely missed where the OP said this

How I'm dealing with this is joining groups with a focus on things I have an interest in. İt means that often like-minded people join, or if they're still not your cup of tea you're focused on the activity rather than them. And you're not wasting your time on activities or people that you don't care about. I think this is a time of life, where we go inwards more, and there's nothing wrong with that.
I also just allow myself to be direct. For example, a young guy in a shop at the weekend just inserted himself into my conversation with a (female) assistant. There was an issue, a mix up on their part, so it was a slightly difficult conversation but in no way heated. He repeated the same thing she'd said but in a different way, adding nothing to help the situation. I just said quite evenly, "I don't really understand what your point is. What exactly are you saying? " Would never have been that direct years ago. I find it helps relieve the annoyance when people are, actually, being annoying 😅

Yep the "introverts" and professional misanthropists have it right: they are always the enlightened ones, the ones who "tell it like it is" and live their rarefied lives without the hated sheeple who have the affrontery to smile at them at the bus stop or ask them how they are. What desperate, petty lives these smiley people must lead.

That normally lasts them for a bit before they have to rush onto Mumsnet or Reddit and tell another few hundred people how much they hate people and how they prefer to live without them and not to have communicate with anyone other than their husband... oh wait...

It's all utterly performative and attention seeking.

You sound like an excellent driving instructor! I had one about twelve years ago (only lasted a few lessons with her) who was a misanthrope whom I could feel bristling with irritation at other road users and who, as we drove around our area (she lived in the next village) kept saying ‘Oh, you can run him over if you like!’ if we passed a pedestrian. I laughed the first time. By the tenth time, I was thinking, I am in a car with a loon who hates the entire population of her village.

I can't bear people like your driving instructor. Very wearing, all that bristling.

I say this as a post menopausal woman who takes the Tube or a bus daily.

@bozzabollix

I teach people to drive, in order to do this with a modicum of pleasure and success I need to get on with people. There’s always something to like about someone, always, even if at first it doesn’t seem obvious or they are quite brittle in manner.

Exactly. This is exactly how I feel.

If I look back through my life there's always something to like about even the least "likeable" people. I've always found something, a glimmer of identification or warmth. You don't have to become their best friend or even a friend. You just have to be able to find some common ground.

Life is hard and stressful at the best of times and modern lives don't bring out the best in people. Of course its going to be hard when you're constantly rubbing up against people you wouldn't have chosen to spend time with, some of whom you will actively dislike.

But the beauty of being a human being is that there's always something in everyone, if you look for it. If you resolutely shut the door on people and retreat into your brittle and self-important little shell you're drastically reducing your own odds of getting anything out of people. It's such a self-defeating attitude.