DD and boyfriend are wasting their lives

[FiddIedeedee]

DD 27 and her boyfriend (also 27) are proper home bodies. All they seem to do in their free time is go for country walks with their dogs, meals out or Sunday markets 😂

When I was in my 20s I was partying, clubbing and getting up to all sorts, I fear they are wasting their youth!

Last weekend they baked cookies and went on a long country walk with the dogs with a pub lunch. DD spends a lot of time reading and crocheting bits here and there. The boyfriend has started furniture restoration as a hobby. They’re like an old couple honestly!

DD got annoyed with me because I said to them they need to be out enjoying their 20s (and soon 30s) and not acting like a couple in their 60s. DP says leave them be but I just don’t want them to regret not living life to the full. You’re a long time old as they say.

AIBU?

You sound, insufferable to say the least. People in other cultures don’t exist to educate you or expand your mind. You can easily do things that better you as a person without the white saviour shit. For example, I’m determined to nail making the perfect sourdough. It teaches you patience!

OP’s daughter will be far better off eating healthily and taking long walks than she will be from clubbing.

OP, I just hope you wake up one day and realise how lucky you are to have a happy and healthy DD. She's got different priorities to you, that's all. FWIW I envy her lifestyle and I would have loved to have been doing the things she's done, when I was 27. I have never partied or been clubbing either and I never wanted to, your daughter's priorities sound perfect to me. We're all different - that's all.

Have you seen how much it costs nowadays to have the lifestyle you had?

Although I guess the dogs won't be cheap, how lovely they have a settled life they are both happy with. Sounds gloriously relaxing.

Moral Requirement to stretch ourselves ?

why?

look what we have done as a species ? Medicine good , nuclear weapons, climate change , bad. We get caught up in pushing things without thinking about the use for good or evil , without thinking about how to ensure only good

perhaps the moral responsibility is to live a quiet life doing as little damage as possible ? Being content rather than always wanting more ( more than a fair share )

( I ask this as a constantly learning , love new experiences sort of person so it’s not clear cut to me )

“When I was in my 20’s I was …”

Read that paragraph back. That alone is the one statement that always makes me despair when I read it, and you read and hear it spoken over SO many issues. And it is so, wrong.

That is what YOU did. Why should they think like you, do as you did, or dare to be different, notwithstanding they are a different generation and each generation changes in its habits? They are INDIVIDUALS, not yours to dictate to, which pleasures they should enjoy and which they should not-what a foolish thing to expect.

If they were taking cocaine or heroin together, I could understand your concern, but this, is just asking for them to distance themselves from you and hopefully it’s not too late.

How can it be a 'moral requirement' to stretch yourself? It's just personal choice whether you want to go travelling or climb a mountain or whatever. If anything, you could argue its more 'moral' to stay at home and not pollute the planet by using aeroplanes etc.

But also - going to the same destinations every white middle class person goes to, doing the same things and seeing the same sites does not stretch you

You sound, insufferable to say the least. People in other cultures don’t exist to educate you or expand your mind.

I am, indeed, insufferable. But not for this reason. I agree with this! Which is why I said literally the same thing.

It sounds like you're trying to relive your youth vicariously though your daughter. If she's happy then what business is it of yours?
Also have you seen the cost of living? If they're trying to save to buy a house then a walking holiday sounds a lot more sensible than going to travel (and if they do go they're probably more likely to visit museums, temples and churches rather than clubs!)

I agree with previous posters that travel in itself doesn't always lead to you stretching yourself. And you can damage the planet.

Perhaps the thing is the mentality you bring to your life, meditation through making sourdough and patience, finding the awe in the everyday.

The moral requirement is to live with intention and find meaning. That's a better framing, my original one wasn't as good.

There's people who travel who are learners and some who are showoffs, and there are people who stay home who are meditative learners and some who are boring dullards.

However, on balance, most of us learn something from coming into contact with different sorts of people and environments, though?? - unless you're an utter self-centred fuckwit?

The overall likelihood for most of us is that new experiences broaden the mind.

And if everyone, in every place in the world, has a broader mind, that's a good thing.

Sounds like you've not gotten to know and appreciate your DD for who she is as a person and you just want to live your life through her. Some people don't like partying. Some would prefer to go for long country walks, bake and crochet. Why don't you just love her for how she is instead of whinging that she's not more like you.

Anyone now singing the bluebells “whole of the moon”?

I think it was The Waterboys

Yes definitely the Waterboys.

I’d say you’ve got the wrong end of the stick…if they were clubbing and getting up to all sorts, I’d say they were wasting their lives away! They’re happy doing wholesome things, leading an stress-free simple life…applaud them! Not everyone who gets drunk at bars and clubs, doing recreational drugs, hungover etc is making the most of their lives 😆 what an odd perspective you have of what constitutes wasting their lives away!

Be happy they are safe in their beds every night.

this sounds like a you issue. Maybe you need more adventure in your life rather than try and live vicariously through them. Go and book that backpacking adventure if that’s what you want to do. Before you are too old to do it

Thank you @Coffeeishot@Fetchthevet

That's true, but there are more different people on our own doorstep than we know, I think.

There are some people who know a lot about the plight of famine victims overseas, but nothing about the little old lady 3 doors down who has dementia, no family to visit and can't always remember if she turned the oven off.

I think in our urge to get out and 'experience', we've lost community understanding. I'd far rather see young people spend a summer volunteering or working in their local communities than charging up Scafell or VSOing.

Because the truth is, there are different bubbles people can live in, and one of the most persistent ones seems to be the bubble which those with time and money surround themselves in their own bit of the world.

OP said she wanted her daughter to see the 'real' world. The real world is the neighbour battling with severe depression, the person begging in a dirty sleeping bag, the family caring for a loved one with severe disabilities.

I think if we want to push ourselves, we need to stop thinking that the 'real world' only exists in far flung places. Time and time again I have seen on here laments about the loss of the 'village' juxtaposed with remarks about not leaving your home town being a bad thing.

Right now, in these troubled times, I think it's just about the best thing we can do. We need to learn to work as communities again, to see what needs doing in our neighbourhoods and do it, rather than run away from it.

There are plenty of people with very different lives right here. Those people we could be helping who have travelled a long way in dangerous conditions, instead of complaining about their existence. Those people who also never left their home time town, but maybe are living with difficulties you or I have not experienced.

It's amazing what you'll find if you just walk up the road. And if you aren't the sort of person willing to do that, it doesn't matter how far you travel in miles.

Few people learn much about themselves or others by looking through the lens of a visitor who knows they can go home any time they like. Some rare individuals, like Bruce Parry, who live and work with threatened communities really do experience a different world, but your average British traveller, even if working, really doesn't, and seldom carry it with them when they return.

Those that stay and quietly support their community learn far more. But that's just my opinion.

Those are excellent points, @ObelixtheGaul .
👏

I sort of agree with this but I’m not sure that’s what these people are doing? They seem quite isolated - and as I said in my earlier comment - I would want to differentiate between a kind of co-dependent sense of safety and genuinely loving the simple pleasures.

I have no idea which end of the spectrum they are on but I feel like the op is trying to articulate something (albeit not particularly well) here about the former.

Yabu. There's more to life than partying even in your youth. I'm 30 and I haven't enjoyed clubbing or getting up to all sorts since I was 20. I'd much rather be living the life your daughters leading than the one you did. You remind me of my mum tbh so perhaps this is a generational thing as my mum's generation seems to be more into that thing whilst my generation seem to be more inclined to be home bodies.

I don't think they're "isolated". They're working, going out, having holidays.
I was expecting a tale of woe about someone never leaving their bedroom, vaping and smoking spliffs.

This was more in response to @CancelTheTableAlan than the OP, but point taken.

What's the point of this thread?

God knows. It’s such a weird thing for a mother to be dissing her own daughter and partner’s lifestyle choices because the mother thinks they’re just too darn wholesome for her liking.