I'm married to an old fart

[ApplesAndCucumbers]

Please feel free to share stories about your own SO so I don't feel like I'm the only one. We are in our late 30s, lately DH is giving me some serious grandfather vibes. On a Friday night he makes an announcement it's late and we need to go to bed despite the fact we have nowhere to be and nothing to do on a Saturday. When he is home from work TV in on full blast and mostly news channels. I'm getting regular weather forecast bulletins now. Random moaning and groaning. When I say something in my normal voice he can't hear me and says I need to speak louder. Then he gets offended and defensive when I suggest he should get his hearing checked. Suddenly he is wearing joggers and purchased an ankle support thingy. We have young children and I'm planning a family holiday for us, starting to wonder if self catering accommodation and couple of excursions will be too much for an old man to handle.

I go to bed when I want to not when DH wants to.

IDK I see my dh has changed with age. He falls asleep during any film. Never wants to go out. Hobbles when he gets out of the chair. He wasn't like this in his twenties. I do belive in the science of ageing and don't see that as ageism. If you was 95 and someone said you be dead in 20 years.is that ageism or reality I wonder? Like saying you can leave having a baby until your fifties and a woman as "age is no barrier" I'm sure it's not. But science tends to disagree. No one gets healthier past 80 IRL. Only on MN. I feel 18 still. My ovaries tend to disagree and I'm.the odd one out who actually have wrinkles and the odd grey hair I didn't at 18 years old. I'm sure my arteries have more build up too. My eyesight is certainly fucked and I wonder it's got worse as I get older? Just very bad luck 🙄

I’m a bit surprised at replies stating hearing loss isn’t age related. Obviously sometimes it isn’t, and I would never make light of significant hearing loss, especially when profound and in children and younger people, but of course there is age related hearing loss. Not as common as presbyopia but hearing starts to decline from about 50-55 and nearly half of people over 60 have loss of some degree, 80% have some loss by 70. It’s so gradual most people don’t notice at first. I’m 56, have significant loss and have been wearing hearings aids for about 2 years. Know we know there’s a link to Alzheimer’s and use of hearing aids may reduce this it’s important to be aware of this.

Nobody called you old farts. OP called her DP an old fart because he's acting older than he is. If he's acting older than you are, that merely reinforces her point.

Nothing wrong with joggers? Plenty of young people wear them.
just tell him youll decide when to go to bed, youll have to go out & make your own fun by the sounds of it.

I am the old fart in this house...

@isitmyturnyes my DH has started getting allergic to rain and won’t go up high on a walk if it’s a little bit breezy. We are talking the local hill, not the Matterhorn.

I have meningitis related (significant) hearing loss. I use very good aids and I miss little now apart from when in a crowded place like a restaurant where there's a group, or other loud gatherings. I don't bother anymore with TV but use bluetooth in the aids to listen to audiobooks, radio, watch Youtube Netflix and anything else I can!

Let me tell you that it's very easy to tune out the world when I take the aids out. I could live in a total world of my own and now and again I do that for total silence. But I can see that if I got into that habit, my world would become much smaller and cognitive impairment would be the inevitable result. I'm 68 and deaf since 23.

Hearing loss often IS an age thing. Several family members have needed hearing aids once in their late 60s/early 70s. Never needed them before.

"hearing starts to decline from about 50-55 "

No, it declines from teen years. They can hear frequencies the rest of us can't.
It may be after 50 that it becomes more of a noticeable problem with having to repeat things or turn the TV up.

This is the thing about subtitles on the TV; we need them because people mumble ~ but then it's 'received wisdom' that old people always say that people mumble when really they just need a hearing aid. I have found that I don't need subtitles when David Attenborough or Patrick Stewart are speaking. Watching Star Trek I don't need them at all. Have a bit of patience for your poor husbands ~ people mumble!

Someone once explained to me how helicopters work. I was mesmerised.

Sounds like my 72 yr old dad! But my dad goes to bed late.

There’s rain and there’s rain. If it’s bouncing off the ground in a heavy downpour I’m staying put unless I have to go out (work). I’m not trudging around in the rain by choice.

Oh come on - you're in your THIRTIES!!! This is ridiculous. Why have you nothing to do on a Friday night or Saturday morning? It needs to be either late nights or early morning engagements, not both or you'll burn out but not neither or you'll give up on life. If the party nights are behind you get into fitness and set yourselves some challenges. You're settling and you're not even halfway through.

OP, you haven't been back. Maybe you remember Mumsnet when it had a sense of humour and would gently take the piss?
If so, then yes, I can relate. Mines been dead for a few years now, but while I was abseiling down the side of a quarry Inn Cumbria, he was watching footie on the the telly.
While u was backpacking around Thailand, he was popping to the local and ordering fish and chips online.
Difference was, we acknowledged the different needs and cracked on.
There is no right and wrong, you do you and encourage him to be himself. Connect regularly' - go for a meal, the cinema, a lovely walk, rampant sex. Then go your own ways.
I was married for forty years before I lost him, and spent, in the region, 30 of those years doing things together, 10 going solo.
But 40 years of happiness 🙂

Some people are creatures of habit regardless of age. We may well be able to be spontaneous and exciting while young because youth bounces back and young people have energy to spare.

By mid 30s it gets harder to work against the grain. The penalty for being spontaneous and exciting, if it’s not in your nature, gets harder to put up with!

It does get more noticeable with age, as recovery takes longer. Things like eating late, irregular hours, change of diet, just get harder to tolerate.

For those that have kept with the gist of this thread, it’s really funny!

My old fart won’t upgrade his IPhone so has series back in the day, the last small one and as a result BBC weather constantly crashes. Keeps thrusting it at me while the cursor spins! What am I supposed to do?

When the sun shines in the morning he says “nice sunny day”.

Constantly asking me to record on Netflix and iplayer. I am laughing as I write this.

As for the hearing aids, he makes jerky body movements, with his fingers pointing to both ears when he can’t hear me.

I love him dearly and I am so glad he is married to me because I don’t know how he would cope with our me. I actually call him my miserable old git! Which makes him laugh and take a look at himself for a minute.

It's fine to gently poke fun at them. The kids now adults and married do. In fact I'm told by their wives at home now they can be grumpy old gits themselves. What happened to my sunny, happy little boys that they turned into their dad. Is it marriage, children?