Is it obligatory to become a misanthrope aged 40?

[Daddster]

I am rapidly approaching the big four-zero and find myself agreeing with the adage that everything is shit.

Not only that, but most of my mates are turning the same way. Zesty and feisty young men who used used to laugh, party and do all kinds of abominable things with ne'er a rearward glance are becoming grumpy old buggers who don't get off their arse and do anything and have nothing good to say about anything either.

Funnily enough though I don't say "kids these days..." Most kids these days seem to be pretty well behaved, oddly enough, certainly on average they seem to be less naughty than I was.

I go down the pub and meet up with a bunch of guys a bit older than me and it does depress me that i may turn out that way.

They complain about the draft from the door, tut when someone shouts, want to play games in the pub, take the pub quiz far too seriously, and other assorted moments that make me feel like i am a bloody teenager or something.

I help them win every week when it comes to any popular culture questions - but they all just look at me like i have crawled out from under a rock when i declare "it's just a bit of fun though innit?"

I hope i never turn out that way.

Are you going to stay EricScrooge forever, then - did the wind change when you made your new nickname?

Ever felt like this?

40? I barely made it to 30.

Bloody kids playing music on their phones on the bus. Tourists walking slowly on Oxford St. Txtspk. Bah!

It's fun though, isn't it?

Well..at 47 , it is refreshing to know I have all of this grumpiness to look forwards to!!

But also...as 'youngsters' become more sophisticated than we ever were at their age, I can only guess they will become much grumpier much earlier in life than we ever did!!

My best mate will be forty this year, and is a Dad of two toddlers. He's as mad as a bag of spanners. However my brother-in-law who's 39 this year is quickly losing his spark. Up for nowt now, not saying we should be doing what we did in our twenties, but he can't get through his reluctance for doinging anything that isnt, well, nothing.

Still I've got a decade to go, hope I'm more like my mate than my brother-in-law, albeit without being mildly unhinged!

Yes.

Althoguh it happened to me at age 18.
I am horrid blunt sulky intolerant person.

I'm chatting to a guy i met thru a dating site and now he is on msn he seems to have all these traits he is 36 and doesn't half moan

DP is 23, he is like this now, he watches programmes on tv and gets really annoyed at the 'world today' but instead of turning the programme over seems to relish shouting at the TV

You want ot make your excuses Zippi!

Since when did being a middle-aged moaner make you a misanthrope though?

Moaning - okay.

Misanthropy - sad.

oh I ma just letting him talk to me as a friend he sounds so miserable...he is not on my potential partners list

he just can't understand why no one talks to him for long..he keeps getting blown out after a few messages

i talk to him because he wants to write creatively and from that point of view he is potentially interesting but he is a curmudgeon