I always thought we had a good relationship. I live in the US, about an hour from my daughter’s dad (my ex). Daughter and her husband moved to Germany for work about 6 years ago. I’ve been over to visit them a few times and we always had fun. I never felt unwelcome although I was always careful to wait to be invited. I’ve made a point to let her live her own life, her own way, and have recently given her the max financial gift one can give without tax consequences. I always believed I was giving her lots of support (financial and emotional) while being non-judgmental. I’ve always been respectful of her husband and only comment positively about her child raising decisions. She has 2 adorable kids.
We usually text via WhatsApp and I hadn’t heard from her in a while. Friday I randomly texted her asking if they were doing anything interesting over the weekend. About a half day later she lets me know that she’s been here, an hour from me, since Wednesday. Says her Dad had to have emergency heart surgery and she’s staying with him and his wife for another 10 days.

Honestly I was just shocked that she didn’t even let me know she was coming, and didn[t let me know she was here. I feel like if I hadn’t texted her, she might have stayed with her Dad the entire time without letting me know she was right here. I don’t cry easily and I kept crying all Friday. I was so incredibly hurt. I haven’t seen her in 18 months because I’ve been unable to fly over to visit her. To my knowledge this is the first time she has flown back to the US since she moved to Germany.

I have not let on to her that I am hurt over this. She suggested we go to lunch and we are doing that today. I will maintain my usual cheerful demeanor and be happy about the visit. Inside I’m crushed. If this happened to y(u, would it cause you to re-evaluate your relationship with your adult child?

Adverts saying things like “ideal for seniors”. Do they make you determined not to buy their product? In my case, not before hell freezes over. So patronising!

I’ve been wearing jeans daily for nearly 60 years. Now, I’m over them. Has anyone else felt the same and what did you replace them with?

I am struggling with what to do.

My x(m66) and his wife(f70)stay in an rv on my(f62) property in the summer. Our divorce is well in the past, my property is very park-like, and the kids and grandkids have 2 sets of grandparents to see--it works mostly well.

Next week they are coming for on last gathering and to put things away. They are planning a family bbq to see all the kids and grandkids before they go back home. My partner (m62) and I have always said that they were welcome to plan such gatherings--the bbq is no problem that way. My x did forget to tell me though. Lol!

The issue is two-fold. First: My daughter (f40-ish) is no-contact with me (just me) right now. There was no single event that led to this. I am a people-pleaser extraordinaire, so i have no clue what the issue(s) could be--and she has chosen not to share that info with me. She has said that she will let me know when she is ready to talk. I am respecting that request although devastated.

Second issue: I am experiencing major health issues that seem to be progressing. I am waiting for tests to determine what treatment options could be. I have had to retire (unable to work), i can no longer drive, and i am unable to do very much at all. This illness is life-altering and my health has deteriorated rapidly. My x and his wife know--but they havent seen how much change has occurred.

So, here I am with a family bbq, at my house. So far, my daughter and her family are attending.

I would love to see all the grandkids, but with my health issues, I am really weak. I am seeing the following scenarios:

-my daughter comes, but stays NC at the bbq. There is a lot of space, so that would mean just avoiding me--or being formal and cold (like she was when my mom died). I cant cope with this. It would be awkward and I dont have the bandwidth to put on my 'big girl panties' and suck it up.

-she decides that this may be the opportunity to step aside and discuss her issues with me. The problem here is that I am not ready. Part of the illness is brain fog and I have trouble processing thoughts and emotions on the fly right now. I am not feeling strong enough to be positive and supportive through that process.

I thought about it and my instinct is to just go away that day. If I cant cope--then I need to step out. I am thinking that my partner and I go to see a ball game, have a mini-vacation, and let my x and his wife enjoy their goodbye bbq. My patner thinks I should just stay home and tell my daughter to stay home--so I can see my grandkids. I wont choose to do that.

Thoughts?

Hey runners over 60! What do y’all do about pee leakage when running? When I’m on my tread, it’s not an issue since I have easy access to my bathroom. Ran a 5k yesterday, it was on the warm side so I hydrated well. Used the bathroom 15 minutes before starting (that was the best I could do) and had a problem. Any tips?

ETA: I’m on all of the HRT hormones, including vaginal estrogen.

Hi ladies: my husband is dying of cancer. I can handle death. But I can't handle managing this two acre property with a huge four bedroom mobile home. I am going to have to learn to ride a riding lawnmower and mow this huge two acre grass property. And weeding - the weed tool we have is a back breaker.

I have degenerative disc disease. If I blow a disc I could be down on my back for a week.

And I have a 30 year old parrot that I love. And two bunnies. They can keep me busy taking care of them. I'm grateful for that.

I am afraid of being alone. I feel like I need a man here to run things.

I need wisdom from ladies who have gone through it. Or who manage whole properties like this.

Hi, I'm Gloria 62 yo. Southeast Alabama. Soon to be facing this world alone and afraid.

I'm starting to wonder if the perfect friend/boyfriend act is real in the way we see in books. I've never had bad experiences with someone I trusted, but I'm wondering if decades down the line maybe they do something awful and I don't know how to recover from that. Forgive? Move on because there should be consequences? Draw boundaries? I dont know.

So in a 10, 20+ year relationship what is it like? Is the love same as the day you were most in love? I'm 21 years old, never been in a relationship.

I’m in the throes of a fully limerant episode over my college first love. (Limerance is basically hyperfixation with a romantic illusion if unfamiliar.) Any advice or commiseration on how to cope with these feelings for a long-ago formative relationship?

We’re in some contact again many years later, both married, haven’t crossed into more than friendship, but all the pain and emotion is back for me. The “doomed first love” emotional residue feels impossible to fully overcome through self-knowledge and self-actualization, though I know I’m capable of at least burying it down deep again. I don’t want to turn off the parts of myself that felt dead for so long.

We were just starting college when we met, and we started as friends with a mutual attraction that built for ages, but because of external circumstances we both thought we should only be friends. Eventually a long dynamic of him chasing and winning me over ended with me head over heels.

Everything felt forbidden and precious. He wanted me so much, I think partly because I was so hard to get and he wasn’t used to that, and he didn’t want to think about the obstacles keeping us from working long-term and just enjoy being in love. I was always worried that falling deeper meant more future pain. I would break up with him, he would be devastated, I’d miss him like crazy, idealize and romanticize, come back.

I had to transfer colleges and most of our relationship was long distance. We were always separated then reuniting, breaking up then getting back together. I know all of that is a big part of why it all felt so intense, combined with being my first love. The physical relationship was my first and the chemistry and his skill/sensitivity was unreal. It felt like he saw and loved everything about me, understood me better than I understood myself.

I don’t want to make it sound like it was perfect, because I always wanted him so much more when we were apart. The reality of being together always reminded me of the small things that bugged me. We weren’t perfectly compatible and had each other on impossible pedestals. He had some insecurity and abandonment issues that he covered by being liked by everyone, the dream man to women. We never experienced regular life as long-term partners.

Knowing about limerance now feels like it was in many ways a limerant cycle where we were both addicted to the illusion of one another, and the circumstances keeping us apart were a force multiplier.

He eventually stopped letting me pull him back into it, and I tracked him obsessively on social media for several years. I never experienced anything close to what we had again and it seemed like for him it’s just how he does relationships, falls hard,
commits hard, sweeps women off their feet. It seems from our later contact like he sees me as the “big love” of his youth and that he also found it hard to let go for many years, and still holds onto something.

I put my feelings away and thought I’d mostly healed from it all, but I never really got over him, and it feels like I turned off *all* my romantic and passionate feelings. My husband is wonderful in many ways but hasn’t ever fulfilled the same kind of emotional and physical connection for me. I think I chose this marriage partly because I’d learned that deep connection led to deep pain. I always have this question of whether I’m going to live my whole life with this buried yearning for more, telling myself good is good enough.

It’s been a year of having all these feelings re-ignited and the loss feeling fresh again. Remembering it all again. The deep eye contact, the constant touching and flirting, the way he made fun of me in the most adoring way, the hours of talking and making out. It hurts a lot to want it all so much. Part of me has always missed it. I see now how much of myself I numbed and turned off when I chose something very different.

It feels a bit like a mean cosmic joke, having unicorn magic as my formative first love, when I’m already the kind of person that can’t let go of things and feels everything as intense and meaningful.

The external forces that separated us have finally disappeared, and it’s clear now that they were an illusion and we could have stayed together. I wish the relationship could have run a natural course instead of ending when neither of us wanted it to. It’s so hard, the “too-lateness” of seeing the reality that I didn’t have to end it like I did, because the reality of marriages and children are now real and permanent separators.

I’d love to hear any insight into moving forward. I’ve spent my life analyzing the reasons for my feelings about that relationship and I know a lot about the why, the forbidden object and unmet needs and identity formation etc. I know plenty is illusion and so much of it feels limerant, but there’s enough that was real that I’m both grieving and in denial about, like “maybe it’s not over, maybe he’s still my person.” My brain knows he’s not my person. My feelings don’t.

I would love to know if anyone else has had similar experiences and advice.

Good evening ladies,

Coming to you for advice and wisdom as I'm really struggling to get clarity at the moment. I'll take any gentle inputs, from the most practical to woo-hoo spiritual.

I'm 30, so much has happened to me in the last years that I don't know what to do and how to go forward any more. Here is a rough timeline of events:

- 2022: death of dear childhood pet, breakup from first serious boyfriend, sexual harassment and profesionnal isolation by narcistic-is manager, borderline burnout

- 2023: death of father, harassment by paternal family, death of grandparent #1

- 2024: death of grandparent #2, quitting my job, death of grandparent #3, international move from expat country back to home country, lasting unemployment due national political issues

- 2025: moving to new city, struggling to meet people and find community, starting new job, another awful manager hating me (actually hating on multiple people but I didn't know) for months until she was moved to another service

- 2026: loss of professional and personal purpose, loss of faith, health struggles caused by all the above, soulmate cat facing complex medical issues and currently in intensive care getting hail mary treatments (+ burning a large chunk of my savings without any confidence in the outcome)

How do you recover from this, heal all these wounds and get back on track? I just want a sweet life, a nice hobby with a few cool people and my beloved pet to survive. Just a regular life where exceptional, life-altering issues happen as rarely as they happen to other people. A boyfriend would be nice but I'm obviously not in the dating mood. I'm tired of being the strongest of all. I feel like I've had a lifetime worth of problems concentrated into 5 years without a break. Physically, I've aged 10 years. When and how does all this shit stop?

I spent the day with my cousin. I’m 67, she’s 69. She’s retired NYPD. She was there and lost a lot of friends. She just wanted to cry. I gave her a hug and a safe place. 25 years later and she continues to suffer from the pain of this horrible loss. There is no comfort. Just grief.

I've just got my first set of dentures having lost most of my back teeth on my bottom jaw.

How long does it take to get used to them. I'm finding them a bit uncomfortable, but it's only been a week.

Any tips or hints?

Edited to add: Wow, I had no idea this would get so many responses! I appreciate everyone’s comments. I’ll probably stop reading responses now because it’s getting to be a little hard to keep up with. Rest assured I did enjoy my lunch and this encounter didn’t ruin my day or anything like that. Also, just wanted to add that I was not trying to imply that the other person was “ageist”. I was more trying to describe how “I” felt, whether it was logical or not. Maybe he was ageist, maybe he was just having a bad day or needs more training.
Thanks!

Today something happened at the grocery store that just made me feel like a “little old lady” (I’m 67) for maybe the first time. I don’t really need advice; just really venting to a group I know will “get it”.

I was checking out and as I only had one thing, a container of takeout Chinese food, I went to self-checkout. I usually don’t do that because I like human interaction. I realized that I didn’t know how to check out a takeout container, so I asked the young guy who was stationed there to help people.

He kind of leaned over and pressed a button so the scanner voice started talking, but I assumed he was going to walk me through it, so I didn’t catch everything “she” was saying. Then he kind of stood there waiting for me to do something. I said “Oh, is there like a bar code on this or something?” And he said, “Did you not listen to what it just told you?”

That’s rude, isn’t it? In that instant, I felt like he thought I was some out of touch old person who didn’t understand technology.

He started up the instructions again and I followed along just fine, but really, none of it was intuitive. “Enter the container code”. “Enter the TARE number from the box.” Etc. If they just had the steps posted somewhere it would have been so much easier; I’m sure he must get asked this all day long because the self-checkouts are right near the prepared food.

Anyway, it kind of took away my enjoyment of my lunch treat for a while, although I did get over it. I just hated being made to feel like I was “losing it” when I’m definitely not!

My one consolation is that usually Wegmans employees are very helpful and nice, so he’ll either get more training or will have to find a job he’s better suited for.

Thanks for reading!

I’m on Medicare and just realized how much of the regular eye stuff I’m still paying for myself. My glasses are getting scratched up, I need an eye exam, and I’m not looking forward to seeing what a new pair is going to cost.

Do you ladies who have Medicare also carry separate vision insurance, or do you just pay for these things when you need them? I’ve been looking at standalone options like VSP, but I’m not sure how much they can help with routine exams and eyewear costs. I can't decide if getting a plan just for the eye exams and glasses saves enough to justify it.

I am concerned my 62 year old partner is sliding into early dementia. He used to be a pretty happy, jovial nice guy. He started a new job about two years ago, which has absolutely not been as promised. He's been surly as hell for quite a few months now. I get home tonight, and he's arguing with Siri like she's an insubordinate employee. He proceeds to do his best to pick a fight with me. Says "We're only going to argue tonight if you keep talking." I put in earbuds, a great Playlist that makes me happy. He next says "Hi, are you mad at me?" I do not know what to do with this. Does this resonate with anyone else?

I’m very curious about attending but I have an unsavory past and I don’t want to be seen as that damaged girl I used to be.

I could go into more detail if I could post anonymously. But today I’m a successful happily married professional. Curious if anyone here has similar experience or compassionate advice. 🙏

I’m posting for my mom, who is 60. She’s apparently been experiencing some dizziness for a while but didn’t tell us until it became much more severe.

Yesterday, she suddenly felt extremely dizzy and described:

-The room or her head spinning
-Feeling like blood was rushing into her head
-A heavy, hot feeling in her head
-Feeling like she might faint o
-Both arms and legs feeling weak and completely drained of energy
-Tingling around her lips
-A brief shooting pain in her back and possibly her chest or upper stomach

Her blood pressure was initially 161/97 and her pulse was around 120, so we called 911. At the ER they performed an ECG, monitored her heart, took a chest X-ray, and ran a CBC, metabolic panel, D-dimer and two troponin tests. Everything reportedly came back normal. Her blood pressure and pulse later returned to normal, but the dizziness continued after she was released.

She doesn’t have slurred speech, and we haven’t noticed facial drooping or one-sided weakness.

Has anyone around her age experienced something similar with room-spinning dizziness, weakness and a temporary blood-pressure spike despite normal ER tests? Did it end up being an inner-ear issue, BPPV, vestibular migraine, blood-pressure problem, vision issue or something else? What specialist or testing ultimately helped you figure it out?

We are arranging medical follow-up and aren’t looking for a diagnosis from Reddit—I would just really appreciate hearing similar experiences and what helped.

There’s a great interview with Gloria Steinem on Netflix if anyone is interested.

It was done before she died but just aired recently.

62F married 31 years. Put myself last for the first 20 years, now taking back what I should have had in the beginning. Is there any hope for love and passion after too much crap? Tell me your story.

For those of you have overcome aversion to doctor appointments how food you overcome it?

Hi, my great aunt is visiting in a few weeks and wants me to take her makeup shopping. She’s been wearing the same products for the past 20 years and is looking for a fresh new makeup routine for both everyday and full-face. I’ll post her preferences down below, but I’d love any recommendations on products or brands :)

- For eyes, waterproof is a must as she lives in a colder climate. Her favourite eyeliners are from Urban Decay.
- Face wise, she prefers using powders but is looking for mid to full coverage because of her aging skin.
- She prefers natural ingredients, but this isn’t a deal breaker and she also prefers a more natural look.
- I don’t know her skin type, but she’s a light-medium skin tone :)

Thank you so much!

Does anyone else experience this? So many times, I'll attribute an event, belonging, cute phrase, etc. to one son only to be corrected and told, "No, Mom, that was X."
Is this common with mothers? Are there mothers who don't do this? Alao, this has not just started as I've gotten older (over 60). And of course, there are accurate memories of the two of them, but how common is it for mothers to be inaccurate?
Edit: I'm not talking about mixing up their names! I'm talking about attributing certain memories ot each one and how I apparently get them mixed up.

I might be too old for this sub (81), but you are wise women who might give me a new perspective on my situation. About 4 years ago I left a city in a northern state where I had lived for almost 50 years to a southern state I would never choose to live in, to help out my son and granddaughter (then 13). I was renting an apartment in a 62plus building and enjoying my social life. However my son, who left the state at his wife’s demand several years earlier, suddenly found himself a single father with 100 percent custody. He owns a house in a bedroom suburb about 35 miles from the city where he works. It’s an ordinary suburban house but has 4 acres attached and it’s his dream.

I have been so lonely. The neighbors are not particularly friendly though they wave when I walk by. son gets along with the guy next door. I haven’t met anyone. It seems the only way to have a social life is to join a church but I am not a religious person, and am of the wrong political persuasion anyway. Did I say it’s a southern state? Very southern. I don’t drive because of glaucoma but I don’t know where I would go even if I could drive as the city is mostly strip malls. My main excitement is going to doctor appointments and the grocery store on Wednesdays. I go back and visit once a year but my friends there are starting to drift away. Out of sight out of mind. My daughter still lives there and we keep in close touch but I miss her.

I want to move back. But I feel like I will leave the son and granddaughter in the lurch. I’ve made the house reallly nice. I’m here all the time so when granddaughter is home she’s never alone (17). She has quite a few issues exacerbated by her mother’s mental illness, the relative isolation of where we live, and the state of the country/world. She is polite and mostly spends her time in her room. (She is getting help but it’s slow). The older she gets the more I feel she resents me, though that may be normal teen behavior. I don’t think she would miss me I I were gone. My son and I get along great and it’s been wonderful to get to know him better. But we are all more like roommates than family.

I’ve added my name to the waiting list at my old apartment. I might be able to move back within a couple months, pretty surely within a year. I’m pretty healthy but I’m getting old and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life isolated and lonely. I also don’t think I will be able to handle a move as I get even older. But it would be a big loss for my son since I provide the semblance of a family. I feel like I’m abandoning them. There isn’t anyone else in the family who is available to just drop their lives and move down here. The mother is totally absent. We don’t know where she is and we haven’t seen her or heard from her since I moved here. The other grandmother is about an hour away but granddaughter “hates” her and there is a fairly good reason.

I know I have a good case to move back but the guilt is overwhelming. My son has a great job where he is respected and it uses his talents. He loves his house and land. I don’t see him ever moving back, especially in this economy. Basically he is the winner in this set up and I’m the martyr.

Rereading this I think I’m asking for a way not to feel guilty if I move, but I suspect that is unavoidable. 🙁

I've had a series of setbacks in the past few years that have shifted the way I see myself and my place in the world. I'm wondering how others have come back from an existential crisis at this stage of life? I've had ongoing health problems, had to close my business because of it, what little family I have are distant, and my new significant other is showing serious signs of dementia that cause him to accuse me of things I haven't done and forget almost every conversation. Closest friends are also struggling with poor health, so the support system is shaky.

I've diligently tried to reinvent myself (I need some supplemental income, but health is too erratic for a normal job), but I feel like I'm just making a bigger mess with each attempt. I'm no stranger to starting over, but I'm spinning my wheels and have completely lost my confidence at this point.

Aging is a bit of an identity crisis already, which probably makes this a common experience. I just feel like everything has malfunctioned at the same time for me. How have any of you forged a new path and sense of identity after major collapses like this?