For those males after 50yrs old

[Soya]

When i read the article, I feel like she is talking about me (i.e. no friends)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

BUT I am neither a dad nor am I 50

That's why u cum to MCF

 

Porker can lup u deeep deeep

[Inlinefour]

my friends in their 50s 60s one all love to fall in together go ex Starlight Cresendo wallaby etc

 

recent years they learning Viet Cong and CCP history...not boring at all

 

notice their platoon fall in personel strength getting bigger by trips 

 

so happy with their motto of "leave no uncle behind"

 

the only happy day was yesterday 

[mersaylee]

i resonate with that. I have few friends, but real ones....

 

At this stage of life, you want more peace to reflect on what really matters

Life is too short to be so serious...why waste precious time...

 

Just need to be true to yourself by standing naked in front of a full mirror and make a 360 turn around once in a while is enuf reflection liao lah. I’m sure you can handle the naked truth even when that piece of joy is shrinking year after year right?

[Scion]

If still have few friends still not so bad. Worst is you have zero friends. When you are old with zero friends, sometimes also quite sad. Cause no one to talk, no wonder you see some elderly people on the street always talk to themselves.

[Kb27]

I thought you'll find them :

1. pushing trolley and collecting cardboards for exercise

2. cleaning tables for exercise

3. driving PHV and taxis to pass time.

[Inlinefour]

used to have one or two friends like that... after married got children, die also won't meet for kopi or gathering

 

the usual excuses are always wife, kids, work

 

i always say.... if you can't even fork out 1 or 2 hours every year for a simple coffee or dinner, then dun bother come find us after your kids all grown up and you find yourself with zero friends

 

 

actually they wanna fall in but..........their OC refused to sign Time Off slip......thats why stupid excuses to save face

 

many of my friends are controlled by Home OC 100%

[Tianmo]

Keep your mind and body always at 49, and always behave like you are 49, and you dont have to worry about SMLJ  males after 50 yrs old, not your problem....    

 

oh boy, what is 50 yrs old, long way to go for me, I may even die before I reach 50 because I am forever 32....

 

Demon no need friends, no have friends, but friends with benefit are always welcome, just dont tell me to go buy a bed to get "a free one night stand".....    

[Soya]

i only have a few true friends...the rst died hahahahaha

Choi!....I dun know u hor

 

On a serious note, tho the article does hold some truths, I wouldn't look at it too negatively. It's simply a natural evolution of one's life thru the different stages of life

 

If all fails, we still hv MCF....

[1fast1]

Good thing for CAR forums, it's not so lonely hahaha

 

https://www.ricemedia.co/culture-life-singaporean-men-50s-non-existent-social-circles/

 

Why Do Singaporean Men in Their 50s Have Non-Existent Social Circles?

• Culture
• Life

5 Jul 2019

 

 

 

 

Photos: RICE/Zachary Tang

 

David Attenborough would have a field day with the male homo sapiens.

They may be a strange species, butâI will give them thisâthey are consistently fascinating across the board. From broader subspecies (Alpha Males, Ah Bengs, Christian Boys) to more niche ones, such as Men Who Blue-Tick Or Selectively Reply Your Texts But Continue To Watch All Your IG Stories, each one leaves me with more unanswered questions than watching a certain minister talk about POFMA with Michelle Chong.

But there is one subspecies I had never given much thought until now: Men In Their 50s Who Appear To Have Zero Friends.

This subspecies is typically middle-class with their own family. Their lives follow a familiar routine: after work, they go home, have dinner, and spend the rest of the night watching TV or videos on their phones. Rinse and repeatâevery day.

In their spare time or on weekends, they do grocery shopping at their neighbourhood NTUC FairPrice, sit at mall food courts scrolling their phones, or just ⦠I donât know ⦠exist?

If you are in your early to mid-20s, chances are you live with one such specimen in your own home: your dad.

 

A man in his 50s... Probably.

âAside from work and family, my dad doesnât seem to have friends. I think this is a thing, you know,â a colleague enthuses one day.

 

Letâs call her X. When I ask X to elaborate on her observation, she sends me a WhatsApp message thatâs essentially an 800-word essay (!!).

âI feel bad for him because my mom has quite a few friends, and so do my sister and I. When weâre not around, heâs kinda alone. Surely this will get worse when my sis and I eventually get married and move out,â she begins.

âAt his job, heâs the boss so he doesnât really socialise with his colleagues. He eats a lot of his meals alone. And if something bad happens at work or at home who can he talk to right? He complains a lot to my mom about work and life already, but I donât think itâs healthy to heap all of this onto one person. I donât quite comprehend how someone can go through life with family being their only support system.â

While Xâs dad doesnât hate socialising, he doesnât actively build or maintain strong friendships either, probably because âheâs not looking for anything long term, just some social interaction every now and thenâ.

Other friends reveal a similar pattern: their dads return home after work, then spend the evening with family and/or alone. Sometimes, they while away time by drifting in and out of their childrenâs rooms after dinner to make conversation, or park themselves on the corner of a couch watching Youtube.

If they have regular âhobbiesâ, theyâre mostly solitary ones, such as reading, exercising, taking walks, going to the museum, tending to potted plants, commenting on car forums, scrolling through Facebook, playing golf, and so on.

Outside work, their social interactions are usually limited to their children or wifeâs friends (although the latter is extremely rare). A few mention their dads âkeeping in touch with friendsâ via WhatsApp, but rarely see their dads actually spend time with said friends.

One friend says his dad attends the occasional school reunion, but otherwise doesnât have friends whom he meets often.

Their dadsâ reasons for a relatively solitary lifestyle include âno timeâ, âno reason to [hang out with friends]â, âprefer spending time at homeâ, or simply that they just prefer life this way.

 

A man in his 50s? Could be.

Almost everyone intuitively understands how the exact demographic in question operates, but itâs trickier to pinpoint the root of the phenomena. And as a Single Female Millennial, I am the furthest possible subspecies from Men In Their 50s.

 

But I get it.

For starters, itâs common knowledge that friendships tend to dwindle significantly once you become a parent, and this is no oneâs fault. Parenting is simply the most life-changing and all-consuming job in the world.

When youâre not changing diapers, youâre thinking of the next time you have to change diapers. Or find a Good School for your child to attend. Or deal with conflicting in-law parenting techniques.

Or basically just ensure your kid doesnât die on your watch.

Thus most parents would be familiar with the inevitable gravitation towards their child becoming the fulcrum upon which their universe hinges. This unconscious decision usually entails solely focusing on work outside of family, so they can provide for said family, and often results in the culling of many âfrivolous pursuitsâ.

Drinking with your buddies till 1 AM: No go. Sleeping in till 11 AM on weekends and spending the rest of the day in bed poring over Netflix: Not anymore. Spontaneously arranging to meet a friend in town for brunch just a few hours before: Are you shitting me? Absolutely not.

Life becomes a succession of precise and predictable plans. With âadventureâ nuked from a parentâs vocabulary, every routine is meant to minimise any chance of mess ups, which might be a mere headache for regular folk but could actually cause a ruptured blood vessel for parents.

Apparently though, this âafflictionâ doesnât quite befall their female counterparts (i.e. Women/Moms In Their 50s). Perhaps women, in general, appear to more readily engage in idle gossip and chit-chat, therefore giving themselves more opportunities to socialise with new friends or acquaintances in their later years.

The same friends whose dads have little/no friends report their moms being more likely to turn colleagues into friends, develop interests and hobbies that grant them access to a whole new community, or become friends with other moms.

So they donât worry as much about what their moms would do or how theyâd occupy their time after retirement.

 

A man in his 50s. Or 60s? Sorry uncle, I can't tell.

Dads In Their 50s, however, grew up in a time when men were usually the sole breadwinner in the family. They were taught to prioritise putting in hard work and doing everything to provide for their families. As a result, friendships were seen as secondary to their mental and emotional wellbeing.

 

If there was time to cultivate thriving friendships, that was simply a bonus. Friendships were never a necessity for a âgood lifeâ.

And so, in their early/mid-30s to 50s, Dads In Their 50s gave up friendships to raise us.

Unfortunately, these years are crucial for building sustainable lifelong adult friendships, which are already tedious to maintain even if one were single.

Once their children are grown adults, Dads In Their 50s realise they no longer have the social circles they used to have in their 20s. At this stage, their friends are either married and/or with their own families, or theyâve stayed single and led a starkly different life that it would be near impossible to reunite based on common interests.

Unless they were intentional enough to rekindle friendships or court new friends, Dads In Their 50s can hardly make âfriendsâ who arenât other Dads In Their 50s.

That said, fading friendships have been a thing since time immemorial, and seem to plague Men Of All Ages. As it is, a male friend once mentioned feeling like heâd lost all his friends after becoming a parent. He now struggles to bridge the chasm between his old life and his present reality as a parent.

Though no man is an island, many eventually learn to be self-reliant, although not reclusive.

 

A man on his 50s. I mean, who knows anymore, really?

Many of us are eons away from retirement, so the prospect of how or with whom weâre going to spend our old age might be a mere abstraction. But, if our Dads In Their 50s are anything to go by, those of us who plan to get married and start families should pay heed to the seemingly inevitable death of our social circles.

 

Even though pop culture rarely accords as much weight to friendships as romantic relationships, the significance of having close friends throughout life cannot be understated. After all, it is only healthy to have our own priorities that arenât tied to familial obligations.

If we donât want to turn out like Men In Their 50s Who Appear To Have Zero Friends, then cultivating friendships should be an intentional and lifelong endeavour.

But therein lies another issue: while our concerns that our Dads In Their 50s donât get lonely in old age stem from a good place, we might also unwittingly be perpetuating the idea that solitude or being alone is a âbad thingâ, and that extroversion or socialisation is the ânormâ.

There seem to be few people who are as comfortable taking walks alone, eating alone, going shopping alone, travelling alone, spending time alone, as Men In Their 50s Who Appear To Have Zero Friends. It might often be an inadvertent consequence of marriage and starting a family, but letâs not presume they arenât perfectly content.

It is often said that all you need is one person. Men In Their 50s Who Appear To Have Zero Friends remind us this person should, first and foremost, be ourselves.

 

 

I LOL at this one hahaha...sounds like @davidtch

 

If they have regular âhobbiesâ, theyâre mostly solitary ones, such as reading, exercising, taking walks, going to the museum, tending to potted plants, commenting on car forums, scrolling through Facebook, playing golf, and so on.

Outside work, their social interactions are usually limited to their children or wifeâs friends (although the latter is extremely rare). A few mention their dads âkeeping in touch with friendsâ via WhatsApp, but rarely see their dads actually spend time with said friends.

One friend says his dad attends the occasional school reunion, but o

That writeup describes me to a tee. And one doesn't need to be fifty plus. I'm in my mid 40s, and I've already been this way for many years. I don't even do social media (other than this forum, and I'm not sure that counts - but I don't often do meetups anymore), and I actively try to avoid prolonged whatsapp group membership. I quit pretty much all of them already. And I get irritated with contacts who keep sending me inane rubbish.

 

And there's nothing wrong with being this way. No sense in being social if it drains more than replenishes one.

used to have one or two friends like that... after married got children, die also won't meet for kopi or gathering

 

the usual excuses are always wife, kids, work

 

i always say.... if you can't even fork out 1 or 2 hours every year for a simple coffee or dinner, then dun bother come find us after your kids all grown up and you find yourself with zero friends

 

"No time" is often just an excuse. Some people just don't value social contact as much as others do. Nothing wrong with that. It's the height of arrogance to think that one is so wonderful that it's a slight on one's person if another doesn't want to hang out with them. Don't hold your breath for them to come crawling back after "empty nest" either - solitude (maybe barring one's immediate family, but some don't even need or desire that) is good at any age.

 

Edited July 8, 2019 by Turboflat4

[Tianmo]

i only have a few true friends...the rst died hahahahaha

 

 

you mean true friends as in human?  yah I think not too many human friends you have left...    

[1fast1]

Eh.

 

What's wrong? I have few friends (count on both hands), non-social hobbies (reading+computer gaming) but I don't see anything wrong with that.

 

Knowing more people just adds unnecessary drama to life.

 

 

It's okay as long as you didn't kill them.

Couldn't agree more. And it's ok even if you had to kill a few friends.

 

I kid, I kid.

 

[1fast1]

One quick question: how many people here are not only comfortable with going to see a movie alone, but actually prefer it? Or: same question, but applied to eating out? 

 

If you are one of these rare folk, congrats, you are a fellow true loner and a kindred spirit.

 

We must never meet sometime.

Edited July 8, 2019 by Turboflat4

[Evillusion]

One quick question: how many people here are not only comfortable with going to see a movie alone, but actually prefer it? Or: same question, but applied to eating out?

 

If you are one of these rare folk, congrats, you are a fellow true loner and a kindred spirit.

 

We must never meet sometime.

[1fast1]

err.....watch movie alone? Got bring umbrella anot?ððð

Umbrella? Why?

[Tianmo]

One quick question: how many people here are not only comfortable with going to see a movie alone, but actually prefer it? Or: same question, but applied to eating out? 

 

If you are one of these rare folk, congrats, you are a fellow true loner and a kindred spirit.

 

We must never meet sometime.

Edited July 8, 2019 by Tianmo

[Atrecord]

That writeup describes me to a tee. And one doesn't need to be fifty plus. I'm in my mid 40s, and I've already been this way for many years. I don't even do social media (other than this forum, and I'm not sure that counts - but I don't often do meetups anymore), and I actively try to avoid prolong whatsapp group membership. I quit pretty much all of them already. And I get irritated with contacts who keep sending me inane rubbish.

 

And there's nothing wrong with being this way. No sense in being social if it drains more than replenishes one.

"No time" is often just an excuse. Some people just don't value social contact as much as others do. Nothing wrong with that. It's the height of arrogance to think that one is so wonderful that it's a slight on one's person if another doesn't want to hang out with them. Don't hold your breath for them to come crawling back after "empty nest" either - solitude (maybe barring one's immediate family, but some don't even need or desire that) is good at any age.

 

 

WLE... you also arrh?

i read halfway, already say jialat liao... why so matching... and i'm right on going to be 伍零高手 this year...

 

Not say no friends lah, but friends my age, at one point when got married and have children, all stopped appearing...

 

I used to play soccer every Sat with a group of school mates, then one by one got married around 30, and hardly see them after that. At least these few years sometimes reappeared, but at this age, heck also bo energy to after work already... esp if next morning need to do school runs...

 

better start to join more MCF activities and make friends liao...

[1fast1]

Me!!!

 

I can even golf alone, and prefer to go on a road trip by myself...

Golf alone, you can make up any score you want. Tiger Woods also can jaw drop.

[Evillusion]

Umbrella? Why?

oh....back in the late 80s or early 90s when RA movie was first allowed many uncles were known to go alone to watch ra movies bringing umbrella.....was reported in the newspaper...