Inside their quiet, confident exteriors, most men have big fears about aging that they’ll never voice.
Losing physicality
There’s a quiet satisfaction men derive from the feeling of being the strongest presence when they enter a room. But as you lose muscle and gain folds of skin, and your knees begin to creak, that subconscious feeling of strength leaves with you.
Studies have found that men feel a mild existential crisis when they know they can no longer rely on their bodies to protect them if they need to suddenly spring into action.
Feeling like you’re out of sand
In your youth, you can tell yourself that you have plenty of time to screw up and still end up with the great life you dreamed of.
As you age, you are faced with the brutal truth that the decisions you have made are what you got and you don’t have much time left to turn things around. Research reveals that men have an internal panic when they know their true potential has become their legacy.
Vanishing friendships
Men generally make friends through shared activities, such as work, sports, kids’ activities, and group outings, rather than through emotional conversations. Retirement and physical limitations cause these activity-based friendships to end, gradually ushering in solitude.
Studies on loneliness have found that older men are terrified of isolation. Their deepest fear is that after their spouse is gone, they’ll have no one left to speak with.
Becoming invisible
There’s a quiet respect earned by men who are active and contributing in the world. Many elderly men experience a sense of invisibility in public spaces.
They feel as if people stop to stare right through them, speak to them slowly as if they were children, and disregard their opinions before they’ve even given them. This finding is supported by social research, which indicates elderly men are stunned by how infrequently they’re treated with inherent respect.
Embarrassing their adult children
Young fathers fear failing to provide enough food for their children. Elderly men fear becoming a burden or embarrassment to their adult children.
They dread turning into those dads who tell the same stories over and over, miss social cues, or have their kids brush off their thoughts as out-of-date ramblings.
Family research highlights that men particularly dread the point when their grown children start speaking for them, steering their decisions, or viewing them as out-of-touch dependents.
Dwindling mental sharpness
Men become aware decades before retirement that their minds may not be as quick as they once were.
They fear sitting in meetings unable to grasp new concepts as quickly as others. Anxiety builds as they struggle to pick up new technology or accidentally forget a key name or simple instruction.
Research suggests that men often put in extra hours after dark to cover up subtle dips in mental sharpness from younger team members.
Death of the partner
Men typically feel they can only confide their most intimate thoughts and feelings to their wives or partners. As we age we begin to realize how scary that is.
Deep down, every man understands that his partner’s death would utterly crush him. He knows he doesn’t have the close friends or the emotional capacity to deal with that kind of intense loss.
Research in Gerontology found that the thought of outliving your partner scares men much more than it does women. This is likely because they feel as if they have no one else.
Failing in sudden crises
There is usually a silent mental image men have of themselves heroically handling an emergency in the home; be it confronting an intruder or reacting quickly in an automobile accident.
As men get older, their reflexes aren’t as sharp and they can’t move as quickly, sparking a growing worry that they’ll be useless when real trouble strikes. This is what psychologists term the “shattered protector complex.”
Economic valuelessness
For most men, their value is equated with how much money they can earn, how well they can pay bills and support those around them. As retirement approaches, men don’t just fear losing their savings, they fear becoming useless. Will they still be needed? What will they do if they no longer have to pay the bills?
Studies have found that once men lose their jobs and income, they fall into a serious depression. They hate the thought of living off their savings and not providing any new value.
Loss of everyday relevance
In addition to job titles, men often grow accustomed to being the person whom friends and family seek out for advice, fixing things, or help with day-to-day tasks.
But as technology advances and computer programs replace common sense know-how, men find that no one consults them anymore.
And this loss of practical utility creates a great void and they feel like all of the knowledge and experience they worked so hard to gain isn’t valuable to others.
Falling behind modern cultural language
The world moves quickly, and terminology surrounding technology, social norms and modern perspectives shifts daily.
Deep down, some older men dread saying the wrong thing, upsetting people, or getting pegged as a dinosaur because they haven’t stayed updated. And to avoid the possibility of public shame or an uncomfortable argument, they tend to withdraw from discussions and shut down.
Daily health betrayal
When you’re young, your body works for you. It complies with your every command, never uttering a complaint.
However, your body starts playing a cruel game of chance as you get older. One minute you might be in the thick of things, and the next, a sharp back pain, aching joints, or stomach trouble could bring everything to a halt.
According to studies, men really dislike the erratic nature of aging, which causes them to proceed through life with a noticeable timidity, fearing physical breakdown.
The protector becoming the protected
A man spends his life training to be the strong one. Most of his life, he’s spent taking care of others. If something is wrong in the family, they’ll come to him. He’ll do what needs to be done to make sure everyone is ok.
As he ages, things begin to change. Perhaps his daughter insists on driving him to an appointment or his son helps carry in a heavy bag of groceries. Little gestures like these can be frustrating to a man who prides himself on being able to do everything on his own.
Letting someone else take care of you after a life of taking care of others is difficult.
Leaving no lasting mark
When men approach the end of their lives, they start a quiet internal review of their worldly possessions and impact.
Men don’t always dread death because they worry about what glorious historical figure they’ll be remembered as; they dread that, maybe, just maybe, their years of hard work, sacrifices, and life story will be forgotten in just a couple of generations.
Men can feel a deep-seated anxiety about “unmarked impact,” the worry that their lives and efforts won’t leave any positive trace on the world.
Sources: Please see here for a complete listing of all sources that were consulted in the preparation of this article.
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11 regrets men aged 70 and over suffer from that nobody imagines
