When you were a kid, you probably dreamed of all the freedom you would have as an adult. But as you can imagine, adulthood has a TON of responsibilities your childhood self may not have considered.
A Reddit user recently asked: "What is an adult problem that you were not prepared for?" Fellow redditors had plenty of relatable problems — ranging from hilarious to eye-opening — that come with being an adult.
Here are some of the top-voted responses:
1. "How and when to quit a job, especially if you’ve spent your childhood not knowing how to interact with authority."
2. "Constantly feeling like I'm still a child trying to adapt to grown-up life. I always assume there are actual adults in charge of things, but I'm nearly 40, and I'm meant to be that adult. I feel like a kid in an aged shell."
3. "The devolving of friendships. Sending a once-a-year text asking, 'Hey! How are you? Haven’t heard from you in a while' and getting a generic 'Things are great! How about you?' response, then being obligated to say, 'Things are great here, too' because anything more than that is too much for them. I miss the days when my friends and I could talk for hours about seemingly any old random thing. I miss having real conversations. I miss being involved in people's lives and having them involved in mine."
4. "We don't get summer off. It's miserable."
5. "Holidays. When you're younger, Christmas is going to your cousin's house and opening gifts while getting off of school. As an adult, it's shopping, cooking, family drama, and being so exhausted that you just want it to end. And then, back to work the next day. I've grown to despise all holidays now."
6. "The skin on your feet and heels gets hard and dry and scaly. Suddenly you find yourself having to sand down your feet like a friggin' horse. Nobody prepared me for this."
7. "The grout in the shower will never get clean. Ever."
8. "The harrowing process of breaking old toxic habits you were raised to believe were good."
9. "The time suck that everything is. I was finally able to snag a PS5 — it got here Thursday night. I would love to play right now, but there's so much I have to do. Had to clean the house, including the balcony so we can get ready for the plants coming, had to rearrange the garage because we're just out of space, cook lunch, cook dinner. Tomorrow, I need to go shopping, do some laundry, and put together a new bureau. ... When I was a kid, I thought that adults had all the time in the world."
10. "How dirty my house can become so quickly. It feels like I'm constantly cleaning. I have a dog, but I live by myself and don't have kids."
11. "That you actually have to eat right and exercise if you don’t want to have health problems."
"And sometimes, even if you do everything right, a random life event can ruin that. I was in shape, fairly healthy, and keeping my chronic health issues more or less at bay by eating right and exercising. Then, the pandemic struck. Now I've got a new chronic health issue to manage, and one which makes exercise more difficult."
12. "Middle-aged acne. I thought we were done with that, but alas."
13. "The acceleration of time as you get older. The realization that youth really is wasted on the young."
14. "Deciding what to eat for the rest of my life. Brutal."
15. "Aches and pains. I thought that was for really old people (70+). Nope, not for a couple of decades yet, but I deal with pain every day."
16. "Deaths of people your age. When you're a kid, you basically view death as something that happens to old people. Maybe the occasional person your age or close in age. But as you get older, death hits harder because it becomes more relevant."
17. "Just the general monotony. I don't know how I motivate myself to go to work every day, no matter what."
18. "Maintaining a relationship with a significant other."
19. "How difficult it is to make new friends after 30 and definitely in your forties."
20. "Realizing that every problem I have is my own doing (mostly), and I have to work super hard to unlearn stuff that's holding me back."
21. "Being single as I enter middle age. I'd never imagined that I would still be single in my mid-thirties, but I'm apparently not attractive to the kinds of people I'm attracted to (which is perfectly fine; I'm not entitled to find romantic love), but as I look at reaching middle age and watch what my parents have gone through taking care of my grandparents, I'm beginning to realize that I'm probably not going to have anyone to take care of me at that age. That’s a tough reality."
22. "Raising kids. I thought I was prepared, but no one really is."
Which adult problems have you felt unprepared for? Let us know in the comments below!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.