r/OlderThanYouThinkIAm

Just want to vent about how much looking younger sucks, like does this shit ever get better? This affects literally every area of my life. The disrespect is everywhere, all the time, even if people don't explicitly say anything, it's the way they look at me. Even though I'm 29, I'm short, weigh 90lbs and have a baby face so I'm basically fucked. Everywhere I go, people think I'm a teenager. I do get it, I can hardly blame people for assuming I'm 16 because I do look that age, but what I can't excuse is the outright disrespect, discrimination and infantilisation of a grown adult.

If I want to shop in a store, I need someone with me or else I'm ignored/get dirty looks. If I go to the doctor, I already know I'm not going to be taken seriously, which affects my health because I don't get treatment until it's way too late. If I want to rent an apartment, the agent will treat me like trash and try to give me a bad deal. Every time I need to go somewhere, I know I'm about to be treated like shit simply because of my 'assumed' age.

Making friends is impossible. I look younger than people who are younger than me...so they automatically don't want to be friends with me. Particularly as a woman, I experience this kind of paternalistic condescending treatment, even if they don't mean to do it, it's still a form of discrimination. It's like I'm a cute pet to them but no one wants to be friends with a pet or give them any respect, just "ohh look at you, so cute!". You're seen as sweet, fragile, non-threatening and in need of protection because you're just so precious. You get the whole "you're so innocent!" as if I'm not a grown ass human being. It comes across as caring, but it reinforces a power imbalance between you and the other person that results in less respect. (e.g people picking you up for fun...).

The worst thing is the workplace. You're viewed as 'friendly + kind' instead of 'capable + assertive' and maybe even assumed to have lower intelligence because of your perceived innocence = less experience. How can you expect to be taken seriously when everyone fawns over how cute you are...lord have mercy. It's hard to get to higher positions most of all because you can't command respect, so no one would listen to you or take you seriously. I've had people laugh and say I'm cute when I'm angry....This has me relegated to low-paying, minimum wage jobs or being stuck in junior roles for my whole life. Talked down to by coworkers a decade younger than me who want to boss me around because I look like a pushover.

This literally ruins so much of my life and I'm not being dramatic. People talk to me like shit. There is no respect ever. I even stopped posting selfies on Instagram because someone from my old school commented "you look like a prepubescent child". It ruins my confidence so bad. It makes me never want to go outside. I just want to be treated the same as everyone else. All in all, it's made me become a more bitter person and maybe even nastier. I feel like I can't be nice, so I have to put on a serious face to try and get respect.

I’m curious if anyone feels your appearance , specifically looking younger than their age, holds you back from anything. Is there anything you wish you could do or do more of? Or have you gotten past it.

I want to make YouTube videos sharing life advice/epiphanies. I recorded a few but I look soo young and I feel like people will be judging it, wondering why this person is giving advice/thinking I haven’t lived through anything. I’m in my late 20s but feel I could look 16-20.

I happen to not drink, but I also feel especially awkward in bars/clubs and looking younger gives more reason to not go. Worried people will think I’m too young to be there.

How about you?

I spend a lot of time alone. Maybe too much time.

I’m social, outgoing, capable of connecting with people easily, but internally I’ve always felt slightly removed from everything around me. Like there’s a layer of glass between me and the rest of the world.

When I was younger, my dad spent most of his time in the basement smoking cigarettes. He would come home, walk past us, and disappear downstairs for hours. I understand him better now than I did then, but I think some part of that isolation imprinted onto me early.

I’ve realized as I get older that I retreat inward constantly. Time keeps moving, life keeps happening, and somehow I can still spend entire days trapped inside my own thoughts.

Sometimes I wonder if consciousness itself is the burden.

Not in a hopeless way, but in the sense that once you become deeply aware of yourself, your patterns, your mortality, your loneliness, your contradictions, it becomes difficult to participate in life as effortlessly as other people seem to.

I think a lot about perception. About how every single person who has ever met me probably carries a completely different version of me in their head. Some version I’ll never fully have access to or control.

And despite understanding that intellectually, I still care. I still wonder what people think of me. Which feels both deeply human and completely irrational at the same time.

Lately, I’ve been trying to pull myself out of my own mind and back into my body. To stop analyzing life long enough to actually experience it.

Because I’ve noticed something uncomfortable: I know exactly what triggers my spirals, and sometimes I still revisit them anyway. Almost compulsively. Like there’s a part of me more attached to emotional familiarity than peace itself.

At the same time, I’ve also never felt more aware or more alive.

The older I get, the stranger existence feels to me. The fact that any of this exists at all. The fact that we wake up every day inside these temporary bodies, build identities around memories and desires, and collectively pretend we understand what’s happening here.

Sometimes I look at modern life and feel deeply disconnected from it. The constant consumption, distraction, performance, endless labor. People working constantly while time slips through their hands unnoticed.

It feels like we’ve built systems that keep people too exhausted to actually experience being alive.

And yet, despite all of this, I still feel hopeful.

Not because I think life is easy or inherently meaningful, but because I think meaning is something we create through attention, connection, curiosity, love, art, conversation, even suffering.

Some days life feels beautiful to me. Other days it feels unbearably heavy. Most days it feels like both at once.

I think what unsettles me most is how quickly the human mind can shift between awe and despair. Between gratitude and self-destruction. Between feeling deeply connected to existence and feeling completely detached from it.

Maybe that contradiction is part of being human.

I don’t really know.

I just know I can’t be the only person who feels this strange whiplash from being alive sometimes.

I’m 23 and have recently started seeing someone who is 7 years older than me. I didn’t expect it at all, and honestly at first I thought it would just be something casual, but it’s slowly become one of the most emotionally comforting connections I’ve had.

He understands me really well, listens properly when I talk, asks me thoughtful questions, gives me advice without being controlling, and overall just makes me feel very seen and safe. I feel calmer around him. I genuinely think I might be falling in love with him.

The thing is, I keep going back and forth in my head wondering whether I’m being naive because of the age gap. Part of me can genuinely see a future with him, but another part of me is scared I should be protecting my heart before I get too attached.

What should I do?

this happens all the time, it's having an actual impact on my life

most recent experience; met up with a guy (29yr old) for adult activities. only when we're 30 minutes into said activity does he asks if im 18. and im confused (tinder has my age), i let him know im 27, he's shocked af saying that i look nowhere near that age, he had thought i was a minor....(weirdo for not asking before things got started)

a few minutes later he asks me if he's a bad person for imagining that im a younger age cause it's his kink. i say that as long it's not a minor ahe cause that's weird af

but that i get where he's coming from cause i have braces which dont help, he gets excited, "no fucking way you have braces, smile "

i smile and he literally grabs my face saying that this made things even better and that i looked cute and perfect

when i head back home im left just feeling weird and wondering if im attracting perverts. it made me remember that a guy described the faces i make during adult activities as cute which threw me off cause what grown woman wants to be called cute while participating in adult activities

idk how to feel about it or how to avoid it. i even got nose piercings a few years ago to try to age my face and it's obviously not working. it makes me not want to engage in the dating scene anymore. especially with how rampant incest and barely legal content is on adult sites, i get asked to say daddy too

should i just get an ugly tattoo on my face?

I tend to think people want to help you like a lost puppy but then they think you're unqualified or too young and naive if you ask.

I've had my instances where people try too hard to help and I'm like I'm not a little kid! Also people think I'm stupid for not knowing and think I'm not at that level yet. Its kinda confsuing and frustrating.

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I've just started a job and was meeting a girl who was training me. The first question she asked was, "How old are you?" to which I replied my age, and she said, "Oh okay because you look really young."

That had to be the 100th time someone said that to me lmao. Weirdly I wasn't bothered by it at least not anymore afterawhile you just kind of get used to it.

And honestly, I don't think it impacts my life too much I mean people always underestimate me until I prove them wrong which is always fun. Does make dating a little more difficult but certainly not impossible (apparently being a funny decent person is good enough to pull!).

The ironic part of it is that usually after they meet me they always say how mature I am for my age. So apparently I look like I'm 15 but act like I'm 40? Okay 💀

Anyways just writing about my experience and hopefully some of you can relate. Thanks for reading.

I’m 31 y o man, who is disrespected almost daily because of this. In fact i was in my building minding my own business and someone asked me if i actually lived here because they thought i was a mischievous youth breaking in to cause trouble. It’s a tough life. But i definitely feel as if increasing my income will help because money speaks for itself. 

people say that what matters is what’s on the inside. Well, we live in the world that is contrary to that. people also say to not look for validation from others. All I want is to live in a reality where I don’t feel different. Where I’m treated just like any other 31 year old man. Am I asking for too much?

Greetings everyone.

I’m in a bit of a conundrum. I (20M) have just discovered that after 6 months of being with my girlfriend (20\*F) lied about her actual age. I found out about her real age on an exam form we are required to fill in the middle of our exams. Soon as I saw it, my heart dropped and thought “surely she meant to put 05’ instead of 04’”.

Anyway we fast forward to after the exam and I ask her, “You were born in 2004?” And she said yes and didn’t say anything to me after that on the topic.

We move on an hour later and I ask her why she didn’t tell me and she said “I don’t know”. I then said I would have appreciated if she told me as opposed to me finding out in this way and she apologized. But however I’m still in between feelings because I’m a guy that hates lies and why would you like about this? In my head I was thinking that maybe she fell for me and thought I wouldn’t like her real age. I’m an overthinker so I was thinking is she fancies guys older than me like in the 23-26 range because she’s older than me and all.

Anyway I’m open to thoughts and comments.

I’m 51 years old. Yesterday, a relative I hadn’t seen in ages guessed I was 28. He must have thought I’d become a mother at 14.

Has anyone else experienced that people you know or even people you've had a lengthy conversation with will age you higher than strangers do?

Social maturity seems to clue people in on the fact that you are much older than you appear. People who know you will age you higher because they know your true age.

If my age is a point of interest early in the conversation with a new person, they always guess closer to 20, while those with rapport tend to say I look somewhere in my mid-20s.

I find these interactions to pull me mentally between two places, maybe I'm starting to look more mature/closer to my age, to ahh never mind.

I’ve posted in this sub a few times about my struggles with looking young, and without fail I always get a few comments that are clearly from people who don’t understand this sub. I’m talking about the comments that are like, “I would love to be told I look 12!” or “Why is it a big deal to be told you look young, I wish someone would tell me that!” So, what do you guys think the difference is? I think most of us in this sub are offended by these comments, but there are obviously some people who welcome it. It makes me think of a post my mom made on Facebook recently where she posted some selfies with my kids and my aunt commented “Wow Laura, you look so young… seriously you look like a little kid! So beautiful!” I would’ve hated that, but my mom didn’t mind it.

So this was a surprise.
A man asked me out, I’ve gotten better at telling ages and figured he was 5-7 years older which is reasonable.

He asked me out, at first I said no but then he tried again and made me laugh so I said yes.

He said he wanted to take me to a restaurant, sent me the location. Insanely expensive and very dark sexy type restaurant. I said no, let’s do coffee.

So he meets me, we grab coffee, he starts hinting at his money. Jokes about having an envelope of cash since he’s traveling and doesn’t know what to do with it. He mentions wanting to go to the nearby (luxury) hotel to use the bathroom, suddenly getting close to me and touching my back. I’m annoyed but it all goes over my head.

Later he asks if I’m in school. I say no and I ask his age, find out it’s 40. He asked my age which is 33. He is stunned. I asked and he said he thought I was 22/23…. It got awkward and he started being a little more formal.

It all clicks, continually talking about the cash he had with him… the hotel.. I’m thinking I’m on a normal date with a guy reasonably close to my age… he thinks he’s on idk what with someone nearly 20 years younger then him.

Btw Im wearing a loose blue skirt that goes to my calves and a loose white sweater. This is the outfit I’ve worn to church. No skin showing. Just the age difference made him think this I guess.

Both me and my dad popped into the liquor store to pick up a couple bottles and cans for the weekend, and as usual I was in charge of the buggy. So we go through the check out and the guy working the register lets my dad know that I shouldn't be pushing the cart because I'm underage.

I'm 20

I actually ended up showing the guy my id, at least we all got a laugh out of it!

For context, I'm roughly 4'10" and I was wearing cosplay that may make me look shorter. I was also with a friend who's taller than me despite being younger.

Somehow, I got the tickets without the cashier asking my age. When it was time to go to the cinema, the guy who's was handling the entrance to the movie asked my age. Iron Lung was rated R-13. I'm eighteen. So somehow, the guy thought I was younger than 13...

Mind you, my friend who was youger than me did not even get asked... I hate this.

But at least both of us were able to watch the movie :D

So I (19f) been getting mistaken for a litteral kid so many times that im starting to think i must actually look like one. The first time i just laughed about it but its just been happening so much that its just not funny anymore.

For context, im 4'11 and 85lbs, so i get that i might look a bit younger because of it. But ELEVEN???

So it happened multiple times, but these two times really shocked me the most. I was with my dad to go buy food at a takeout restaurant or whatever you call it. And the guy started talking with my dad, about his daughter and all, and my dad asked how old is daughter was. And this man points and me and says "around the same as yours, first year of middle school"....and that really shocked me, because i seriously don't think i look THIS much like a child.

And i tried everything! Cutting my hair shorter, wearing revealing clothes, but all i get is weird stares as if im a kid wearing a lowcut. And it makes me uncomfortable. One time i was out eating at a restaurant with my family, and the waitress asked if i would like the kids menu...💀

My family says its okay and that i'll be glad to look younger in a few years, but its really hurting me to get comments like that so often, its been making me feel more and more insecure each time.

So my mom is a middle school teacher. She works with children who are on the spectrum in a Montessori type of school. One of her students, 11yo boy, recently told her: “Miss X, why do your hands look like you are 50 yrs old?” 😂😂😂 Mind you, she’s 56!

(tbh her hands have always looked like that for as much as I’m alive lol)

Anyway, I told my mom that she got a compliment because the kid didn’t expect her to be in her 50-s 😆

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