Men in their latter years are more likely than women to become isolated and grumpy, according to ABC radio host turned author, Geoff Hutchison.
Geoff, who is into his sixties, is determined not to approach retirement like many blokes who fade into the background, while women, more often approach life with zest and vigour.
While grumpy old women certainly exist, Geoff says there is a much greater likelihood of running into a grumpy old man – or perhaps not – because they are probably stuck in their recliner rocker.
He believes that for the most part women, as they age, are far more capable of either growing or maintaining social connections around them, and men aren’t.
“Women are more likely to say ‘yes’ to the prospect of doing something, and men are less so,” Geoff says.
“And I know that’s a generalisation, so I would not want anyone to think that I’m writing this book because I think all blokes get grumpy. I don’t think that’s true.
“But I do think that having been defined by the straitjacket of uniformity that we’ve all worn, of being husbands and providers and leaders of family, etc., etc., when work finishes, I think some men lose their sense of identity. The world is changing really dramatically and in ways that some of those folks don’t understand and because they don’t understand they don’t want to engage with it.
“I think that might be a bit of a mistake.”
To give men a bit of a helping hand Geoff spent around two and half years putting together his book How Not to Become a Grumpy Old Bugger.
It’s a witty, reflective and at times gently provocative exploration of ageing.
When he started to write the book Geoff wasn’t sure what he would end up with.
“But I’m really fond of it and I’m really fond of the old bloke on the front cover.”
The cover shot is of an elderly gentleman.
“He’s just a stock photo, but people seem to say, ‘he looks like someone I know’ and it will probably be my luck that about a month from now, we’ll find out that he was a decorated World War II hero and his family are going to sue me.
“But I’ve grown to really like him.
“I just refer to him and the whole idea of this book now as ‘grumpy’. And I’ve been amazed. It’s selling really well. Without getting ahead of myself, I think it’s the number eight book out of the top 10 for Dymocks across the country.”
Geoff says the hardest part of the book to write was a reflection about his father, who in many ways was a motivation behind the book.
“It was me seeing what a slightly sad looking fellow he was at different stages during his life.
“When I started writing this book, I was probably around the age my dad was, when I asked him if he was happy. His response was ‘no, not really’.”
“But this is a pretty gentle little handbook aimed at convincing blokes to have a look at it. Women will happily read a book like this, I think they’ll happily buy it for a bloke, but whether he wants to read any of it is a bit of a mystery to me.
“I had to try and get the tone right and not get a bloke offside too quickly by accusing him of things. Who wants to be lectured by someone else? I don’t think blokes are very keen on that.”
As well as his own experiences Geoff also involved a wide range of experts and well-known personalities, including bestselling author Maggie Dent, philosopher Hugh Mackay and Fremantle Dockers captain Alex Pearce, to understand where grumpiness comes from and the problems facing older men.
From men’s mental, sexual and physical health, finances and plans for retirement to social media and influencers, loneliness, regrets and death, Geoff leaves no stone unturned on his quest to find contentment.
Geoff maintains he is not inherently grumpy, but writing the book has been a fantastic experience.
“Some things make me grumpy, but once I’d left 40 years of journalism and making snap judgments about things, once I got to this point where I’ve got time and opportunity to just have a good hard think about things, I really never thought writing this book would be of some benefit to me.
“But I realised that if I was going to ask blokes to consider what their life might look like in hopefully the next 5, 10, 15, 25 years, that I could do so as well.
“And for me that means I can’t tell blokes to go to a GP and have a check-up without being willing to do it myself. I can’t ask them to be more thoughtful about the people around them without assessing whether I’m doing the same thing, so I found it really good.
“I can’t believe I carried the journo’s cynicism with me for much of my life and I just feel like a lot of it dropped away. Journalism, over many years, has the potential to accumulate a lot of barnacles on your hull.
“I do not see a reason to be grumpy and I’m also a very privileged person. I’ve got a good life and a close family and all those things.”
Geoff believes there are a couple of lessons for people reading the book.
“If I could condense 288 pages into a sentence it might be for blokes to go easy on themselves. So not be so self-critical, not be so harsh in their judgments of what the value of their life has been or the merits of their life is. Go easy on yourself and go easy on others.
“I genuinely think that there are there are little tips in the book that give you some clues on how you might do it. But if you can look at life that way then you are no longer feeling the need to judge everything so harshly or correct people when they’re wrong or point out when you think someone else is stupid and generationally I think that’s really important too. You’re not necessarily the smartest person in the room just because you’ve been around for 70 years. It is about having some respect and regard and curiosity for another age demographic as well.
“And if you do that, I think you might find that the kindness runs both ways.”
Geoff says a lot of men assume that when they retire, their partners will want to have them around or get in the caravan and go on the ‘big drive’.
“But we need to be aware as we get older that as we perceive ourselves to be slowing down, our partners may well be, as Maggie Dent says to me in the book: ‘freed from the obligation of putting food on the table and the dubious delights of menopause’.”
Women want to go and do stuff.
“And if I’m sitting at the Formica table saying, ‘Beryl, where’s my dinner?’ I might have to become aware of the fact that Beryl is in fact in a hot air balloon in Turkey because she wants to go off on adventures, so it’s important for blokes not to carry too many assumptions with us as we get older about what our partners might want to do.
“The rates of grey divorce in Australia are on the increase and I think men need to understand that women faced with the prospect of living with someone who is grumpy and unhappy and not much fun to be around are increasingly asking themselves: do I have to stay here? The answer for quite a lot of them is no they don’t and they will leave.
“That’s a big thing for blokes to get their head around and I hope that we’re never surprised by it.
“I just want blokes to know that it’s okay to be grumpy, but I’ve used this phrase and it seems to have gone down quite well: Don’t curate this museum of dickheadedness where you find fault in everyone else or you stand at the window waiting for a pothole to be filled by the council and at the end of the day you say to your partner, ‘they still bloody haven’t filled it’, so you go and stand at that window the next day waiting for them.
“These things sit in our guts and they make us unhappy and they make us unwell and I think we become lonely and sad and we think that is to be our lot. And I don’t believe that to be true.
“There are small things that we can do if we choose to, to be an enthusiastic participant in what life looks like.
“We don’t have to understand it all.
“We don’t have to agree with it all.
“But I, for one, like the idea of plonking a chair down in the middle of it and watching it unfold and doing so with some curiosity.
“And then suddenly you find yourself laughing and suddenly you find a few other like-minded blokes and you think, this is all right, this is good.”
How Not to Become a Grumpy Old Bugger – A Blokes’ Guide to Living a Better Life. by Geoff Hutchison. ($28.75 at all good bookstores)
