@Lt Luna 475046 wrote:

There are less women in our group these days 🙁 They either had kids or just don’t go out anymore. Most have also split from their partners.

Thats another factor which also affects blokes my age as well – I’ve met a lot of girls/women who have had a bad experience with a partner what uses drugs and likes music (including controlling/violent behaviour, or even just sketchy things like not prioritising stuff like paying rent etc over partying)

They not surprisingly now view men who are into this scene suspiciously (also a lot of women here move from London/Essex to escape bad relationships) – as well as nightlife. seen this across the board from teenagers to women in their 50s.

Also unfortunately lone women (aged anywhere from 18-60!) in most night time venues are seen as “fair game” – a woman in her 50s here who went out clubbing ended up being raped by a 18 year old lad young enough to be her son. In my town I have seen up to 8 police simply nannying the crowd (along with bouncers) at a popular nightclub. although there wasn’t any overt trouble that crowd did not look friendly and I got the impression that had the cops not been there something would have kicked off.

there is a entire police unit simply to deal with the behaviour of people at pubs and clubs which is relatively new for this region (though metpol have had one for decades). I can’t blame people for not going out in some towns/cities – although London (where I lived for many years) has many good events (like most big cities) there are still security risks.

A lot of older blokes don’t go out any more because of these risks, even if you can look after yourself defending yourself can result in arrest and career problems and there are folk out there who will hurt of kill someone simply because they are feeling shit about life (it happened here even 100s of years ago when there was death penalty). to be fair whilst its no worse than 25 years ago before the rave scene and the last economic depression and Tory Government it seems understandable that when you either grow older and/or have something you want to live for (like a career or family) you take less risks.