Wor­ried about get­ting old? Who isn't–ex­cept per­haps those who are al­ready un­mis­tak­ably there. Sur­vey af­ter sur­vey shows the el­der­ly are more con­tent with life, less de­pressed, and less fear­ful of death than the young.

"I'm a lot more san­guine and com­fort­able about ag­ing at 76 than I was at 56," says George Vail­lant, pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try at Har­vard Med­ical School who codi­rects its Study of Adult De­vel­op­ment. In the mean­time, though? Men in midlife har­bor plen­ty of fears when they peer ahead. (Women have their own, slight­ly dif­fer­ent set of ag­ing fears).

Fear 1: Im­po­tence

"No ques­tion that men wor­ry more than women about per­form­ing," says Ken Rob­bins, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Wis­con­sin pro­fes­sor of psy­chi­a­try who's al­so board cer­ti­fied in in­ter­nal med­i­cine."When li­bido starts to di­min­ish or things don't work as well as they did be­fore, it's very com­mon for men to wor­ry that they'll em­bar­rass or hu­mil­i­ate them­selves."Per­haps per­for­mance anx­i­ety isn't sur­pris­ing, giv­en a 2008 British study that showed men think about sex 13 times a day, com­pared to five times a day for women.The prospect of im­po­tence was scari­er than can­cer or death to read­ers of a men's mag­a­zine in a 2001 poll.Per­haps there's a good med­ical rea­son for this: Oth­er­wise healthy men who have erec­tile prob­lems have been shown to have ab­nor­mal coro­nary tis­sue, high­er in­ci­dence of high blood pres­sure, high blood fat, and oth­er mark­ers of heart dis­ease.Three-fourths of men with erec­tile dys­func­tion (ED) have ab­nor­mal cho­les­terol.

Fear 2: Weak­ness

It's said that knowl­edge is pow­er–but for men, so is phys­i­cal pow­er it­self. "Men val­ue strength and vig­or more–and when it starts to slide, they take it much hard­er than women do," Rob­bins says."Los­ing phys­i­cal strength adds to their over­all sense of loss: 'If I can't lift things, what kind of man am I?'"Feel­ing weak­er was named one of the most dread­ed parts of ag­ing for near­ly 9 in 10 peo­ple sur­veyed ear­li­er this year by the Amer­i­can Geri­atrics So­ci­ety Foun­da­tion for Health in Ag­ing along with Ab­bott Labs. On­ly 25 per cent of the 1,000 adults in the AGSF study made strength train­ing part of their every­day rou­tine, even though this ba­sic can pro­tect mus­cle health.

Fear 3: Re­tire­ment/ir­rel­e­vance

The prospect of re­tir­ing fires enor­mous anx­i­ety be­cause it, too, begs the ques­tion, "If I'm not my ca­reer, what am I?""Men fear re­tire­ment be­cause it's how they de­fine them­selves and how they fill their time," says geri­a­tri­cian Lau­rie Ja­cobs, di­rec­tor of the Jack and Pearl Resnick Geron­tol­ogy Cen­ter at the Al­bert Ein­stein Col­lege of Med­i­cine in New York City.In the US, reach­ing re­tire­ment age tends to co­in­cide with hav­ing your opin­ion so­licit­ed less and be­com­ing more "in­vis­i­ble," she adds. Net re­sult: a huge ego blow.Women have an eas­i­er time giv­ing up work, psy­chi­a­trist Ken Rob­bins adds, be­cause they more quick­ly fill its gap with friends and chil­dren.Try to fol­low new tech­nolo­gies, stay in­ter­est­ed in younger peo­ple, rein­vent your­self by dis­cov­er­ing a new mean­ing and pur­pose to your life post-re­tire­ment. Or keep work­ing. Above all, stretch your­self to keep so­cial net­works strong.

Fear 4: Los­ing wheels(and in­de­pen­dence)

From his first souped-up junker to his badge-of-suc­cess sports car (or midlife-cri­sis con­vert­ible), what a man dri­ves re­flects his very iden­ti­ty.In Amer­i­can cul­ture, cars al­so rep­re­sent free­dom, in­de­pen­dence, and the end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties of the open road. The prospect of hav­ing to give all that up–which many men first think about when they see their own fa­thers turn­ing in the keys for safe­ty's sake–is scary in­deed.Dri­ving is al­so em­blem­at­ic of an­oth­er fear: Be­com­ing de­pen­dent on oth­ers to meet ba­sic needs."It's no co­in­ci­dence that the men with the high­est so­cial sta­tus in as­sist­ed-liv­ing com­mu­ni­ties are the ones who have dri­ver's li­cens­es," Rob­bins notes.Many old­er adults con­tin­ue to be able to dri­ve safe­ly in­to their 70s and 80s. A re­fresh­er course can help. But know that this is one area where the greater good–the safe­ty of oth­ers–should trump pri­vate fears, when the time comes.

Fear 5: Los­ing your mind (or your wife los­ing hers)

Per­haps re­cent head­lines are scar­ing more men in­to the fear of Alzheimer's: Men are more like­ly than women to have mild cog­ni­tive im­pair­ment (MCI)–some­times called "pre-Alzheimer's"–and get it ear­li­er, ac­cord­ing to a Mayo Clin­ic study in the Sep­tem­ber 2010 jour­nal Neu­rol­o­gy.Near­ly one in five men ages 70 to 85 have the con­di­tion, which falls be­tween nor­mal for­get­ful­ness and ear­ly de­men­tia.More women, on the oth­er hand, ac­tu­al­ly de­vel­op Alzheimer's dis­ease. But that, too, is a scary prospect for their mates, thrust with lit­tle prepa­ra­tion in­to a care­giv­er role."Most men haven't done too much care­giv­ing," Rob­bins says. And noth­ing dash­es the fan­ta­sy of a foot­loose-and-fan­cy-free re­tire­ment like tend­ing full-time to a part­ner who doesn't even know you.De­men­tia was the num­ber-one health con­cern of 12,000 Amer­i­cans (both gen­ders to­geth­er) in 2010 Bu­pa Health Pulse, a sur­vey con­duct­ed by the British health­care com­pa­ny Bu­pa.No sure­fire ways to pre­vent Alzheimer's have been found, but a heart-healthy lifestyle may low­er the risk. (Ya­hoo Health)