To think it’s not normal how much I miss the 90’s and my youth

I miss 1996, the euros, hot summer, leaving school, great music.
The feeling I could do anything. Is that just youth though?
I've got kids now and married. I'll never have that same freedom and no fucks given attitude. Maybe that's what I miss? But I'd go back in a heartbeat.

There was a lot of hope, and young fit men. Men now are different and less fit although probably better dressed. Soft lads I think I would’ve called them back in the day. Everything was hopeful. Cars had big engines, we danced a lot, drove empty roads, nothing was complicated.

I’m 48 and would love to be 15 again. YANBU

No haha! I was a fat, bullied nerd, with poor, grumpy, chain smoking parents living in a shithole!!

I loved Britpop, the magazines and the fashion but I was too northern, too fat and too poor to really feel part of it.

There are other times in my life I do get that feeling for though, so I do understand. It can be physically painful to think too deeply about those times- like staring at the sun.

I think it's aging and facing mortality. It's too much for our ape brains.

Some of that for me, loss of youth and opportunities, but mostly missing the feeling that the world wasn’t literally and metaphorically on fire.

I've recently been feeling really intense nostalgia for my late teens and early 20s, particularly my time at university and in my first job afterwards. Young and carefree, relatively speaking.

I'm turning 40 this year, married (very happily), 2 children, I'm ageing, parents afe ageing and life feels heavier and moments of joy more rare. I assume it's related.

I loved the attitude. Fuck you 😄

I'm very nostalgic at the best of times. I'm not sure the 90's was better. I just didn't care for the news tbh.

Friends was your entire life but naturally when your Older people focus on kids and partners. Getting older and your best days being behind you is hard for sure too. But got to keep thinking lots never get to grow old and wrinkly

I Di terribly miss my home, my dad but if I'm 100% honest I would go back. Things was also bad but different bad things like a sadistic mum. I feel sad I never had a loving mum and happy home

Apparently if they want to sell a target age group something they should play a song from the year you were 16.
Songs that do it for me
Tiffany I think I'm alone now
Bon Jovi living on a prayer.

But I lived the 90s from Ace of Base to Oasis . Life was good personally for me late 90s/00s with my kids. Enjoying CBBC demon headmaster to Tracy Beaker.

I’m a bit younger, 35, but I loved my 90s childhood. I have been thinking about it a lot recently. Things have changed so much and the world seemed so much simpler back then.

I'm in the same age bracket as you. The early to mid nineties were a horrific time of my life due to my childhood home and school bullying, however I do still understand what you mean. I miss the days before social media took over and the feeling that anything was possible. I wish we could rewind and go back to the days before the Internet.

You have to enjoy the feeling- that was your time - but also have to appreciate everything that came after and brought you to the amazing now. Even if it doesn’t feel so amazing. You are alive and lived all those good times. That’s what it’s all about!

I don’t wish to be a teenager again because it wasn’t always an easy time for me.

But I am incredibly nostalgic.

The music, the sweets, sleepovers and watching videos, staying up half the night talking and laughing, hanging around the park and the boys coming over and hoping to get a snog, going to the cinema to see the latest film, the TV shows, the shopping.

It definitely seemed like a golden era of hope.

I also cried at ABBA Voyage.

I cry at old songs too. I'm a lot older than you OP so it's 70s/80s that does it for me. If I watch old TOTP I am overcome with nostalgia and longing for my youth. For me it's that my whole life was in front of me and I was young free and single and in excellent health.

Girls just wanna have fun was mine and my friends anthem early eighties

I’m 44 and unfortunately due to trauma I barely remember anything only fragments. I truly envy you for having vivid memories. Just cherish them! it’s okay to be nostalgic, life is passing us by so fast.

Oh god yeah I miss the boys from uni. There was one who was perfect for me and I didn't even notice him really. He even grabbed me and kissed me once, but I was an idiot.
I do occasionally look him up on Instagram , probably doesn't help that he's never married. Oh to go back just one day! 🤣

I'm 42 and completely agree OP.
Even this thread is making me cry and want to go back. I sometimes worry that I'm too attached to the nostalgia and spend far too much time reminiscing and wishing I could go back and live through it all again

I was very late to the party but just finished watching One Day on Netflix. Loved it but it has rather overwhelmed me with a painful almost exquisite nostalgia for my lost youth during exactly the same time period. Running around London after university, living in flatshares, the boys (so many boys!)…….

I actually cried in one episode when the episode ended with “Sonnet” by The Verve. Not because of what I had watched but because the song took me back in a second to a certain time and place in the 90’s.

I have a very good life now in my 50’s (great career, stable marriage and lovely kids) and wouldn’t really want to be that young again! But the upside is that I have got interested again in music that I used to love and exploring some current bands - and it’s great!

I’m the same age OP and I get it 100%.

I think a certain amount of nostalgia is reasonable, but you sound like you are plain unhappy.

Are there things in your life now that you would prefer were different? Do you feel disappointed?

I would focus on how to move forward positively rather than getting upset about missing the past.

I graduated from school in 95. Lived in London & Paris late 90s / early Noughties. So many good times… And great music, clothes, parties, sex, laughs, hope, fun! I loved it all.

I miss the hope we had in the 90s. You could do anything and achieve anything and it didn’t depend on money or status.