It started around age 35 and just gets stronger as the years go by

Yes. As I'm getting older I'm dreaming more and more of people in the past, some of whom I haven't thought of in years and were not even really that special to me. I have worried if my brain is preparing me for death!😂

I guess there is a silver lining to my awful childhood after all. Nothing to miss. Now are my happy times. I have a little pang when I see pictures of my kids as babies though.

Yes happening to me right now. Aged 35. Im significantly reflecting on emotions and why I've been passive allowed myself to be manipulated in relationships and what I actually want in life. What I value more what clothes I want to wear. I'm reconnecting with my authentic self and looking at why I've suppressed emotions from childhood. I had a good childhood but my step dad who brought me up from aged 2 got alzheimers when I was 11. Teen years very hard my mum having 3 kids me being the youngest she had no one and worked 90 hours a week to manage and we lost the car as step dad was the only driver. I had no emotional support and went to boys for it to seek validation. I'm seeing this now!

God no! I’ve never been nostalgic for the past especially my childhood.

I hated school and being the poor kid and left school at 15. I was academically very able but one of my parents was an alcoholic and a smoker so it was stressful, money was tight and I had zero friends.

My first holiday was as an adult and I did that on the cheap. Even when I’ve earnt a decent wage, I struggled to enjoy it as I’m always worried about frittering it away and ending up being poor again.

I’m approaching 60 and have the odd happy memory from years gone by but I’d never yearn to be back in any particular decade.

I try to live in the present and enjoy the here and now.

The analogue world was very different and much less 24/7.

Mind you, nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Nostalgia.....its not what it used to be 🙂

Well, I absolutely loathed being a child and teenager so I am not nostalgic for that at all. However I am nostalgic for the 1990s in that I really wish I was a young adult then (even though I was a young child in the 90s).

I am living my dream life right now tbh, at the age of 35, so perhaps I’ll feel nostalgic about now in the future!

No. I don't have a good memory for things in the past.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Agree - it is nice to remember special times.

I voted YABU for the clickbait title

I feel like I enjoyed the 1990s but definitely do not want to do it again or go back. It would annoy me so much now, and I'm so much more confident in who I am now.

I’ve been feeling exactly this too. Thank you for putting it into words.

Oh my goodness, I could've written this post myself. I've been feeling this SO badly recently, to the point my heart aches to be living back where I lived in the mid-late 90's. I think of it every single day. I'm going there for a holiday later this year, but I want to be there right now, and live there again.

It's fine to think about it. Would writing about it help? Sometimes this happens, dwelling on the past, when we are unhappy or afraid to move forward? There are a lot of big and scary things happening in the world, but kindly, there were also in the 1980s and 1990s. We just weren't as aware of them when we were younger.

Difficult time-hormones, we're usually mad busy at this stage with working, having to care for young kids and our parents, life's difficult with all that's going on in the world (yes, I know we're lucky compared to people in the past, but we have the internet so are constantly reminded about all the problems, everything is rushed, we often spend more time online than with real friends). Things just seem to be more bleak and less "happy endings" than in the past-I mean books, films and even music. On the bright side, some articles say we get happier again at 60...

Life was so much simpler and carefree growing up then, wasn't it? I really wish I could go back there (and 're-do' some decisions along the way), sort of a do over. I would genuinely hate to be a child in this day and age.

Yes, same with me too. I am also 47. I think it is a sort take stock of your life at the midlife stage. I keep on thinking about revisiting my childhood home where I spent from 4 to 11. Visiting my old school. Old streets, shops. Wondering how my life would have turned out had we not moved. Songs from the 80s often take me back there.

It's a time when you were (hopefully) safe and secure and looked after. Life was for living and endless possibilities. You don't realise until you grow up and are responsible for your own children's lives, jobs, bills, mortgages quite how free you were. Especially if you put bereavement and family alienation into the mix. It's understandable to look back with nostalgia at easier times.

Yep 100% all I think about is the 90s and early 2000s, the summers I spent with my cousins, the caravan we used to have, the schools I went to etc etc

I'm 45 and have virtually no contact with people from school or uni days so I don't feel it as much. I don't look back on those daya as particularly happy or simple either! But I had a rather complex and non mainstream teens/20s.

I agree with really embracing the times with young dcs. I have an adult dc and also primary aged dcs so I know how quickly their childhood passes and how easy it is to get too busy to just enjoy the time.

The idea of reconnecting with exes or even old friends makes me shudder however! Exes are exes for a reason (I have no contact with any of mine).

I'm too tired to write this out so AI did it, but I wonder if this is of interest to anyone. Did the Voctorians not consider nostalgia to be a mental illness?

"Mark Fisher, a cultural theorist, coined the phrase "the slow cancellation of the future" to describe the gradual erosion of hope for a better future politically, economically, and socially. This cancellation is accompanied by a deflation of expectations, where there is a pervasive sense of living after the "gold rush" of cultural innovation and progress, leading to a reliance on nostalgia and pastiche in culture and arts.

Fisher argued that this phenomenon is not due to a lack of significant events or changes, but rather the inability to imagine or articulate alternatives to the present neoliberal reality. The period marked by the election of Margaret Thatcher and the subsequent neoliberal restructuring of the capitalist economy has contributed to this sense of stagnation.

Nostalgia plays a crucial role in this context, as it provides a way to cope with the failure of modernism to deliver the anticipated future. However, Fisher warned against falling into a vegetative state of endless culture recycling, as it castrates the potential to imagine ways out of the current neoliberal trap.

Resistance to this trend involves daring to dream and conceive of different futures, which Fisher believed is central to human nature. The cancellation of the future is a product of significant political, economic, and social changes, and resisting it requires imagining and building alternative futures.

The concept of hauntology, which Fisher drew from Jacques Derrida's original idea, describes the lingering influence of past ideas and their transformation into mere echoes or clichés, further contributing to the sense of living in a time where the future is cancelled.

In summary, Mark Fisher's concept of "the slow cancellation of the future" highlights the cultural and societal challenges in imagining and creating a better future, emphasizing the need to resist nostalgia and envision alternatives."

Not sure if this is related but I keep coming across online - Ever wondered what the stars from XYZ tv show look like now? Then there is a then and now photo comparison with date of birth and other trivia. I feel a little sadness because if the celebs are 10, 20, 30... years older guess what? We are too! Maybe there is a mass nostalgia campaign being dipped into the atmosphere. 🤔

It's a funny/odd one OP. My DS is doing his exams right now. I keep telling him 'your school years are some of the best of your life'. He can't see it right now, lol. But for me, looking back, they really were. The last carefree days of my life.
In comparison, he'd love to have lived when I grew up. I was born late 60's so had great music/disco's/parties. Everything was 'new' and just invented. It really was a great era to grow up in.