to ask if it is normal to have intense nostalgia, yearning for youth once you hit 40ish?

[lemon8de]

This is going to sound really sad but over the last few years I have suddenly started thinking a lot more about the past, about people I have not seen in 20+ years and having this intense sort of nostalgia. I am over 40. I thought it was just me but several of my friends have also said that they have this too and that they have suddenly had the urge to contact people they haven't seen in years or start listening to music they haven't played in years. Is this common?

I have this and I'm 29!!! But I know exactly what you mean. I feel like I'm living a completely new life now, I often think back and it's quite intense at times.

I'm in my 30s and sometimes get this.

I think it's when you realise how quickly life passes you by, how good you really looked and how simple life seemed in your youth.

I so get this. It's the realisation that your youth was half a lifetime away and you feel the same inside. But when you think of all the things which have happened in between, especially if any of them have been traumatic such as bereavement or divorce, it makes you yearn for simpler times and the people you were with back then.

It's weird when I hear music from my childhood/teens it suddenly sounds amazing, I miss the shops, the clothes.

I get it a bit with my eldest child too, I've got a sort of memory box full of old photos, first outfits, newspapers from the day he was born and other keepsakes. When I look through it I yearn to kiss his little newborn head again if that makes sense.

I’m late 30s and feel like this.
I think it’s when you get to the point in your life where you have completed your family (and come out of the small child haze), have probably settled into a career, etc etc so it feels like there’s no more ‘big life things’ left to do so we hanker for that time in life when we had everything ahead of us and life was full of possibilities!!
The Ed Sheeran song - Castle on the hill, makes me feel like this everytime I hear it.

Yes, you will find as you go through life it comes in phases. It can be incredibly intense, poignant and melancholy ... as I have experienced myself.

The Welsh have a wonderful word - Hiraeth - which is very difficult to translate into English but is usually taken to mean homesickness or longing for home but it's actually more than that. It also means a bittersweet memory of a time, era, an intense form of longing, nostalgia etc for something that is gone and can never return. The nearest equivalent is a Portuguese word 'Saudade'.

I've found that as I go through life I have these periods of this intense nostalgia - and it usually precedes or follows a life transition so going from youth to middle age, middle age to old age, approaching menopause, other life events like children growing and moving on, parents passing and so on.

You find yourself thinking of things you haven't thought about in years, things on TV or in real life trigger a memory of a place, person, time and you are back there. It's quite difficult to stay in the present some times when you are going through these intensely nostalgic phases.

My experience is that they do pass ... but while you are experiencing it it can be a very emotional and poignant time and of course it's completely unique to you.

Yes, late 30s and absolutely feel like this. A very close friend from that period of my life was recently terminally ill and sadly died last month and I think that triggered a lot of my nostalgic feelings.

Brieandchilli that would make sense as that is me right now. There's a bit of a feeling of well what's next, what more could I do.

So instead I yearn for a time when the possibilities were endless.

Im 42 and sometime look back at my youth and feel a bit wistful. Particularly this weekend when my teens are off to the Reading festival for the first time! However, I'm much happier and more confident now than I was back then, so I don't miss being young all that much really.

God yes.
I miss my youth.
I was beautiful and had the world at my feet. I was invincible.
I feel old. I have aches and pains. I feel invisible and have crows feet.
I am turning bitter and haggard.
What I thought my life would be and what it actually has have no similarities at all.

I get this and I’m mid thirties! I’ve recently found myself watching “Gavin and Stacey” listening to music from 10 years ago and yearning for my twenties when things were simpler and there were exciting things to try and achieve.

Im having trouble understanding what this time in my life is “for”

Think I might be mildly depressed though.

I don't know if it's normal, but I get the same thing (early 40s). It's not entirely unpleasant - I like to wallow in it sometimes.

When I look back now (fondly) it all seems SO long ago, becaus the world has changed so much. It's not that I want to go back, but there are people and places I would like to see again, and never will. Having DS has made me much worse. I find myself mourning that he won't have my wonderful childhood in the suburbs of Dublin, even though I know full well that Dublin in the 1980s was a shithole everyone was fleeing.

And then I feel guilty cos I have a lovely life and I think about other friends who died young and didn’t get to this point

Yes. When I hit 40, I started going to gigs with DH again. I’m still doing it and I’m nearly 46.
I’ve got the Pixies lined up for October, Slaves before that and a book reading/signing thing at our local indie record store.
I’ve been to see JAMC by myself as a 42 year old, I took my teenager to see Echo and the Bunnymen with me...
We watched an L7 documentary the other night and I saw the events of the Reading set I attended as a 20 year old, right there in front of my very eyes.
If you are nostalgic for that, get out there and see some live music; there are loads of old rockers there.

I think I'm mildly depressed too pinkyponk

It's a bit depressing when you achieve everything you could have wanted and it doesn't feel half as good as it should.

Where else is there to look but back?

That’s it Porth, I look forward and I see getting old and parents and loved ones dying. Struggling to see positives

It is not sad it is pathetic. 40 is young young young. Talk again in 40 years you poor old thing

@Jitters22 - there is a German word too to describe this too - "sehnsucht".

It is not sad it is pathetic. 40 is young young young. Talk again in 40 years you poor old thing

Nothing pathetic about it.

40 is not 'young, young, young' - you have four decades of life behind you and are starting out on your fifth. You will never be a child, a teenager, a 20 something or a 30 something again. Yes it's young compared to an 80 year old, but it's not young compared to a child being born today.

It's perfectly normal and in no way 'pathetic' to feel nostalgia at any age as we go through transitions and life events, births, bereavements and changes in ourselves as we age.

It's not something that is the exclusive domain of the 80 year old.

I've been feeling like that since I hit 40 - I think it's normal.

I wish I could go back to when my daughter was a tiny baby
She’s 16 and bigger than me now
I miss her being tiny and cute
I miss buying her clothes

But I think if I could go back it wouldn’t be so great
I suspect we forget the bad stuff and remember the good
Rose tinted glasses and all that

@Jitters22 - there is a German word too to describe this too - "sehnsucht"

Thank you for that Lemon8de - really interesting to know that. I wrote a little about 'Hiraeth' in my dissertation and I did look up similar words in other languages, but never came across sehnsucht - so I've learned something today.

This is such an interesting thread. I am in my 40s and have been experiencing this. I have had moments when it's been this incredibly intense, melancholy feeling, as described by previous posters.

Notcontent - It is an incredibly intense and melancholy feeling for me at the moment. It is so bizarre too as I literally did not think about the past much for about 15 years and then this feeling suddenly hit me like a steam train.

I also think it is because I am over 40 so my youth was pre-internet and everything was much more of a lived and real experience rather than a virtual one. I miss it all so much .

Heatherjayne I think you’re totally right too about the rose tinted glasses. I wasn’t as confident or secure in my career 10 years ago.

I was also totally desperate for my boyfriend to ask me to marry him 🙄