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?

Soo agree. i want that enthusiasm back. although i have more time now with teenagers than toddlers i envy their boundless apetite for fun. maybe it cos we have to work, pay the bills, be a taxi service etc that we have barely any time for being spontaneous. I have more time but feel restricted. oh to be young again. idofwel nostalgic a lot recently

I've been having this too the oast 3 or 4 years.I'm 45. I think it's kind of an awakening after bringing the kids up. Now they are all older teens etc. I find I suddenly have time to think and remember.
I kind if think OMG What on earth happened to my thirties? It's like I didn't have time to stop and think for an entire decade and now my twenties, youth and Singleton life seem a million years ago.

Weirdly I have had a very difficult year and I get intrusive random memories just enter my head. Very insignificant memories from my youth/early twenties that just come into my head at totally random moments. They are nothing particularly memorable or special but maybe just things like singing to certain songs whilst getting ready with a friend for a girls night out except the memory isn't triggered by the song. These really small thoughts just happen at random times.
I'm actually on holiday at the moment at a hotel I stayed in 25 years ago with a group of friends. I'm here with my 3 teenagers. It's not changed much and it's giving me huge hugevpangs for my youth. It's quite distressing to realise how enthusiastic I was back then for life and now I just feel I'm just getting on the best I can.

35 here and been feeling this a lot recently

I’m late thirties and I have this all the time. The most distressing part is how things that were so long ago feel like I could just step back into them. My university days were close to 20 years ago now and I’ve lost touch with everyone I knew there, yet I feel like I could just wake up tomorrow in that same flat I lived in with the same flatmates and everything would be the same.

I get nostalgic for how pretty I was in my teens and early twenties. But at the time I thought I was so ugly. I wish I could have had the confidence I have now when I looked like that, and I feel so melancholy that I didn’t?

And yes, as others have said, lots of wasted opportunities. My life now is fine but it is a very ordinary life. I would do anything to go back to the time when there were so many possibilities. I was really unhappy in my teens and twenties but knowing that only makes me wish all the more that I could do it again and do it differently. Unlike others who have said that because they were unhappy they don’t feel nostalgic.

Yes I do,but I thought I was the only one,thanks for this thread OP.

I used to get it a bit now and again but since we lost my Dad last year I get it all the time now.I'd got it a bit after I lost my Mum but think losing my Dad meant a whole huge chunk of my life has gone,visiting the family home no longer gives me the comfort it did when my Dad was there because when he was there we'd share memories of my Mum and now I've lost that huge part of my history and I'd give anything to be able to go back even if just for a little while.

I am very lucky though that I'm still best friends with my best friend from when we were 3 years old(40 years of friendship now) and because we only had 1 house between us growing up alot of our memories are shared one's so anytime my memory faulters my bestfriend can remind me of memories I'd forgotten about.

I wish I were as carefree as I was when I was young. No real responsibilities, and only trivial stuff to worry about. And I do miss people who aren't here any more.
But I console myself with the thought that 'when I am an old woman' I can start being irresponsible again :)

If I could go back to any year it would be 1987. I was an early teen and it was a simpler, more secure time. Love looking back at old stuff from that year.

Yep. Just chatting to a friend about this few weeks ago. Mutual friend had passed away.

Am fairly happy with life in 40s but nostalgia does kick in (and the fear of wasted time...job gets us by but not creative/challenging in way I thought it would be - I imagined saving the world age 18). Goals more modest these days.

On the plus side - its really nice to have good memories to look back on (and I do remember the sad/bad times - boyf had depression, down to last £40 in the world etc when was in 20's)

28 and feel like this.
My life is wildly different from the one of ages 17-24.
Wouldn't change it though, I love feeling nostalgic because I know when I'm feeling like I haven't achieved much etc, it helps me knowing that in ten years time I will look back on this time with extreme nostalgia (probably when I hear baby shark )

I feel nostalgic for my 40s.

In 20 years, if I'm still around, I'm sure I'll feel nostalgic for my 60s.

And in another 20 years.... Oh.

Sure I feel it but I try and remember that every minute I spend being wistful about the past is a minute off the rest of my life.

ShreddedFeet I feel exactly the same as you - my thirties seem to have been a blur of nappies, kids, doing a million things every day - and now I can finally take time to think about myself again I'm realising how long it is since I've done that, and how different things were then.

I think these feelings come along at times of relative stasis - like you, my kids are older now and life is less hectic so my mind is a bit freer. And I'm using that time to think about me haha!

It doesn't make me sad though. Quite often in fact I'm amazed at how much I've lived through - not just the things I've personally done but all the things that have happened in the world that I remember first hand and also how much it has changed with the technological revolution. And then I feel awesome and almighty with knowledge to be feared! Rather than a slightly plump middle aged woman with a love music that is thirty years old.

Love of thirty year old music that is

This is when I find keeping a diary invaluable. I can look back and see everything wasn't the way I remember. Can also see patterns now I am older and I do wish I had done things differently/:been kinder to myself and just enjoyed it all more.

I must admit that I've been feeling rather nostalgic lately. I'm a fair bit older than you OP,I'll be 55 in a few weeks. Earlier today I suddenly thought '55?! How the hell did THAT happen?!. In my mind,I don't feel any older or different to how I did when I was 18. Unfortunately,my body tells a different story....! .
In my case,I think the nostalgic yearnings may have been triggered by a conversation that I had with my best friend of 50 years,back at the start of this summer. She mentioned a band that we'd been heavily into in our teens,and that we'd gone to see play live 4 times. We ended up reminiscing about it for a good hour,and it just brought back to me all the happy memories and how exciting it all was. I just can't help feeling a pang of regret that that part of my life is over. And yes,I DO feel a bit depressed about it too. seriously wonders whether its acceptable to be a 55 year old rocker.

I haven't had a particularly good life to get nostalgic about - so when I catch myself dwelling on such things I soon talk myself out of it.

Turns out my family are toxic, my friends didn't like me all that much anyway and every day with the kids is like World War 3 because one has autism and really struggles with his behaviour. I think things would have been better if I'd been more attractive. Too late now.

Alot of bellyaching going on in this thread! Talk about maudlin. I feel lucky to make it to 40 after seeing a fair few people around me die young. I try to always look forward!

Could be that my youngest child is only a toddler so I don't have time to dwell on the past though?

It's probably to do with lack of empathy, La, something which isn't always age related.

DH and I play music from our younger days to the DCs and it’s terribly bittersweet. Both of us lost parents quite young and the late DPs were very musical while the living ones aren’t.

We’re on holiday in my late DF’s home country at the moment and he would have loved taking the DCs out into the rainforests . The youngest especially adores wildlife and is fearless.
DF died when our eldest was 4 and never met the younger three. I’m feeling very wobbly at the moment.

It’s a symptom of loving and having been loved though isn’t it? That’s what I tell myself when I feel shit about what could have been.

I'm 56 and I've been reminiscing earlier with my teenage DD. She went to a Gay Pride festival this afternoon and I was telling her that when I was in my twenties I worked for a firm that printed the very first Gay magazine in Manchester. I was the typesetter. It brought back so many memories of all the other things I did at that time. I was single, going to clubs, on holiday with friends. Never at home, not a care in the world. So much has happened since then it feels like I lived another life. Treasure your youth.

It's not like mid life crisis is it? My husband missing his young life so badly that became depressed.

I am the opposite, I am quite happy to leave my past and look forward (apart from aging).

I would like to go back and do a few things differently. I wouldn’t have married my first husband, and I would have climbed higher in my career before settling down and having kids.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing eh?!

I had my first child at 17, I’m feeling nostalgic this week about everything! About all the things that could have been different. Both parents died while I was in my twenties and that still bothers me, sorting funerals out in your early twenties isnt that fun. I felt ok about it all till my son got his gcse results this week ( all 7’s and 8’s by the way 😀) I have a strong feeling about what could/should have been, and how life could/should have been different and I feel bad about it. I’m 34

I remember my grandmother looking at her face and mine in the mirror when she was in her mid 90’s and I was in my early 30’s and she told me that “Hindsight isn’t just looking at your own arse, darling....” She told me how she didn’t realize it at the time, but she felt the most at home in her body and mind in her 40’s, and that she thought that the definition of middle-aged should be shifted to 60. (She was an awesome human!) I am trying to remind myself of this, when I make old lady noises getting off the sofa or out of bed aged 46, or can’t do a decent winged eyeliner because my lids are crepey and beginning to sag (not that I could before, either, btw...). I smile when I see that girls have begun wearing Doc Martens again (oh, the nostalgia!) and my daughter thinks they’re fabulous and wants some too. I told her I’d think about it when she can sing along to the Stone Roses.

OP I absolutely get where you are coming from!

I am 39 and will turn 40 at the end of this month- was always the youngest at school!

My DC2 was born earlier this month and realistically I think they will be our last baby, although to be honest I'd like 3.

Recently, I've thought about friends & acquaintances from over 20 years ago. Maybe it's linked to people getting in touch re new baby etc

I find myself looking back over the 90s, when I was a teenager/finishing school & heading off to university.

I'll admit that I yearn to go back to a time before smart phones, endless screen time, social media obsession etc

I find the music & songs from the 90s a very powerful thing, evoking so many memories