What do you wish people would stop romanticizing, because you’ve lived the reality of it?

[HazelMaker]

The 1990s

This. ^

Travelling for long periods of time, especially solo, past a certain age.

I've done it, a lot, and had a blast - but travel like that was always something I did when young with the view that it wasn't forever. I realised pretty early on that I wanted a permanent home, good friends, "my" place. As I got older, and still hadn't met a husband or had kids, I took a few shorter trips but it gets a bit poignant when you want the mundane but lovely family life and not the travel of your youth.

People can't understand why the idea of travel (especially instead of having kids) doesn't fill me with joy anymore.

Spending time at any social event that involves only other females (and is bigger than a group of 3 or 4 at the most).

Undercurrent of bitchy and I never feel relaxed. Not that I bother nowadays, it's always a no.

Camping in the UK.

Just saw this on Twitter, and it put me in mind of this thread... The 'tweet' read 'they were poorer than kids are today, but much happier!'

There is a lot of this 'we 'ad fuck all - but we were 'appy' bollox on the internet isn't there? 😆

Errrr, yeah, not ALL kids has a blissful childhood in the 1950s,1960s, and 1970s!

So sorry to hear that, it must be so tough for you and your child, and sending you an un-Mumsnet hug

What a truly unpleasant thing to say.

I enjoy eating out - it's just that the food is often disappointing. I am genuinely surprised and impressed that you are thrilled - do tastebuds suffer from a lack of imagination or do you make assumptions about people who disagree with you? I don't know anyone who constantly tries to get money off - what kind of people do you spend time with?

Seconding those who said marriage, being a SAHM, being a single mother, making things from “scratch,” growing own vegetables, foreign holidays when kids are young (same shit, different place) California, especially LA, the mafia/Crays/gangster connections, oxbridge, university in general.

also maybe we should use this thread to get others to unromanticise things we romanticise…

like I romanticise a town/village community, everyone looking after each other, being friends, contra services, people who check in on you and help each other with odd jobs round the house

i romanticise being thin and beautiful . I just think it makes people nicer to you and your life a much better experience

I romanticise the swinging 60s, free love and equal rights

‘having it all’ for women.

I can’t be the only one who thinks we’ve been sold a big fat lie.. we don’t have equality, we have some sort of ‘parity’ with men in modern life. But the work that comes having children, in society where there’s no village anymore, raising them, being married and all that this ´costs’ us as women just gets largely ignored. That’s how it seems to me! I’m not keen to go back to the 1950s, but I am genuinely baffled sometimes at how we’ve arrived at a point where the human race (in the west anyway) as a whole society doesn’t value having offspring!?

Anorexia, especially the media portrayal that it only happens to rich, beautiful, sporty, white teenagers who get straight As at school and are magically cured by one impatient stay and meeting a boy.

And winter, especially on MN.

I totally romanticise this… please say more!

Nobody has ever romanticized that! I lived it and heard others mentioning but never romantically.

THIS! ^

Well, her dad was a Vicar--she knew the real story!

Travelling for work (endless bland hotel rooms, early starts and late finishes and hanging around airports)
Buying a property with a seperate bit you can AirBnb (loads of work, entitled people, stress and anxiety over whether they will give you a 4 star rating because the weather wasn’t great, tiptoeing around your own property lest you mar someone’s weekend break)
Buying a property with lots of land And ability to be ‘self sufficient’ (takes every hour of the day to tend to the bloody place, fruit and veg with various infestations, everything ripening at once so loads of wastage, so much fucking jam).

Having a big garden.

Why did you have to scrape the ice off?

Living in Devon

But also

Living in Yorkshire 😂

@Notthisnonsenseagain

like I romanticise a town/village community, everyone looking after each other, being friends, contra services, people who check in on you and help each other with odd jobs round the house.

I know some others will have different experiences, but in my (very rural) village - where no-one comes unless they live here as the road here only goes to the village - there is a good community. I have made more friends here and felt more welcome here than anywhere I have ever lived - as an adult. (DH feels the same.) We have lived in towns, and cities, and suburbs, and whilst it was OK/people were OK, there was never the same sense of community that my village has. It's wonderful and I absolutely love it.

Living in a country that British people often go on to holiday to.

You’re so right!!

I mean the open prisons, where they live on a country estate in pods are a bit hi de hi

I loved the 70s, would go back in a heartbeat.

Home education.