Coming out of the ice seventy years later is a good thing, in its way. Everyone who you loved, everyone who you need to need to you -- either they're either dead, or they's stepped away from the people or things that replaced you. Spouses, career, ambition. The children are grown and have lives of their own. If Steve meets Peggy in her home, attended by a live-in nurse, husband long in the ground, children living on different continents, career set aside twenty years ago, she has room for him in her life. She can sit with him in the garden; she has time to enjoy his visits.

Steve coming out of the ice in this time period, on the other hand -- true, the world is less radically different, but imagine him meeting this Peggy. It doesn't go well.

Imagine him meeting this Bucky. It doesn't go well.