… but I still paid for a separate place with my fiancee.
(sorry, got interrupted by a phone call during the five-minute edit window and didn’t finish polishing the above post. Like, by adding a conclusion to it.)
From the point of view of a parent with teenagers…
We built this house to raise kids in. It isn’t the neighborhood we’d pick if we didn’t have kids - and we are looking forward to moving out of the 'burbs. It has more bedrooms than we’d need if we didn’t have kids, and more living spaces than I want to clean - but that is handy with kids and their friends. If I had all this space and no kids, I could set my sewing machine up upstairs - but instead its in the basement where it seldom gets used. Or, I could give up the space and move to a smaller house that would take less time to clean.
I love my kids, but eventually I hope they move out. I’ll move into a townhouse with no yard - we aren’t yard people - but my son likes to throw a ball, or shoot baskets. Or a condo downtown where I don’t care about the schools. I’ll have loud sex with my husband - like we had before the kids were born. I’ll know that if someone left the knife coated with jelly on the counter, it was probably me - maybe my husband - but I won’t be yelling “who left the knife coated with jelly on the counter” to discover that nobody wants to confess to the infraction. My carpets will stay cleaner with two adults in the house - and yes, as my kids become adults, there will be somewhat less stomping into the house trailing snirt, but two adults trail less snirt than four do. My fridge will contain the things I eat, or my husband eats - and I won’t need to make room for the milk behind the cans of pop that I don’t drink, or room in the freezer for fish behind stacks of frozen pizza and chicken nuggets.
Wisest advice in the whole thread!
At that salary, and with room and board provided, you’d be able to bank a hell of a lot more money than you would in Toronto (even living with your parents). It’s possible that 4 years or so in the backwoods would get you the down payment you need for that expensive house in Toronto you want so badly.
Maybe your parents would be reassured if you explained to them that you’re planning to fly away the way a boomerang does, sailing off for a short time only to loop around and come back in the end?
That’s not what I was objecting to and you know it. I was objecting to the concept that if i reject a man for living at home I have a stick up my ass.
I was pointing out that my number one priority has always been my independence from my parents. So of course that would be a priority to me in a man. That doesn’t mean I have a stick up my ass. It just means I know I would not be compatible with a man who lives at home. Other people have different priorities, and its not fair to expect me not to judge them but its ok for them to judge me?
I have been to Nunavut, and not only are they NOT racist, they are the exact opposite - extremely warm and welcoming.
It sounds like your parents want to keep you tied to them, and you want to let them.
Hi weemart, and welcome to our message boards. I’m sorry for your loss, and good luck with the legal red tape on her estate.
I’m having a hard time understanding from your post if you have somewhere to live or not, but for whatever it’s worth, having your life upended like that is one helluva special circumstance, and I think staying with your family for just a little bit while you sort out all the broken pieces is not even close to being inappropriate. Reach out for as much of your support network as you can.
That said, if you absolutely don’t want to, and you don’t have to (i.e. I misunderstood and you DO still have a place of your own in which to live) then of course, telling her “thanks, but no thanks” is just fine.
Also, ummmm … happy birthday. Such as it is. I hope just wishing you that doesn’t cause you more pain, but I didn’t want your day to go unnoticed and unmarked.
This bears repeating:
Food for thought, OP.
Considering that there’s a ‘large inheritance’ waiting, I’m not surprised about either of those things.
A large inheritance that may or may not become reality. VeroTrem, one of the things you want to remember is that your parents cannot guarantee you a large inheritance, because they can’t foresee the future. Plenty of wealthy people have lost their fortunes in the past as a result of large financial upheavals, political revolutions, huge natural disasters, etc. Plan on supporting yourself; that way any inheritance is a nice bonus rather than something you must have for your survival.
It certainly doesn’t do a lot to dispel the “spoiled rich kid” vibe present in the thread, tho.
Agreed entirely. Mostly my point was that it sounds like the money is being used both to keep him home and that he’s using it as a reason to stay.
For sure. Although I can’t honestly say what my reaction would be to living in a family where 70,000 a year, plus room and board, was something to just toss away because it’s such a small sum.
You can find racism right downtown in Toronto and Vancouver, too. I say take the internship, take it take it take it. Never miss a chance to travel and experience new things, and this is an opportunity that literally comes once in a lifetime. You want to spend your whole life living with your parents? Get out there and live your life for you while you can.
Sheezis, this is a no-brainer. DO IT
I guess I don’t see the distinction if the parents are willingly doing it rather than being pressured into it and the child is not taking advantage. This goes back to my stance that a bad guy is a bad guy no matter his living conditions. If he’s not forcing his parents to do it, if his sincerely just trying to save some money, then I don’t see a big downside to it other than the fact that some people may judge him needlessly for it.
And gifts are free to the recipient. We’re talking about his living situation, not his parents. What his parents pay is irrelevant to the discussion because its assumed they have the means to support him.
I think your mistake here is in assuming that this person will only seek girls with cars. Instead, consider that he dates random girls who may or may not have cars. If they are fine with that, who’s to say that the relationship is a bad one. Plenty of poor people don’t have cars but they still date, plenty of rich people have cars but make terrible mates. If his girlfriend has a house and doesn’t mind him staying there, then its a great relationship.
I’m simply trying to get people to consider that living at home with your parents as an adult should not be a dealbreaker. I’m not trying to win in the sense that I’m not trying to tell people they can’t take it into consideration, but just that it shouldn’t be the only one or the first one that they can’t move past
To answer your last question first: Yes, because their judgement is in response to a terribly prejudicial one by you.
What you don’t understand is that your situation created that belief in you and that belief is what a lot people have in this thread, what I described as a stick up their ass. But you don’t consider that other people do not have the same experiences as you. For other people, their #1 priority may be saving money, financial stability, a car, or family togetherness. Why do you consider a negative in a man who may have those as priorities rather than being independent? It may be that the parents are like roommates and the man is independent for the most part, so what would he have to prove by spending a lot of money to move out?
What I see is that you have a lot of assumptions about people who live with their parents based on your own experiences with your own parents that you are transferring onto others. That is what is think is the stick and that is what I think you need to get over. Not everyone needs to be live alone. You can certainly imagine a man who fulfills every other need you want but still lives at home when you two meet. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad guy not worth considering. Just consider it, get to know him first (I know you’re with someone already, I mean the hypothetical you), see if his living situation is something that is immutable or if it even gets in the way of your relationship at all.
There is likely a cultural aspect here, and in that regard the norms of some are not the norms of others. In my wife’s family, you live with your parents until you are married. My wife has middle-aged relatives who, while owning houses that they are renting out for income, still live with their parents. Its not seen as parasitic, in fact quite the opposite. In fact when my wife and I were dating and my wife’s mom was asking her about me, when it turned out I had been living on my own for years she was shocked, because to them for an unmarried adult child to live on his own means they got kicked out or had some kind of family/drug/legal problems. For them, “normal” was living with your family until you got married. They don’t see it as a burden but a blessing. And living with her parents didn’t “hold my wife back” from double majoring in college while supporting herself and contributing to her household by paying her share of the utilities and all of the groceries for six people. She also would do a lot of translation for her mom regarding everyday issues.
In spite of not living on her own, by being so involved in her household, my wife was very experienced with everyday and more competent than me in a lot of categories even though I had been more independent than her. Had I been still living with my mom when I met her my wife would have had no problem (her parents probably would have been less concerned she was marrying a gringo under those circumstances too).
But it depends on the relationship with your parents. In my wife’s family, everybody is very involved in supporting each other. Her family has done much more for us than my family has, and we never had to ask for any of it (they always offer). I noticed in other cultures, expectations/entitlement attitudes can end up being a little one-sided and this is where resentment starts. I moved out on my own around the same age as the OP. But my parents would have been fine if I wanted to stay indefinitely.
Also, most of the women I dated back when I was in my twenties were still living at home and it wasn’t an issue. I didn’t find having them over at my apartment to be a ‘drain’ on my resources; if anything I was the one taking advantage of the fact that they had more disposible income and a willingness to take me out for dinner/movies when I was broke. My wife was living with her parents when I met her, but she was also working a full-time job, helping her mom with the household finances, and taking care of her two disabled sisters. When her and I moved in together, the idea of paying rent, utilities, running the washing machine, cleaning up after herself, flushing the toilet, etc was not some foreign thing to her. She hit the ground running as though she had been living on her own the whole time.
The OP should keep in mind that nothing in this life is free and without strings. Sounds like his parents are banking on him taking care of them when they are old and infirm. And this likely doesn’t mean “look after the family business and the upkeep up the house”, but rather “your ass better not even think about putting us in a nursing home. Now wipe my behind. I’ve sharted again”.
I know that if I knew this was the future waiting for me, I’d be doing everything I could to enjoy my independent life while I can. If your parents aren’t old and infirm now, VeroTrem, then there’s no reason to act as if they are. You only have one life. When your parents are depending you to be the dutiful son and you can’t do whatever you want to do, you will be ruing the day you decided to put financial security above independence.
And you can cry me a fucking river about racism. You’re going to encounter racism wherever you go, I don’t care what you look like. And yet, you will find a way to deal with it, if your mind is intent on dealing with it. Do you think there are no racial minorities outside of Toronto? How is that they can make it but you’re somehow so precious that you can’t?
That you are so easily convinced by your parents indicates that you would do well to experience the world outside of their influence. You will always be naive and sheltered as long as you live with them. It’s not about the “laundry machine” anymore. It’s about becoming your own person, someone who doesn’t let other people control him.
Missed the Edit window, wanted to add:
My wife’s older sister did what the OP is thinking about (Living with parents, saving up to buy a Nice House). She bought a house in one of the more expensive parts of the Bay Area, during the housing bubble, at 19 years old. However, in order to do this, she also happened to have a fiancee (also living with his parents) doing the same. Both of them had stable full-time jobs, worked their asses off and saved up to make it happen. When they bought the house, they weren’t married yet, so they rented the house out to people and used the rent money to pay the mortgage. When they got married, they moved into a room in the house with the roommates for a few years until they were stable enough to live on their own (selling the house for a tidy profit, and upgrading to an even better house). I should point out though that my Sister in Law had the benefit of a partner with the same goals, and they were both extremely disciplined and motivated to make this happen. My wife mentioned the reason she didn’t own a house too was because she wanted to go to college (and was single at the time).
Your comment about women who have a stick up their asses was more prejudicial then her statement about her own dating preferences. Anaamika can hypothetically date who she wants (last I knew, she’s married). She’s ruling some guys out, sure. But everybody does that. She’s being strict, but not insanely unreasonable: there are practical reasons as well as personal ones that you might not want to date someone who lives with their parents. Generally we all give each other plenty of leeway in matters like this. You should probably let it drop already.
Even if someone is doing something willingly, it doesn’t mean you should always accept it. My dad offered to buy me a new couch this weekend. Totally unasked for, totally willing on his part. I told him no, because they have already been ridiculously generous with me, I don’t need a couch that much, and just because he’s willing to give it doesn’t mean I am totally free to take it.
Now, my parents have paid for other things. I have accepted other significant gifts because of some complicated internal calculations where I weigh the cost, the need, the recipient (i.e., my son or myself), the recent history of other gifts, and my own ability to provide. Sometimes it seems right to me to accept gifts, other times it seems wrong. What is important is even seeing that a calculation is needed, that it’s not okay to just take and take and take, oblivious to the imbalance.
It’s not a great relationship if one person is living a life of affluence and relative ease while the other is living one of hardship and want. It’s especially not a great relationship if the person living a life of hardship and want is actively sharing everything they have–however modest–with the other person, while the person with the life of ease is mostly taking.
Children are allowed to thoughtlessly take from their parents and peers. Adults have to be aware of give and take in relationships, and strive for balance. The OP doesn’t seem to have this sense at all: he hasn’t talked about what he can do for his parents, how his being there might help them.
That’s all fine and good if we all had infinite time to meet people and get to know them better and consider if they will or won’t make good life partners. But we don’t. If I’m spending a lot of time getting to know John who still lives at home, then that’s time I’m not spending meeting and getting to know Sean, Dave, and Paul, all of who might be better matches for me.
Since we all have limited time, most of us have preferences, and will spend more time pursuing those who meet our preferences, and not pursuing those who don’t meet our preferences. We all have filters or dealbreakers to sort through people. I know that there would be some guys who would be great for a relationship with me who live at home, but overall probably most of them wouldn’t be, so it just saves me time to pass on them.
I would go out with a guy if I knew that he was overall otherwise pretty perfect for me, but I don’t know how I would know that upfront. When I first meet someone, I don’t know enough about them to know if they’d be perfectly compatible or not. I guess if the guy was a friend of a friend, and the friend setting us up knew we’d be perfect together, then I would give it a shot. But otherwise probably not.
Seems an oddly specific dealbreaker.
When I was looking for someone, my filters were set on good looking, intelligent, good sense of humour, some interests in common, no disabling political or religious fanaticisms.
Their living arrangements were there, but pretty far down on the list - more the sort of thing that would become of concern once you already knew them.