The only thing worse than having to suck it up and be responsible for yourself is not sucking it up and being responsible for yourself. I chose, in my 30s, to go back to school and get the PhD I’d always intended to get. Long story short, the plans my wife and I had in place to support ourselves financially fell through, through no fault of our own. My parents have been offering significant financial support for a while now, and it sucks. They’re in a position where they can do this without any real difficulty on their part, and they’re behind us 100%, and I know that I’m doing the right thing, and we’ll be better off in the long run, but still. Living off mom and dad’s dime at this time in life is pretty damned miserable.
What have you got against Rigmarole’s parents?
A goodly part of being an adult is to get over on the one hand expecting one’s parents to solve all one’s problems, and on the other hand blaming all one’s problems on them.
Can’t cook? Can’t clean? Can’t figure out interest on a loan? There are solutions to these problems …
Another aspect is to realize that your parents were once standing in your shoes. For the most part they are neither saints nor devils, just ordinary people generally attempting (and of course sometimes failing) to do their best from day to day.
The only way through the sucky parts of life, is, well, through. Just keep going. It will get easier.
Stop taking money from your parents, and stop expecting they owe you something more, than you’ve been given. If you’re jealous of trust fund babies deal with it by growing up, instead of blaming your parents. You sound intelligent enough to recognize that jealously is a stupid and wasted emotional response.
I think you feel unloved, because you grew up in a world where love was measured in being showered with things/stuff/opportunities. You claim you rejected the ‘stuff as love’ dynamic, but I’d say you need to look a little closer at that issue.
My best advice is to go do something you’re proud of. It doesn’t matter what it is, truly. Just so that it makes you proud of yourself. Go give out $5 bills at the bus depot, go work a shift in a homeless shelter, spend a day helping an aging neighbour do yardwork, ask at the church who could use a hand, or a ride, etc. Seek it out whenever you’re feeling unfulfilled and, I think, you’ll find things turning around in your life, mostly from a change in your attitude, not your circumstances!
“If life seems to have gotten harder, you’ve probably just levelled up.”
It doesn’t sound like your parents did you any favors by spoiling you, but it really is up to you to make of it what you will. This lesson is just one of the many that you are going to have to learn to live with in your life.
So you have to decide how you want go forward. Things happen in life. Some good, some bad and everything in between. The only thing you can really control is how you react to it all.
I could bitch and moan about the lack of opportunities that I had being born in to a very poor family, but in the end, I’m only hurt more by not moving past it.
I’m the complete opposite.
I’m 32 and grew up spoiled in a rich upper class family. I had everything I ever wanted. Big house, parents bought me a bmw. I had lots of video game systems: atari, nintendo, Sega Genesis, Turbographix 16, etc. Went to a top private school and my parents paid for college.
Now I live in a small 1 bed apartment. I have no car, no cable tv, no smart phone, no pets, no plants, no wife, no kids. I eat beans and rice and pbj mostly. I just got broadband internet 2 months ago for the first time. And just got my first cell phone 1 year ago. I work at a low skill $11.45/hr job that I spend 2 hours a day commuting to and fro on my bicycle.
But I love my adult life. I feel so free and independent. I have no responsibilities and no worries. I live minimally, but I can afford anything I want. I have a trust fund and could buy fancy cars and a big house with cash if I wanted. But I’ve had all those things and it is such a hassle maintaining material possessions. I will never go back to it.
My mom thinks I’m crazy. She drives a Bently and flies first class all over the world while I ride a bicycle to the 99 cent store to buy ramen. She keeps insisting on buying me a car and a house, but I won’t let her.
The funny thing is, when I was in my early 20s, I had a serious entitlement mentality. Why should I have to work? Work is for suckers! I was the creative type, I should spend all of my time creating, not working.
Within a few short years, my parents (who didn’t spoil me in the least) almost begged me to move back home with them so that they could take care of me. The very idea was repugnant.
I’d live in the tiniest, crappiest little apartment ever (and have) and walk to work every day (and have) and eat Ramen (and have) just to have my independence. I’d never, ever, move back in with my parents, even at the worst parts of my life.
Now I am much, much better off, and TBH I am grateful for those times - they ensure I will work hard to never have those times.
You need to listen to Tim Minchin:
Well, in theory, your folks should have gradually started requiring more and more responsibility and self-sufficiency from you, so that when you did get out of school and were on your own, there wasn’t such culture shock.
It sounds like your Dad was trying, even if he was going about it a bit harshly; it’s not always a competition or some sort of cosmic musical chairs game.
I think a more accurate way to put it is that once you’re on your own, nobody owes you a damn thing, nothing’s really free, and you have to work hard and plan ahead if you want more than you have, whether those things are material or not.
Everyone generally works full-time to have not much early on; that’s part of being 26. Very few people are all that comfortable in their early-mid 20s, and the ones that are either planned ahead and work hard, or got lucky. By the time you’re in your late 20s, you ought to have an idea of what you want to do career-wise, and can start to plan about how to make that happen (move cities, change industries, etc…)
The freedom is the best part; at 26 I moved to a different city because I had more friends there and potentially more job prospects. Didn’t have a job lined up, but did get an apartment with an old college buddy.
I couldn’t do that now; I have a wife and child to move, and a house that would need to be sold. Plus, I’d have to have a lot more money saved if I planned to move without a job like I did back in 1999.
I understand where you’re coming from.
I never found booze and drugs alluring, so the desire to get out on my own so I could do ‘bad things’ never interested me. Because I was a good kid, my parents would give me money for movies or books or whatever when I wanted it. My teen years were as the lone basement dweller with no siblings, so I didn’t need to get out to be independent.
Mom said she expected me to pick up cooking and cleaning by watching her do it - when I tried to do it myself, she would do it over again.
I’m not in the same position as you, exactly. I have to work, my parents aren’t rich enough to buy me a house or support me, but they still spoil me. I left home because it’s what you do as an adult, not because I was itching to get out. Well, I wanted to get out because my dad was an alcoholic, but if my mom had decided to just leave him I would have happily gone with her.
While I agree that being an adult is hard, I think I didn’t really have this problem because I had university as a transition period.
When I went off to school, I had very little money. What I did have went to food, rent or tuition. I worked part time jobs just to be able to afford that. I asked for things like shampoo for my birthday.
So, from that perspective, it was pretty tough. But I knew that it would be 5 years of this and then I would have a real job where I made money. I knew it would get better.
But I had untold freedom and the ability to learn about it with all the other students (who became friends) who were thrown into the same boat. I loved the freedom so much, I rarely dwelled on being broke. We made our own fun (mostly by being silly or playing card games). It was awesome.
Then when I moved onto the next stage, I had significantly more money (working full time will do that for you) which made things seem better. I certainly didn’t have the same standard of living as I did before I went to school but it was so much better than when I was in school that I failed to notice.
Now I have scrimped and saved (and worked hard) and I have achieved what I wanted to in terms of standard of living but it took a good 10 years of being on my own before I could say that. I still don’t have everything that my parents do. I have what I have and I appreciate it all.
The OP makes me think of Ferris Bueller about six months after he leaves home.
Just wait - eventually you’ll have those kids you want, and then THEY’LL be livin’ the idyllic life of childhood and you’ll be not only putting your OWN dishes in the dishwasher, but THEIRS. And doing EXTRA loads of laundry. And paying bills FOR THEM. There will be several years where you do nothing but work, take care of children and sleep. Relationships? Yeah, right, after potty training - you might get to say hello to your spouse. Leisure time - ha! Actually finishing a novel - like anyone has the time or attention span! I didn’t see any grown up television for five years.
There is no way to get over the feeling except to just wait for it to go away.
And it will. You will get hardened and tough and you will look back on your life now and say, “Man, what was I whining about? I was trippin’!”
You don’t have to make yourself feel guilty by thinking about the starving children in Africa. That might work for some people, but that never works on me. The problem with this logic is that pain isn’t relative. There will always be someone worse than you. Even the guy who is sleeping under a highway overpass with blistered feet and an empty stomach is better off than someone else. That doesn’t mean his pain is dumb or wrong or inappropriate.
Remember when you were a kid and you had to psyche yourself into getting into the cold swimming pool? You’d put your toe in and have chills just thinking about getting in there. But everyone else did it and is having fun, so it can’t be that bad, right? So you jump in and lo and behold, it’s as bad as you feared. It’s so COLD! It’s HORRIBLE! You want to jump out and get back on the warm pavement.
But eventually you decide the only way to get over the discomfort is to just dunk your head in. Fully submerse yourself and you’ll forget about the warmth up above. And that’s what you do. And sure enough, a few minutes later you’re swimming just like everyone else. And having a good time, doing stuff you couldn’t do when you weren’t in the pool.
That’s kind of like how being an adult is. It’s shocking and brutal at first, and you just want a time-out. But after a few years of being submersed in it, you almost forget how it was to be a kid. Or you look back at that life and see that the advantages of being an adult outweigh life as a kid. It may take you longer than usual to get to this point, but it will come one day.
There’s no rule saying you can’t be a self-indulgent adult. Just find a job that will support the standard of living you’re used to, and it’s all good.
I can’t wait!
(No really, I’ve given it some thought. I can wait. ;))
I don’t know that I think it’s the perspective that matters so much as making a difference.
I think it can be hard to feel like a cog in a wheel, especially if your parents made a big deal of you as a child. Once you’re an adult, you just don’t seem to matter as much. Work is just a means to an end. Life can seem weirdly empty once it’s not so taken up with endless fun times. Doing something like volunteering can be a way to get your feet under you, to say, “This is who I am. This is what is meaningful to me.” It’s a way of saying that you are more than a job, more than a dollar sign, more than what you can afford, more than your car or your house or your clothes. It’s a way to take possession of your time in a way that wasn’t possible as a child.
“I changed this thing.” “I matter.”
I know 
But there is a parent whine of “why do I have to be the one to cook all the meals, clean up after all the meals, give everyone a bath, pick up toys?! I’m not the one who got strained squash on the ceiling, I shouldn’t have to clean it up!”
Of course, this is why my kids probably won’t mind the transition…because now they have to do the dishes, help with the laundry, cook meals and mow the lawn. After a Saturday spent helping with laundry for four, cleaning three bathrooms and vacuuming a living room, family room and den - their college/post college apartment will seem like a breeze.
This is… really profound.
I suggested volunteering upthread, but I want to be clear I didn’t mean it in a judgmental, ‘‘oh you should just be grateful for what you have’’ sort of way. It’s just that one of the best things I ever did for myself was take a class about the child welfare system, even though I knew I wasn’t going into that field. I learned about things that made my blood curdle. It didn’t erase the pain of my past, but it certainly put it into a different perspective. Now when I look back at my own childhood, I see just as much privilege as I do pain. God, what some kids go through I can’t even fathom.
But even more than that, volunteering/social work in general gave me a sense of empowerment because I’ve seen many of life’s societal ills be addressed in concrete, helpful ways, I’ve seen people overcome their circumstances and become the directors of their own lives, and that is huge and has helped me to do the same with my own life. Problems are now a call to action instead of something to complain about.
I know Rigs is talking about a different sort of thing, but I think that feeling of disillusionment can be universal regardless of how you were raised. And one way to get through that disillusionment, in my experience, is to go engage with the world and try to put something positive in it.