Suburban Home... Am I crazy?

[Before you can make things better, you have to stop making them worse...]

I really need to hash some stuff out concerning myself.  Maybe you all can help.

I grew up in the suburbs, and I hated it.  I don't know if it was directly a result of living with my controlling BPD parents, but I hated it.

I never wanted to go back there.  I had no good memories at all. 

So, shortly after my wife and I got married, we rented an apartment.  It was a great apartment and somehow we got a great rate on it.  We were saving money.  We were having fun.  Most of all, I felt I was freeing myself from my childhood.

Then, out of the blue, my parents said that they had a plot of land next to their house they wanted to give me so I could build a home.  I absolutely refused.  There was no way in hell that I had any interest in moving back there.  I was finally finding some happiness.

Well, my wife really wanted to build a home there.  She worked on me and worked on me.  At the time I thought we were a team, so I gave in.

We have lived here for 20+ years and I have never felt like it was truly my home.  I have my parents nosing around.  My other neighbor is always offering to spy on my kids when I have to leave town to alert me if they are having parties.  (As info, I have given my kids a great deal of freedom and they are excelling academically and they feel no reason to have a party.)

I feel like it has been one long slow strangulation of my soul for me here.  No one understands this.

I have never felt truly free and at ease here.  In fact, I still hate it!  I dislike the suburbs.  I dislike seeing people let go of their dreams for security and a well trimmed lawn.

I always wanted to travel and do things.  I get to travel for work and I am grateful for that.  I am grateful for my home and family.  But, something inside just doesn't like it.

So, I understand that I have a few narc traits due to my childhood.  Is this a narcissistic problem?  Or is it just who I am?

Is it normal for people to dislike uniformity and homeowners associations and busybody neighbors?  Or am I missing out on living my life?

This really concerns me. 

[workinprogress]

I really need to hash some stuff out concerning myself.  Maybe you all can help.

I grew up in the suburbs, and I hated it.  I don't know if it was directly a result of living with my controlling BPD parents, but I hated it.

I never wanted to go back there.  I had no good memories at all. 

So, shortly after my wife and I got married, we rented an apartment.  It was a great apartment and somehow we got a great rate on it.  We were saving money.  We were having fun.  Most of all, I felt I was freeing myself from my childhood.

Then, out of the blue, my parents said that they had a plot of land next to their house they wanted to give me so I could build a home.  I absolutely refused.  There was no way in hell that I had any interest in moving back there.  I was finally finding some happiness.

Well, my wife really wanted to build a home there.  She worked on me and worked on me.  At the time I thought we were a team, so I gave in.

We have lived here for 20+ years and I have never felt like it was truly my home.  I have my parents nosing around.  My other neighbor is always offering to spy on my kids when I have to leave town to alert me if they are having parties.  (As info, I have given my kids a great deal of freedom and they are excelling academically and they feel no reason to have a party.)

I feel like it has been one long slow strangulation of my soul for me here.  No one understands this.

I have never felt truly free and at ease here.  In fact, I still hate it!  I dislike the suburbs.  I dislike seeing people let go of their dreams for security and a well trimmed lawn.

I always wanted to travel and do things.  I get to travel for work and I am grateful for that.  I am grateful for my home and family.  But, something inside just doesn't like it.

So, I understand that I have a few narc traits due to my childhood.  Is this a narcissistic problem?  Or is it just who I am?

Is it normal for people to dislike uniformity and homeowners associations and busybody neighbors?  Or am I missing out on living my life?

This really concerns me. 

[fromheeltoheal]

Home is where the heart is.  Some people like the 'burbs, manicured lawns, safe for kids, neighbors who are trying to live the way they are, even though they may not know each other.  Other people hate it, find it vanilla and suffocating.  Some like a small apartment in the middle of a big city, some like a ranch house on 40 acres, some like living in hotels, moving a lot and having no fixed address.  To each his own and home is where the heart is.

I could not live next to my parents, it would feel like I wasn't moving on and it would be too intrusive, although I do live in the 'burbs far from my parents and I like it; it's a house I've turned into a home.  Some of my neighbors are my friends, some aren't but it doesn't matter.

So looking inside, what does your heart tell you?  Where do you want to live?  When are you going to move?

[workinprogress]

Home is where the heart is.  Some people like the 'burbs, manicured lawns, safe for kids, neighbors who are trying to live the way they are, even though they may not know each other.  Other people hate it, find it vanilla and suffocating.  Some like a small apartment in the middle of a big city, some like a ranch house on 40 acres, some like living in hotels, moving a lot and having no fixed address.  To each his own and home is where the heart is.

I could not live next to my parents, it would feel like I wasn't moving on and it would be too intrusive, although I do live in the 'burbs far from my parents and I like it; it's a house I've turned into a home.  Some of my neighbors are my friends, some aren't but it doesn't matter.

So looking inside, what does your heart tell you?  Where do you want to live?  When are you going to move?

My heart tells me to go to the rural south.  I could probably transfer fairly easily.

I don't want to appear to be ungrateful, but trying to be self-sacrificing for the family and giving everything I have has left me feeling a little short changed in life.  Does that make sense?

On a side note, my wife has messed my credit up fairly bad over the years.  Making a move might not be possible.  Plus, she absolutely refuses to leave our town due to her controlling parents.

[Ihope2]

Hi Workinprogress

No, it does not sound like you are crazy.  In fact, it sounds like your parents have been enmeshing you in their lives, under the guise of "family togetherness" and subconsciously you have been feeling this all along!

I am a 45years of age woman, and guess what, I live just around the corner from my mother.  Up until recently, I would have laughed it off and affectionately called it "living in the family ghetto", but with all that has happened to awaken me to my own reality post marriage/divorce to a man with severe BPD, I now know differently!

You see, my FOO was also very dysfunctional with divorces and stepfathers etc.  Moving around from place to place/ to another country.  Parental alienation towards my father.  I had a difficult childhood growing up with my mom and NPD stepfather, and I had a difficult young adult "launching" phase, too. In fact, perhaps I never really launched from the parental home due to many complications in my family.  I moved in with my mom again for a few years in my twenties, and then she remarried yet another difficult, angry man, and to cut a long story short, I had inherited some cash from my late father, and my mom got her husband, who is in the building industry, to build a modest house for me.  I thought it was such a great idea at the time.  But guess what, out of all the plots that were for sale in their area, he recommended that I buy a plot just down the road from them. So that is where I have been living for the past 11 years:  basically neighbours with my mother and her second NPD, possibly BPD husband! 

I know my mother has always been very enmeshed in my life and I in hers, due to FOO dynamics and me having become the parentified child all those years ago to try and prop her up emotionally.  Some years ago, she also went through a lot of health challenges, and because of a previous relationship with an untrustworthy man, she became infected with HIV and almost reached the brink of having fullblown AIDS, before medical intervention saved her.  I was the only one of her three children who found out about her health status, she tried to keep it from all of us.  This just sucked me in even more, and I would regularly be checking up on her condition and visiting her to make sure she was doing ok. 

So yes, I can absolutely relate to the whole scenario of never really having felt completely free and having ease of movement in my own home.  I sometimes feel that  it is incumbent on me for my own healing to uproot myself, put my property on the market, and for the first time in my life, make a decision that is purely based on my own wishes as to where I am going to live next!

[workinprogress]

Hi Workinprogress

No, it does not sound like you are crazy.  In fact, it sounds like your parents have been enmeshing you in their lives, under the guise of "family togetherness" and subconsciously you have been feeling this all along!

I am a 45years of age woman, and guess what, I live just around the corner from my mother.  Up until recently, I would have laughed it off and affectionately called it "living in the family ghetto", but with all that has happened to awaken me to my own reality post marriage/divorce to a man with severe BPD, I now know differently!

You see, my FOO was also very dysfunctional with divorces and stepfathers etc.  Moving around from place to place/ to another country.  Parental alienation towards my father.  I had a difficult childhood growing up with my mom and NPD stepfather, and I had a difficult young adult "launching" phase, too. In fact, perhaps I never really launched from the parental home due to many complications in my family.  I moved in with my mom again for a few years in my twenties, and then she remarried yet another difficult, angry man, and to cut a long story short, I had inherited some cash from my late father, and my mom got her husband, who is in the building industry, to build a modest house for me.  I thought it was such a great idea at the time.  But guess what, out of all the plots that were for sale in their area, he recommended that I buy a plot just down the road from them. So that is where I have been living for the past 11 years:  basically neighbours with my mother and her second NPD, possibly BPD husband! 

I know my mother has always been very enmeshed in my life and I in hers, due to FOO dynamics and me having become the parentified child all those years ago to try and prop her up emotionally.  Some years ago, she also went through a lot of health challenges, and because of a previous relationship with an untrustworthy man, she became infected with HIV and almost reached the brink of having fullblown AIDS, before medical intervention saved her.  I was the only one of her three children who found out about her health status, she tried to keep it from all of us.  This just sucked me in even more, and I would regularly be checking up on her condition and visiting her to make sure she was doing ok. 

So yes, I can absolutely relate to the whole scenario of never really having felt completely free and having ease of movement in my own home.  I sometimes feel that  it is incumbent on me for my own healing to uproot myself, put my property on the market, and for the first time in my life, make a decision that is purely based on my own wishes as to where I am going to live next!

Ihope2, thank you for sharing.  It sounds like you have really been through it all. 

I know that getting away from FOO is probably essential now in life.  I think one has to get out on their own and learn to lean on themselves.

I know when I originally got away from them when I was around 18, my parents pretty much stalked me.  It was really bizarre.  I don't know why they didn't want me to have my own life.

[Ihope2]

In my case, it was  a case of my parents being "collapsed" at parenting when it really mattered, ie when my siblings and I were children.

But then once we had become adults, especially my mother, could not let "go" all of a sudden, and she tried to bridge the huge chasm left by her emotional neglect of us, and suddenly reappear in our lives and try to become as close as possible to her children again.  But it was all for her own needs, she was feeling bereft and insecure.

Funny how the dynamic works:  when it counts, they are absent, but then later in life when the children have moved on with their own lives, the parents suddenly have this great need to be close again.  Push-pull, abandonement vs enmeshment.  It speaks of an unhealthy pattern of relating that they have carried with them from their own FOO dynamics.

[Harri]

Hi worknprogress, how are you?

So, I understand that I have a few narc traits due to my childhood.  Is this a narcissistic problem?  Or is it just who I am?  Is it normal for people to dislike uniformity and homeowners associations and busybody neighbors?  Or am I missing out on living my life?

I don't know if it is a narcissistic problem or not.  I do know that this has been weighing on you (I remember you mentioning it in a thread on the coping and healing board one time).  It sounds to me like you have denied yourself some important things for a long time.  I can relate to that as I did the same.  So like I said, I don't know if it is narcissistic or not, but I think it is natural and understandable given the fact that you have put others needs ahead of yours.  That in itself is not a bad thing but I think it only works when you are in a relationship with someone who is capable of doing the same.  Each takes the other into consideration and then decisions are made jointly.  That is my take on it, though I have to admit that healthy relationships are not exactly my strong point.   

On a side note, my wife has messed my credit up fairly bad over the years.  Making a move might not be possible.  Plus, she absolutely refuses to leave our town due to her controlling parents.

This may be a crazy suggestion, but (!) why not check your credit and see if it really is bad enough to keep you from moving.  I think that would be a first step in finding out if your desire is even a possibility at this point.  The next steps might be more difficult, but it might be easier to see options if you take care of the obstacles that you can tackle fairly easily.  What do you think?

[workinprogress]

Posted by: Ihope2

"Funny how the dynamic works:  when it counts, they are absent, but then later in life when the children have moved on with their own lives, the parents suddenly have this great need to be close again."

Ihope2, I can understand what you are talking about.  I've experienced that first hand myself.

Harri, you have some good points.  I think that I haven't really experienced reciprocal relationships in my life.  I just give and give and give.