Honestly I really appreciate having a throwaway account to ask these sort of personal questions to other comrades in a well-meaning community.
Here’s my living situation, regardless of current disability (still not gone btw if anything it’s morphed now lol)
I’m 31 and live “at home” in that the house is technically my parents’. However, they themselves work and live abroad, so it’s just me and my 2 brothers living there for most of the year. Parents come back once in a while to see family and hang out.
When people ask I try to remember and say my brothers and I are housemates, basically. I feel the word housemate/roommate has a more ‘serious’ tone, like more grown up lol than saying “I live with my brothers”.
– Before proceeding, what are your thoughts on this so far? –
I ask because now at 30 I feel that I’m “stuck” there, still living with my parents, even though they only come back a few times a year. I feel like I should outgrow this at my age, do everything like an adult, so I’m wondering what the good people of lemmygrad think when they hear about this living situation. Is it off-putting, is it smart, or do you just not care?
I feel like I’m still living in my childhood home, in my childhood town, with my parents, even though as a kid I only lived in that house for like 3 years before we moved away for work lol. I came back in 2012 and have been living here non-stop since then, I have never rented my own place or tried moving out. I think some part of me is scared of doing it, but that’s another topic lol.
I guess it’s a source of shame in some aspects to still be in that living situation at my age. It feels like people my age are having their own families, have been living alone and working since their 20s, and I’m here not ready to take the plunge at 31.
Despite this I remind myself that I’m otherwise completely independent, aside from the rent situation. Well, I don’t pay all the bills but people don’t need to know that lol, and it wouldn’t be a huge dent to split the internet bill three-way. But I pay my personal bills (groceries, phone, health insurance etc). I also get access to the car they leave here but I fill the gas. I guess that’s another source of shame, when I drive and friends ask about the car and they learn it’s my parents car lol. I’m not sure they even care, but I feel like I’m not performing up to expectations, you know? Like I’m seen as a kid, or someone who refuses to grow up and take responsibilities.
Don’t worry about it. It’s only weird in atomized western cultures, it’s normal for generations of families to live together. An author I like, Xiran Jay Zhao, talked in a video about how yeah of course they live with their parents even though they’re in their ¿late 20s/early 30s?, it’s not weird in their culture, it let’s them focus on their writing career, they love their parents and enjoy being around them. I’ve got a friend in his mid-30s who says “hell yeah of course I live with my parents, I love my mom and dad and like getting to see them, my girlfriend and I get to have our own personal space so we’re not up in each other’s business all the time, I help my parents out, it’s cheaper than renting on my own or dealing with roommates I don’t know or trust to be covid-safe”.
If it works for you, own it and be glad that this is working for you, because plenty of people could benefit from getting to live with their parents but we can’t for various reasons.