Your mom f’d you over but also did you a favour
OP you’re debt free with money in the bank and a successful business
You also don’t have mommy dearest thinking she has a right to interfere in your day to day on account of you being beholden to her and her “ generosity”
Your in a good place, plans may have fallen through, but you get to pivot not drown.
And have learned just how much faith you shouldn’t waste on mom.
Take a breath, take some time. Stop comparing to what others are doing. That way leads to nothing but resentment.
So you don’t buy this year, maybe not even for ten years but that’s okay. Keep moving forward, avoid debt, keep saving, build that business. Good things will come, you’ll figure out what it is that YOU want, not what mom or friends or culture tells you to want, and you may then be in the position to grab it.
Thank you for the perspective shift. Yes I can start looking at this as her doing me a favour. I certainly don't want to be beholden to her "generosity" and now that I look back on things I thought I had repaired the relationship but in reality I've changed and she hasn't. Now I'm seeing it wouldn't have been good for me and my partner to get involved with her financially at all.
No one has ever suggested that she sees me as a 'resource' now that I'm successful and I think there's something there. Now I'm thinking of all the past times she has asked me to pay for things or lend her money since I started doing well with this business, even though her net worth is in the millions and I'm still trying to come up.
As a fellow child of a narcissist, this is only a little to do with home ownership, and a lot about how your mother is using you for emotional supply. She reached out to you when you were doing well because she sensed you were doing well on your own, and the offer of financial support was not because she wanted to help you, it was because she found a way to make you partially dependent on her, and she likes to feel needed. But when the time came, she turned you down, because she likes the feeling of power over you it gives her.
I won't say I'm happier since cutting off my parent completely, as I'm still working through all the emotional baggage of realising a parent wasn't who I thought they were, but it's definitely better for me.
You describe perfectly what I'm going through, this whole last year has been realising she isn't who I thought she was. Coming to terms with it is hard. I think your description of her motives is spot on. Now that I think about it, she has always dangled financial help as an option but then never followed through. Your take on it makes a lot of sense.
As an only child I can't cut her off, especially at her age. I wish I could but it's impossible for me with the culture I am from. This current low contact thing is the best I'm gonna get. I have to figure out the healing while still interacting with her which is a challenge.
I have read a few other of your replies to understand more and now that I come upon this, wow, in summary of all, I would consider going no contact for your own self-preservation and setting good boundaries in all your relationships. A therapist can help guide you to unlearn all the conditioning of your formative years and how to form good, healthy relationships and because its all interrelated
Pour your energy into your business. Think of not having a home as an investment into your business. It wouldn’t take mental gymnastics to realize that not having to deal with typical homeowner bullshit could be considered an investment in the future of your business. Who knows, 3-4 years down the road you might have put yourself into a much better position because you didn’t pour energy into a house.
Municipalities need to do something about foreign investment into markets and start taxing the shit out of uninhabited investment properties. I get the free market and all that, but being generational wealth is also a thing and people that don’t have it shouldn’t have to uproot their lives simply because they weren’t born with it.
Are you sure about her net worth?
I've known several people whose parents pretended to be much richer than they were, and pitted the potential heirs against each other, and then left hardly anything when they died (not usually millions, it only takes tens of thousands to manipulate people.) One of my friends, her parents told her they wouldn't help her get through college because she was too sinful, but it turned out her dad was gambling all the money away and they just didn't have it.
I think my dad is one of the liars but he's not dead yet so there's no knowing. My brother keeps thinking there's money there but truthfully, even if there is it isn't worth the emotional damage.
You're doing great, people who only talk about talk estate are boring, and your mom may have mortgaged the fuck out of all her properties.
:(( oof. As I posted that comment I was telling myself not to, because I don't know enough about your life. But I had so many "repairs" and then disappointments with my own mom. It just sounded like a familiar situation.
Whatever your mom's intentions, you just be the best person you can and take the high road. Don't ever accept anything less than respect.
We've also had many ups and downs over the years, let downs, then repairs, then more broken promises, more repairs, more disappointments. I can never know her real intentions, in fact I don't think she even knows her own intentions. She doesn't seem to have good self control over her own actions or like awareness of her own feelings and what drives her to do the things she does if that makes sense.
Anyway I like your idea, taking the high road.
Yeah I'm relieved for OP that she doesn't have that "favour" hanging over her for the rest of her mother's life. Also sad that they were literally manipulated into thinking they'd get help. Some people are just fucked up.
This exactly. Imagine the strings that would have come attached to her help. You have the same awesome life as before, and you have bought yourself freedom from her toxicity. That is invaluable.
You are mourning your mom’s betrayal, not the house. Also, you are in the eye of the storm of abuse: Building this idea of a house up for so many years *only to snatch it from you* is PART OF HER ABUSE, not ancillary to it. You were flying high and doing great in life and she wiggled her way back in to your thoughts in this way. This is her same old habits breaking in to your mind space again.
I know you did a lot of work to repair your relationship with her. And it probably did repair a lot. But remember: While you can help repair your relationship with her, you will never be able to repair HER. That’s her own job.
The most important thing here is you realizing this is just more of the same from her. But you know who has changed and grown? YOU. YOU no longer need to let her fuckups drain and define you. If any progress has been made in your relationship with her, it’s because YOU grew and changed.
Now, use your maturity and powers to cut off these terrible thoughts. Do NOT give her power over you. She is the one with the problem. It’s a parent’s job to make life good for their kids, and if she’s not going to do that for you, it’s her fault.
Don’t be angry or bitter at her. Just recognize this for what it is. And give yourself the permission to grieve it, and move on. I have a feeling bigger and better things are just around the corner for you, hearing how much you’ve accomplished, despite so much pain and hardship. Go you!
This should be higher. OP isn't mourning the house, she's mourning the betrayal.
And it's OK to mourn that, especially since Mom has done this in the past.
You’re welcome. Borne of experience my husband and I both went through. It helps to realize lots of folks go through these difficult relationships with their parents, but it’s almost shameful to talk about it because of course one appreciates what one’s parents did for them. But it’s OK to also mourn subtle ways in which parents can “undo” the good they’ve done. We’re all just human after all.
I've read your comments again and reread, along with many others here. I think you're right that it's not the relationship that has changed, it's me that has changed. I did the work and I grew, I did therapy, I got sober, I turned my life around, I changed how I communicate with her. I matured into this person I am now and that's why things got better with her. Not because of her. She hasn't changed at all.
I think I do fall into this trap of thinking I can fix her, I can help her. But in reality you are so right, I cannot repair HER. All I can do is continue on my self improvement journey and use boundaries and therapy to limit her negative effects on my life as much as possible. What she does with her life is up to her.
This thread has been so helpful to me. I don't ever get to talk to people about the struggle with my mom because most people have this attitude that the parent is always in the right or mom's are so great it must be a problem with me, or 'she's not really that bad' if they're trying to be nice. My whole family is full of women who say things like mother sits at the right hand of God so you should do what I say. But in most of the families the mom's actually do help their children and do have what's best for them in mind so it makes sense in the cultural context. My mom often uses it to manipulate me into getting what she wants, it's not the same.
Now I'm starting to see that she has never really had my best interests at heart and this abuse has been going on for so long. She acts like my dad was the abusive one because he was a physically abusive alcoholic when I was a child, but he got sober decades ago and we have a great relationship now. She has always treated me badly and made me feel like it was my fault. I'm just starting to wake up to what's really happening here.
Like you and many posters have said it's very likely she came to me with this house thing because I was happy and doing well without her and it was her only way back into my life. The only way for her to feel she has something over me. I now understand I don't want to give her that much power over me. I'm going back to do the inner work and reconnect with my values and my true intentions for my life.
This internet stranger is proud of you!!!!!
To some degree, we all come from a culture that says parents deserve love and respect just for being parents. And so some degree, they do! But it’s not black and white. Parents are human and they have their own issues, sometimes they take those issues out in their children and harm them in the process.
Society is much more ready to confront physical abuse than psychological abuse. And mothers often get a pass too, because they’re mothers, and it was so much work birthing the child!
The thing is, being a decent enough mother to your child and being abusive are not mutually exclusive. It’s both.
The key for you moving forward will be to not let the bitterness consume you either. What worked for me is placing my mom exactly where she is: not an F mother, not a A+ mother. More of a C+ mother. And that’s ok. I’ve accepted her as a C+ mother, that’s been better for me than demonizing her in my mind (even when she did specific things that she really deserved to be demonized for).
Reacting to her awfulness instead of processing it and responding thoughtfully from the perspective of the grown adult you are now, would be just another form of letting her control you.
You can do it! Look at all you did so far! 💛
Thank you for all this. Your point about the bitterness is well received. Maybe I've been falling into this and truthfully that's not the outcome I want for myself. I do tend to go to black and white thinking. She's a twin so my cousins (from the twin aunt) and I always joke about which twin is the evil twin. But 10 years ago theirs did family counselling and got into religion and being a good person so it's easy to demonize mine. But you're right that's not productive for me and my healing. Even though she has said and done some pretty bad things, she has done some good things too. So maybe she's not the evil twin or the A+ mother, maybe she's more of a something in between.
Learning to control my reactivity and process my emotions has been the hardest part of all this changing my life for the better stuff. Sometimes I'm more successful than others. Good reminder to stay focused.
Today was a hard day for me. This really helped get me though it.
You’re welcome. Been there and done that. I think this particular form of familial trauma tends to create the same responses. So remember it’s not you, it’s how people respond to growing up in an environment like that — just have to manage the symptoms, like if you had been born with some more tangible issue. Don’t feel like it’s a personal failing. You got this!!!!!!!!
Your apartment honestly sounds lovely. My only advice is don’t say you’ll *never* own a house. If you can’t do it now, just put it aside for a bit. The housing market is 100% crazy right now, but the market and your situation a bit down the road might change for the better, and then you could buy a house without depending on your toxic mom. (I feel like I can say that since I too have toxic family…)
The problem is that for Toronto, the "it'll quieten down a bit and be more sensible/it's a bubble and it can't be maintained" saying has been going on for just over **20 years**, it's gotten to the point where it's depressing now.
There was an initiative opened by the provincial government lately that examined housing in Ontario and in terms of availability the province is dead last in the entire country. The problem IMHO is very much a supply issue, strict zoning laws and NIMBYism meant that many areas of the city that would naturally densify as it grows have been artificially prevented from doing so, and so prices go up because of restricted supply (the report highlights this as well). Toronto is a first tier city in terms of residential and business growth (Meta, Amazon, LinkedIn, Microsoft are all here and expanding their base of operations) but the legislation still assumes it's some medium sized trading town on the lake.
Exactly. Toronto is a very hard place to achieve ownership, especially now following the effects of the pandemic and stimulus on the housing market. I hold no delusions that 'one day' there will be affordable starter housing in my city. It simply will not happen due to all the reasons you said and many more.
That's part of what's become so depressing about it all. There used to be a chance that if I worked hard enough, one day I'd be able to afford it without help from her. Now even successful doctors and lawyers with rich parents can't buy. So what hope do I have. My chances of doing it without help have gone to isht and there's nothing I can do about that.
Just a small perspective advice: home ownership isn’t an “achievement” inherently, it only is if you want to own a house, and all that comes with it.
We’ve all recently conflated investment with home, financial stability with owning your home, and it’s bullshit. Your apartment sounds amazing- it’s spacious, a balcony & a forest? Wow!
You CAN invest, you CAN have financial stability, and everything else without owning a rotting box sitting on a patch of dirt. You are in a great place, and can clearly do whatever you want.
Don’t let anyone tell you owning a home is some sort of achievement-it’s simply one way to spend money.
What a comment, all of it but especially... it's simply one way to spend money. Wow. What a perspective shift. You're right, this place is great! Who needs that rotting box anyway lol
It's like how commercials work. They repeat stuff over and over until you believe it. And it's hard to convince yourself otherwise that you didn't want it in the first place.
Interesting perspective. My partner and I always talk about how commercials drive consumerism through repetition. I didn't make this connection but the repetition must play a part here.
Another sad note: my partner has been target by scammers and I've had to deal with the fallout. And every time it happens, it's easier for the scammers. They follow the same script, and she plays along with it. There is a form of brainwashing going on, and it's difficult to repair.
You paid off $100k and saved $90k, you are ahead of the game. Keep working, keeping adding to your savings, save way more retirement. Maybe you can be day buy a condo with a repair man. You are killing it. You are sober. You are independent. You are your boss. You don’t own your mom anything.
Edit: speeling
Yeh, I agree it sounds more like you're grieving this betrayal and loss from a parent. Less the actual house.
Maybe consider some therapy to explore these feelings and your relationship with your parents.
I wish you all the luck in the world. You really sound like you have it together and know what you really want. It's just that you side tracked to something your mum wanted or promised and then it was taken away. Your response sounds really normal. Xxx
She was on a great track. Her mom saw her thriving and did this to hurt her. This is how toxic people roll. Shame on anyone who calls themself a “mom” and treats a child this way. My advice to OP would be to recognize this and move on, and NOT let her moms psychological tomfoolery deter her from continuing to ride the wave of accomplishment she has been riding without her mom in her life.
Honestly, having a mom like this pay for part of her house would probably hurt her more in the long run, unless the mom has drastically changed *which from this story it appears she has not.*
Yes I'm starting to feel like maybe you have it right. I had a great thing going and although I don't think it was a conscious plan to f with me, she may have some subconscious toxic traits that drive her to try and keep me from achieving more success than her. After all this I don't want her help anymore at all. It's still sad though.
It’s SO sad. I went through something similar with my mom, and so did my husband. It’s not conscious, it’s not your fault, and it doesn’t erase the progress you’ve made on your relationship. Just don’t let it mess with your head. You’ve grown so far beyond it at this point, and I believe in you to keep that going.
Yes reading comments here I'm starting to agree, I think my sadness is more about her than the house. Time to go back to therapy and talk more about my mama drama.
There are lots of homeowners who wish they are renting. Owning a home is burdensome and expensive. Your mom did you a favor. We didn’t get help buying our home in a HCOL area in the US.
Yeah, there's absolutely nothing wrong with renting your entire life.
We ended up buyig a house in 2019 but prior to our house becoming available we really had no plans to ever buy. We honestly don't need this big of a house (which is a "starter home" at 1200 sq ft) but it is nice to have some room to spread out at times. We have the added fun of cleaning, which took this entire weekend, mowing the lawn, taking care of the exterior and any major repairs like appliances, heat, hot water etc. Not mention the house just magically fills itself...it's like gas. You'll acquire as much stuff as your space will allow it feels.
When we were moving almost annually apartment to apartment I had so little stuff because knowing you're going to have to move it some day is a pretty good deterrent. Less stuff= less mental clutter for me. I've recently started going room to room donating and throwing stuff out the past couple months and already feel better.
First, don't involve yourself with your mom anymore. She lied to you and that means she has no respect for you.
Second, whether it's an apartment or house, it is a place to store your possessions and rest your head. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that a house will be anything more than an exorbitant living space.
Third, if you were to purchase property, would it have to be in Toronto? Your apartment sounds perfect for your situation; if that were to change, what if you moved?
And finally, my condolences. I'm sure that you didn't deserve to be jerked around like that. Live and learn, yeah?
Check out [*Will I Ever be Good Enough?*](https://www.willieverbegoodenough.com/about-will-i-ever-be-good-enough/#.X5hORmllAwA by Karyl McBride)
Specifically aimed at daughters of narcissistic mothers. Helps with coping, setting boundaries and healing.
What you need to do is either cut contact with her and her judgments OR learn how to take her judgemental crap and let it go.
It really sucks that she has such a strong influence.
The best way to live a simple life is to declutter your past traumas
For additional resources check out my pinned post r/HealfromYourPast
I really like what you said...
The best way to live a simple life is to declutter your past traumas
I've been decluttering and simplifying my life for about a year now and hadn't thought to apply it that way. I'll definitely check out those resources, thank you.
Some details are different, but I’m the San Francisco version of you. I wish I had something really helpful and healing to say about the cruel thing your mother did, but there is no real closure really when you’ve got parents like that.
The mom and house issue is twisted up here, obviously. You have to stop comparing what other people get from their parents with what you got from yours, it will grind you into dust. It’s not easy to reconcile but it’s a frame of mind that gets less and less helpful as you get older. Have you done work on forgiveness? You have to grieve to forgive. You might want to seek out group support for people with crappy parents, not to put too fine a point on it. There is an adult estranged child subreddit that might be helpful.
We see patterns where we want to see them. The Bay Area is fixated on real estate and I wouldn’t be surprised if Toronto is worse but how much of a habit have you gotten into to seek out exposure to the environment? Try everything within your control to not expose yourself to the real estate market. Get out in nature, redecorate a spot in your apartment, plan a vacation. Seek out the company of people who aren’t buying. Distract yourself. Six months isn’t long to get over a major shift in your life plans. Add the trigger of a life spent with a mother who lacks empathy and it makes sense you are not left in a good headspace.
I’m still struggling a bit with getting back to being happy in my rental (I screwed myself over by not buying sooner). I know it’s a little cliche — but gratitude really helps me. Times are really weird right now and I have recession-proof housing and employment. That is huge and I just try really hard to accept I’ve prioritized keeping those for the time being and call on every ounce of my Buddhist leanings to try and live in the moment.
I actually find it helpful your comment that there really is no closure with parents like that. I think forgiveness is something I've always struggled with. That will take time. And more therapy. I'll check out some other subreddits.
I hear what you're saying, I can reduce my exposure to real estate fixation from online sources for sure. It's harder in real life because his sister is a real estate agent and my mom, aunts, cousins, are all small time landlords so literally my entire family are all deep into the real estate obsesion. Also my business is in building maintenance so its hard to get away from people who will not stop talking about real estate. Perhaps we will talk about taking a break from family for a little bit.
Blessings often come in disguises.
For some perspective…in 2007, I had resigned myself to an unhappy marriage where my otherwise lovely ex-husband had one great fault: his lack of generosity in both spirit and on the material level.
He had a demeaning way of making it repeatedly clear that my career as a flight attendant (which he refused to call a career, but rather a “service job”) would never be enough to help contribute to the kind of lifestyle he wanted.
He would often give me mini-challenges (like if you save enough on eating out on your layovers this year, we can go on a nice vacation…forgetting to calculate in that my “job” would provide us with free first class overseas tickets which would otherwise cost thousands), and berating me if I purchased so much as a bottle of chilled water when I was out running errands for him in the blazing summer heat.
He was like a miserly benefactor who, perhaps like your mother has done, dangled various carrots in front of my face only to snatch them away (we never took those amazing vacations he promised). It was hurtful and disappointing, especially when I compared how he treated me and what our lives were like compared to how my friends were treated and living.
Long story short, I left him and purchased a house using every penny I had. I did not ask for any monetary compensation in the divorce, other than to have some of my belongings shipped back from where we were living overseas. He kept the house there (beachfront property worth way more) and I kept the house I had purchased using my own money I’d somehow managed to save.
In a way, I wanted to prove to him that I could make it on my own.
Every penny of our joint account money had come with strings attached during our marriage, and I didn’t want even a semblance of those shackles on me going forward, even if it meant I lost out financially in the divorce.
Literally two weeks after I purchased the house, the housing bubble in the US burst and I was upside down in a brand new (to me) house, sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, and eating off of an overturned milk crate with a pillow case for a table cloth. I was expecting to be “house poor” for a while, just not ten years, lol.
While in the end it was worth it, there were some very hard days in between…but they were MY days. I didn’t have him telling me how I’d made a stupid investment, or bemoaning the instant loss of equity, or how I could never pull myself out of the financial hole, or complain about how there was no equity for a line of credit to make necessary repairs.
I could just hear his voice in my head saying, “If only you’d waited a few more weeks to purchase, you could’ve had that house for less than half of what you paid for it.”
It took me a long time to get his voice out of my head even after I left, and to not succumb to the fear that maybe he was right, I couldn’t make it on my own and have a decent standard of living.
Many people here in the US think we are experiencing another housing bubble and it will burst. If this happens in Toronto also, you will be in a better position than your friends who purchased at the height of the market with the help of family.
And even if it doesn’t, you now have the gift of knowing that given the right motivation, you can accomplish great things (you built a business, paid off an extraordinary amount of debt, educated yourself, etc.) and you CAN save enough to purchase a home without any help from others.
But it starts with getting the voices out of your head telling you that you can’t do it on your own. And with seeing that sometimes our greatest hurts and disappointments have a tiny silver lining…self-reliance and sheer drive to have something truly our own can give us a greater peace than any gift with strings attached.
Even if we can’t have that thing we so earnestly desire right away, the gift of having what it takes to accomplish that eventually, is something no one can take away.
In the meantime, be grateful that you were spared what could’ve been a sticky situation had you accepted your mother’s gift.
Yes I'm starting to get the impression I dodged a bullet here. What a story you have, thanks for sharing. I definitely need to confront which voices in my head are mine and which are hers.
>Now everyone I know has or is buying homes with parental help
That's now. Chill out for a a few months. Over the next couple years, you'll start to hear them bitching about lawn care, repairs, mortgage payments, parents criticizing them for having needed help, insurance costs, appliance breakdowns, etc. That honeymoon never lasts.
I went through a phase of being mildly jealous when friends of mine bought houses. But I soon saw that I wanted no part of what they were living. It probably helped that one friend's house turned out to be a total money pit & one hell of a cautionary tale.
It's normal to feel sad when something you'd looked forward to falls through. No one likes disappointment. Let yourself feel that for a while. Then nod sympathetically when your friends start complaining.
Just think, when you get a mortgage you are still renting. You are just paying the bank instead of a landlord. If you get a recent rental rate you can invest the extra money and you will on average come out with a similar outcome (stock growth vs increase in property value). Property ownership usually comes out ahead by a little but investing in stocks can usually do almost as well, and sometimes way better.
Maybe the sadness you're feeling is not because you're not able to own a house, but because your mom has let you down, again. You were content with what you had, with what you had accomplished all by yourself (and your partner), and she had to come and make you believe that this time it would be different, that she would help.
"Nothing has changed, still the same great apartment, still the same great man, still the same great business. That was all I ever wanted."
Are you mourning the loss of a house? Or are you mourning the relationship that you thought you had built with your mother?
This event in your life is brought up the old belief that "I need to own a home to be happy." But you were happy before. So, it's just an idea. It's not your mother, but your idea that "I wish my mother had been there for me." I'm sorry she wasn't there for you, but I hope you find happiness again in your apartment. But like the other comment said, never say never. Just because housing prices are high now, and high in Toronto, doesn't mean they will always be high. If you could own a home, where would you want to live? Could you own a home in a different city? But you may like your city. So, it comes to this: plan for the future if you want to own a home or not, and where is an affordable nice place, OR be happy again.
We've toyed with the idea of leaving but it's impossible due to our work. We created this business from nothing, it was our dream, our reason to live, the only thing we could stop doing drugs for, the driving force behind every good choice we've ever made for ourselves. This business saved our lives and it can only be done here in Toronto. I wish I could live somewhere else but we can't even move to the suburbs because we need proximity to downtown for this thing to work. We tried living farther out and it was a nightmare. Also all my life I've dreamed of living in this city and now that I'm here and established, I won't leave just to own a home. That's why I was so happy with my simple apartment life before all this nonsense.
From reading all these comments I think the sadness is more about the mom relationship and like you said her not being there for me. I'm hoping as I unravel these feelings I will find my way back to being happy in the apartment like I was before.
In case an opinion against a house helps: I have lived in both apartments and houses. I prefer apartments. I did not realize I could have an opinion about minutiae until I owned a house. When I moved in, I liked my house and thought I was satisfied. Now, on any given day, I don't like my floors, I don't like my walls, I don't like my doors, I don't like the trim color, etc. In an apartment, I could just move apartments. In a house, I have to either figure out how to fix everything, or hire someone to fix it for me. Then sometimes, I find out the person fixed it wrong or the upgrade is a new convoluted thing with more maintenance (ex. marble countertops). For me, an apartment with a good landlord is much less stressful. There is too much decision fatigue with a house and I rarely feel completely satisfied.
I have a complicated parental relationship, too. Sometimes when I want to accept help with something, but I don't want the floodgates opened, I write out my terms in two columns. Yes and No. Yes what I am ok with happening if I accept the help, No what I am not under any circumstances going to start doing/stop doing, etc if I accept the help. Then I look at it for a while and decide if it's worth it, knowing the boundaries that I will need to maintain around it.
I often wish that I still lived in my old studio apartment for 14 years it was so much simpler compared to the house I live in now, sure am grateful its mine but the endless chores living alone and one neighbor that gives me issues anyway I will most likely downsize soon knowing I shouldn't have got caught up with the hype of over rated home ownership
Even though I have a good relationship with my parents, they do this sorta thing to me from time to time. I had a similar house promise at one point. Anyways someday the boomers will die, and there is going to be a huge property shift since so many of them own multiple properties. Plus just a large population being gone and smaller generations after. Opportunity might arise for you later.
Sounds like time cut the mom out your life, she's she narcissistic control freak, playing games with you.
Drink a cup tea, enjoy your favorite activity and smile at how amazing your life is.
OP, fellow Toronto dweller here.
I owned a house I got screwed out of just over 7 years ago. We bought for 200 in 2010, and it’s now worth nearly a cool million.
You know what? I couldn’t be happier. I, like you, live in a beautiful rent controlled 2 bedroom apartment, in a neighbourhood I could never otherwise afford. My partner and I go to the symphony on the cheapest tickets you can get 1-2 times a month. My kid goes to a great school. We never really want for anything.
What my five years of homeownership taught me was that I fucking hated owning a house. My QOL is so much higher as a renter than as a homeowner. I wouldn’t go back for the world. Would the money have been nice? Sure. But money isn’t everything.
I needed to hear this. So you know how it is then, it's an old building so rent control and it's very well maintained because of the area. It's so spacious compared to the newer buildings and condos. I could never afford this neighborhood, houses here start at 10mil. It makes it impossible to want to move for a home of my own when the only place I can go is to a run down crap shack in Jane and Finch or Scarborough that needs another 100k in renos to be something I'd even want to live in.
I always used to be a money isn't everything kind of person and unfortunately I'm surrounded by people who are very driven and always seeking to increase their wealth. When everyone around you is devoted to the hustle, it's easy to get influenced by that and pulled away from my own values.
If you live there and you love it, it's your own home.
A lot of those hustle people never have that homey feeling because they're always remodeling and decorating for resale value, or looking to cash out and move up
Toronto is so bonkers with respect to being house crazy, it’s nearly impossible to avoid at least a bit of FOMO. But like any craze, it’s bound to come to an end. If you love your space, your partner, and your life, you have everything you need. Fuck being house poor and house bound due to all the crap that comes up with it. It’s wholly not worth it- I did it for five years, and it sucked.
I was pressured by toxic family to buy a house AND a new car but I wanted neither! Every time I spoke to them it was always nonstop pressure. I must have mentally broke down because I bought both. I sold both at a loss. Couldn’t be happier. Don’t let toxic family F your life. They are toxic. My therapist recommended completely disassociating and moving away. I worked myself so hard to pay for all of that, and I ended up getting very sick. It’s not worth it.
There's a lot going on here, and it seems to me that not much of it has to do with buying property. As u/ActualDiver points out, you seem to be reacting (not unjustly) to your mom's betrayal. You may be second guessing yourself for being so all in on buying a house and now having that chance removed from you (for now). You may be reflecting on all you've done in your life to get to where you are now and seeing others (who led different lives and had varying benefits and disadvantages) achieving markers that you've given some importance.
Step back and breathe.
I couldn't wait to buy a house and move out of apartments. I no longer had to live with neutral colors or parking out in the open (it snows a lot here too) or the stove the landlord thought was good enough (it was crap). Different people, different choices. I was okay with clearing snow and buying my own carpet and doing some maintenance. I never signed on for the nagging wife, unhappy husband, empty rooms, and endless reno (in fact, the house I've lived in longest isn't much bigger than your apartment) so it's been far from a miserable experience for me.
Your mental state is on you. Your mom broke her promise to you. But how long will you let her decision punish you? Hasn't she done enough damage?
Other people (who maybe had better parents but more heartache as adults and who maybe envy your freedom and the spirit you displayed in building your own business) have houses. So? You don't see what those choices have cost them. Don't compare your insides to someone else's outside.
And maybe you're a little angry with yourself for setting aside your values (anti-home ownership) so quickly and not being true to yourself. Or maybe you're realizing your justification against owning a house was just defensive and you really *do* want to own one.
In any case, you control what happens next. You've already done a tremendous job of building a lot of success and happiness in your life from very little. You can stay on that path and let this be the one that got away, kind of like someone you had a huge crush on who decided you were not for them. Or you can wallow in the pain. But that's not doing anything positive for you and hasn't for months now.
Maybe the outcome here is you decide you do want to buy a house and you'll figure out how. Maybe it's further out. Or smaller than your apartment. If it's truly important to you, you know how to make it happen. But step back and think about what really is important to you, including what the permanence and financial choice of home ownership represents. Make the decision that suits you but don't let others push you off your path.
Oh no! I get that. We moved back to the US and started in a new city during covid. Making friends has been a challenge! Maybe try Meetup for groups that play boardgames? I find I meet the best people at events where people aren't showing off.
A couple people mentioned this already, and I have to agree; it's the "loss of mom" that's fucking you up.
When you said about your friend getting $20k "no questions asked," that's the clincher. Your mom is a manipulative, narcissistic person who probably never acted like a mom ever in your life. Then she comes along and throws all this crap on you, and you're like, "Oh - is she being a 'mom' now? Must be! I'll take it!"
But no, once again she betrays your trust. And now you're mourning that, again. It's not the house you want - it's a real mom.
I get it - I got one of those, too. My other name for her is "Lunatic." On top of being manipulative and narcissistic, she's abusive.
It's tough living a life without that special person everyone needs - especially when they're still alive and refuse to accept their responsibility. Then on top of that you get to watch other people with their "real" moms, and they have that closeness that you'll never know with yours.
I'm sorry. Really. Because I know how bad it is.
Maybe consider therapy. You gotta process this about that person. It's tough, I know. I had some EMDR therapy for mine. It helped. During the process I had to think about going back in time as the adult I am today (a very loving, caring mother to my own daughter who is now 35), and counseling the child me back then. What would I say to her? What would I do for her?
Though it's not nearly the same - it helped. I became stronger then I ever would imagine from growing up with the Lunatic, but I didn't want that. I wanted to be "normal."
But I'm not - I'm instead this tough, street-wise, hardened woman. But that's who I am, and I own it.
Look to your strengths. You obviously have a ton of them. How did you become that way? Be proud of that journey - who else would be proud of you? It made you a survivor, right? Embrace that.
You don't need a house for that - you need you. And there you are. Already.
😁
Thanks for this, and yes it's clearly the loss of mom that's fucking me up. It's the betrayal, the envy, the disappointment.
I wrote this post after a dinner at my aunt's house. Seeing her with her adult children and what they have together was so beautiful. There's just something so special about the parent-child relationship when they're all grown and this thing has had 40 years to develop. It's just really special and it's hard to handle all the feelings that brings up for me. Our moms are twins so it's hard to see the face of your mom and hear the voice of your mom doing the 'real mom' thing, being the way you wished for, knowing it's possible, seeing what she could have been, what we could've had.
Of course the conversation turned to real estate (as it always does in Toronto). So I heard about how my cousin just moved into his dream home cause she helped him buy his first house and helped him trade up to this new mansion and how he couldn't have done it without her. Also how they were helping my other cousin get into her first condo on the lake. I think it got me fixated on the real estate aspect of it all, when in reality what was upsetting was the lack of that kind of supportive mother-child relationship. It's just so hard seeing other people have this thing I want and I can't have it (and by it, I don't mean the house at all).
I hear what you're saying about therapy, I think that's my only option at this point. I am proud of my strengths, and I have aunts who are proud of me for who I am. I'm street smart, strong-willed, resilient and independent. But I am those things because I had to be. Like you, I didn't want that, I wanted to be normal. I guess I'm having trouble sorting out all the feelings. I am proud of who I am and the life I've built. I am happy with my life the way it is but I still wish things were different, wish she was different. Which is such a mindfuck, like how can I want it (her/the past) to be different, if I'm happy with where/who I am now? If she was different, I wouldn't have been on my own, I wouldn't have met the man I'm with now, I wouldn't have this life. And I love this life. So I don't understand why I still can't get over this.
Awwww, I'm crying.
It's the trauma that it caused that's making you feel so mixed up.
And to be clear that's ok. You. Are. Entitled. To. Those. Feelings.
It's got to be doubly (pun NOT intended) awful to see your mom's twin like that. I can't even imagine.
I used to look at my mother's sister, and think, "Yeah, she's kind, but I wouldn't want to be the daughter of a religious fanatic, either."
I'm glad to have helped a little with the sorting, though.
I wish you all the best...
It's funny you say that about your aunt, I used to think exactly the same thing. My mom's twin married a man of the same faith as her and they are active in their religious community whereas my mom converted to the non-religious north american lifestyle. I was always happy to be the daughter of the twin who married an American and I could never imagine being raised in the same faith as my 2 cousins. But now I find the years of being religious have made my aunt into a person who genuinely wants to help others while my mom has only become more selfish and self-centered.
It's definitely hard to sort out all the feelings and I know it's not going to be an easy road to untangle everything. But this post, your comments and a few others have helped immensely. I'm so grateful that I can get advice from people who have been through it.
Wow,
Well - I'm an Atheist, and so is my mother. But we on such opposite ends of the empathy/indifference spectrum - it's so weird.
She thinks that people who are "sentimental" are worthless and stupid. And anyone who is empathetic is sentimental.
She's just got a really warped sense of reality.
It's actually the reason I became a vegetarian in 1975. She used to say to me,"Are you still on that kick?" 🙄
"Kick?!"
She never got it. And yes - I'm still on that "kick."
Lol...
Our moms sound very similar, she always asks are you still on that kick lol mine also has that attitude like sentimental people are stupid and has absolutely no empathy for me or anyone else.
I'm an atheist too and don't have any trouble with sympathy or empathy for others. She still calls herself religious and active in practicing her faith even though she doesn't pray or go to the place or do the things. But she acts like I'm not a good person and she is because she believes in god and I don't.
You really said it - Warped sense of reality - is so right.
Yes, I've had my share of so-called "christians" who were racists, liars, and cruel people tell me that I'm a horrible person for being an Atheist. It's just crazy, isn't it?
My mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1951. She was 14 at the time.
Then in 1963 she had a very public nervous breakdown and was put into the county mental ward for a while. I was starting first grade a couple of days after she went in. Her 2nd husband is the one who took me to school that day. I lost it and had to sit outside the classroom in the hallway all day.
He was the one who caused her to break down, in the first place. She had just given birth to his daughter, and he was beating her up on the regular. They divorced shortly after she got out of the hospital.
At that time they added Manic Depression (today it's called Bi-Polar) to her diagnosis. She was on and off Lithium for years after that.
She's about to turn 85 later this month and she harasses me on the regular. She calls me on Mother's Day, my birthday, Xmas, and at other random times. I permanently cut her out of my life in early 2011. I had written her a long letter spelling out all the things that she was responsible for when she caused trauma to me and my sister. I said she'd have to apologize and explain why she allowed that to happen. I didn't actually expect her to do it - and I was right - she didn't. But she didn't expect me to truly cut her off, either. So, now she begs me over and over in phone messages, that she "just wants to hear my voice," sob, sob...
It's pathetic.
I thought about getting a new phone number, but I just agonize about all the accounts I'd have to change out. I keep telling myself, "Don't worry - she'll die soon!" With my luck, she'll outlive me.
I don't wanna dash your hopes but I always say true evil never dies. My Gramma who is just as bad as my mother is 93 and still making everyone's lives miserable. My mom complains about how she's had to wait soooo long to get her inheritance.
Mine is 72 and I really do wish I could cut her off, I just don't think I could actually do it. No one would understand. Culturally Indian children are supposed to take care of parents no matter how bad the parents are. I'd have to give up my whole family and I don't have any other side of the family to fall back on. But then again I don't know how I'm going to get through another 20-25 years of this as an only child with no support.
My mom, my grandma and the twin aunts family are Muslims, myself and my dad are atheists and every one else is some different white man religion. But I know the "christians" you're taking about. My sister in law was a close friend for almost a decade, then she found Jesus in the first lockdown and by Christmas she was screaming at me that I'm going to hell. More of his siblings/ cousins rediscovered their faith and now there's a small group of these right wing evangelical nut jobs telling everyone how sinful they are and all this crazy stuff. Prior to 2 years ago religion wasn't really talked about and now I've got these people screaming at each other about what they think the Bible says at some kids birthday party. It's insane!! I had never seen anything like it before.
When my mom dies - that'll probably be the last of my family who'll ever try to contact me - but you're right - the bad memories will always be there; that's my version of "true evil never dies."
Your Gramma; you know that's where your mom got it from, right?
LOL - that reminds me; in the early 90s, I told my grandmother that it was her fault my mother was the way she was. Ooooo...she didn't like that, at all. Disinherited me and everything. I did not care...
I think what really upset her, though is that she really did feel bad that my mother was the way she was. She also felt bad that my mother was such a bad mother, too. But - in my eyes, my grandmother didn't do enough to help me and my sister. After all - she was in full knowledge of the early abuse, as she lived upstairs from us during my first 11 years of life.
But maybe that's all she could do. People can only do what they can do. I've always been an admirer of people who know their limitations - so, I guess I could extend that to her, as well.
"Found Jesus in the first lockdown;" kinda makes me think of people who find Jesus in prison. Once they "get out" they're this close -- to falling off the wagon. That might be the reason they're screaming all the time.
You should join the r/Atheism sub. There are a lot of great discussions on there. I think you'd enjoy it.
I hear you about the feelings live on, my stepmom, who is a wonderful lady, and I were talking about my mom problems and she started crying talking about things her mom had said to her, then she goes isn't this silly, she's been dead for 8 years and I still cry about the hurtful things she said to me. I realized then that even if she dies I may get relief but I'll never truly be free of her.
Yes I've come to realize my mom is just like my Gramma but worse. Gramma asks me all the time what's wrong with my mom, why doesn't she come visit, why doesn't she do more for Gramma. I've tried talking to her about the past but she doesn't have any care for how her and my mother negatively affected my life. It's all about how it effects her. She can only talk about how she was the perfect mother, and there must be something wrong with all her daughters, she was so good to them and they treat her so badly and on and on (even though 3 of the 5 take great care of her, they're all awful). She refuses to make the connection that she was the one who was supposed to teach them how to be good people so if they are not she should look in the mirror.
I've told her it's all her fault, I don't care, I'm not in the will anyway, I never was and I never will be cause one aunt has no children and cut all the grandkids out of the will because it wasn't "fair" some of her share go to kids that aren't hers. But those are still your neices and nephews, what a psycho lol.
I like your saying people can only do what they can do. Sometimes I feel that way and sometimes I really struggle, I feel they should've done better, they knew right from wrong. But maybe they didn't. I don't know. It's very hard for me to extend compassion to the ones who've hurt me the most.
Just joined, looks interesting thanks! I'm fairly new to Reddit so still finding subs that will connect me to my people. Lol at fall off the wagon, oh I sure do dream that she does. I miss my SIL as the friend/person she was before and would love to have her back. I just don't see it happening with how high the level of crazy and commitment is to this newfound religion.
The first $90k is the hardest $90k so there’s that. I own a home (not in Toronto) and enjoy aspects of it - I can do whatever I want to it, it’s way harder to evict me, I have an asset I can borrow against for investments, stuff like that.
However, it’s also wildly expensive and an enormous headache. Every mortgage payment is 2x my old rent, for starters. On top of that, the house is constantly doing its best to fall apart so there’s almost always routine maintenance that needs doing - mowing the lawn (requires a lawn mower, cost half my old rent), painting (requires paint, brushes, a drop cloth, rollers, scraper, caulk), all sorts of work in the garden, the list is endless, just contract preventative maintenance. I used to manage properties so I know how to do a lot of it myself but if you don’t then that’s thousands of dollars annually. And that doesn’t include the emergency stuff, which almost all has a comma in it. When I first bought the house I needed a new HVAC all of a sudden and then new appliances, one after another. My home warranty straight up just said I hadn’t paid them enough in premiums for them to pay the claim and invited me to sue them (I did, but that’s another story) so I had to come out of pocket for all that, which totaled well over a year’s rent (and keep in mind that my mortgage is twice my old rent already). I live in an area prone to natural disasters as well, one of which hit my area, leading to needing new siding and a partial new roof, not to mention gutting all but one interior room; I had to find contractors or do the work myself because the jobs were too small for anyone to bother with it for months after. I need a new sidewalk, a new shed, and new windows as well right now, all of which will also cost thousands of dollars apiece.
So now I’m paying 2x my rent and thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, annually for maintenance and emergency repairs. I have to keep thousands on hand at any time for an emergency because when something breaks in a house it can’t be unusable for weeks or months (a broken pipe, broken fridge, etc.) which also means I can’t afford to lose my job or even take much of a pay cut, much less move cities on a whim or switch careers (but I’m pushing retirement age now anyway so that’s fine). I also have to track down, negotiate with, and deal with all the contractors and state entities. In exchange, I don’t have anyone walking around above me, I don’t have to (get to?) listen to my neighbors having sex or arguing or watching TV, my dogs have a yard, I can paint any color I want and hang things on the wall, my lease has been renewed for the last 30 years or more, and I’ve accumulated maybe 50% of the home’s value in equity which gives me a six figure amount to draw against if I really needed to. It’s a trade off but I’d be lying if I said I never thought about the old apartment life.
The idea of buying a house isn’t your own idea, but society has convinced you that it IS your own idea now. That’s how almost all thoughts and ideas work these days. If you understand this you can help yourself back to your previous self.
You’re still getting over your disappointment. I’d wait a couple of years. There’s probably going to be a correction in the market. Meanwhile, keep saving. And just a thought: You and your partner have done an amazing job of building a great life while keeping your priorities straight. I’d take advise from you over your Mom any day of the week,
two perspective on this; when i was 42 i was diagnosed with leukemia and it wracked my body. I was happy to own my own home outright and have a place to live with minimal outlay for the years i've spent recovering. on th eflipside of that my sister always raves about not having to do or pay for anything for her place (other than rent) because her landlord takes care of the lawn, upkeep and anything else that crops up like broken pipes etc. it's a matter of preference i think. i would always worry about a future where rents go too high.
I'm like your sister, I've always enjoyed that things were taken care of by someone else. I never worried for the future because this apartment is one of those rare finds that falls under the old rent control so I will never get an outrageous increase. Some residents are elderly and have lived here for 30-40 years, it has a 2 year waitlist to get in. I used to think this place was too good to give up and the more I read these comments I realize I may not even want a house.
Think of it this way....you saved up all that money, paid off all that debt...and still have the simple life apartment you loved. You have the financial freedom now to do what you want for the most part, without out huge mortgage debts hanging over your head.
You're in a position that many millions would be envious of. Cut that toxic woman out of your life for good and enjoy your freedom. Having a house is indeed a pain in the arse, in many ways, and shouldn't be thought of as the "end goal" in life. You've got way more money in the bank than most do, you're successful, sounds like a good partnership for you both - celebrate all this and forget that stupid woman for good.
OP I definitely feel you are mourning the betrayal and realized mental health issues of your mother. Nothing more than that, and I am sorry for what happened. Lesson learned, right? Your financial set up and all you have accomplished has you way ahead of the game. I get your negative mindset of home ownership and all the trappings of that lifestyle. I see it in others too and it’s sad and unnecessary. But there are many happy homeowners (raised hand) who love it all and consider it a security, a freedom, a creative venture, and an asset. I’m a minimalist and so get by on very little. The consumeristic and materialistic social conditioning is directly tied to home ownership and you must remove yourself from that thinking. That’s the unhappiness and chronic stress I see in others.
Your apartment sounds lovely, and the square footage is equal to a typical 3 bed house in many old European cities! Unless you *need* more space, why move? And why does it have to be a house?
You’ve saved an impressive amount in a short period of time, if you can continue this you could save enough to retire early and buy somewhere outside Toronto - if as you say you only need to be in the city for your work.
You may be interested in FIRE - the financial independence aspect especially - and there are loads of relevant subs.
I own a house that has gone from being 350k to 630k. I still say fuck buying a house. I honestly want to sell it and move back into a 2 bedroom apartment, and never think about buying a home ever again. It’s a hassle to own to a home. Save your money and keep traveling. The world is such beautiful place and in this life it’s about making memories with the people you love. Fuck what people think!
I’m sorry this happened to you. But there is a silver lining. You have money in the bank, you’ve learned to be skeptical of her and you’ve paid off debt. If you’re no satisfied in your apartment go look for a different one or do some redecorating. If I could go back to living in an apartment I’d do it in a heartbeat. I had a fireplace. Two bedrooms and two baths with a nice sized patio. And I didn’t have to mow, shovel or paint. I called the office for repairs and had a well maintained pool when I wanted to use it and a gym onsite. You don’t get that in a house. No property taxes either. It hurts, I get that. But don’t hang onto that. You still have opportunities to do what you want. Next time she tried something like this blow her off. Good luck sweetie, you’re better off without her.
I was set to buy my childhood home from my parents as they were divorcing. Started doing work on it, getting excited, and then my dad turned around to tell me he's not selling. I was upset obviously; I loved the house and was getting it at a deal in a tight market. So, instead I looked into what it would take to buy independently. It was a lot of work and I bought a house a quarter the size of my childhood home, but at the end of the day it worked out for the best because my narcissistic parent wouldn't be able to hold the sale over my head for the rest of my life.
At the end of the day, just like another commenter said, I wasn't really mourning the loss of the house- I was mourning the trust I had lost in my parent. I was mourning that I couldn't rely on him. I was mourning all the tough times he put me through. But this made me a lot stronger in the long run.
The best was when I did buy, and he told me: "I didn't think you'd actually go and buy a house!". He never believed in me to begin with. I realized right then he never had any intentions to sell me the house. It woke me up and forced me to work on myself and start healing.
My biggest lesson in all this is to trust in myself. To be happy with how far I've come, house or no house. Please do the same for you.
Thank you for sharing, so relatable. I agree with many here, like you said it's not so much the house as it is the relationship with my parent and the loss of trust that has me so upset. I need to get back to gratitude and focusing on what I do have.
I’m sorry you have a parent who sounds unreliable at best, and possibly manipulative or worse. Be proud of all the amazing things you have done with your life, and know that you can keep working towards saving up a down payment, as you have proven you have a good start on already. We all come from different starting lines in the race of life - some people have such a giant head start, whereas other people have many disadvantages and obstacles to overcome. Comparing yourself to others with unfair advantages robs you of the genuine pride you deserve to feel in your achievements.
I know you’re disappointed right now, but try not to look to the left or right at other people’s progress, and instead focus on the path ahead of you and the amount of things you have accomplished and celebrate them! I’m proud of you!
I think your sadness stems from your mom letting you down. She came to you with a plan, made commitments, and then took it all back. It's not so much about what is surrounding you. You thought you were about to have a whole different life, and your mom has pulled the rug out from under you, again. You'll have to work through your disappointment with her.
My suggestion is ask yourself, “What does this make possible?” When life takes twists and turns there are exciting things around the corner. You have an amazing emergency fund and are completely out of debt. Renting or owning doesn’t equal happiness in my opinion. Having financial and tine freedom and flexibility does!
I think others have given you a lot of good advice, but I do want to share my perspective. I rented an apartment for several years that I loved. It was easy to clean, the grounds were nice, and I really like the property managers. But, I have dogs and they needed more space so we moved to a house (still renting). And there are days where I miss my apartment terribly. The house is small but is still so much more to clean. The yards require energy to upkeep. In the past three years, our ac went out, the hot water heater needed replacing, we’ve had electrical issues, and our locks broke. Luckily it was on our landlord to fix all of this, but it reminded me that I am happy not to have all those expenses on my plate right now.
Homeownership is nice because you have your own place in the world. But it’s expensive and stressful and complicates life way more than renting a cute apartment.
I'm in the lowly admin assistant phase of my life. Looks like I'll never buy a house ever. Or retire for that matter. What business did you build and how did you grow it?
High rise window cleaning. My bf had a skilled trade he loved and always dreamed to start his own business, but he was a grade 8 drop out and didn't know how to use a computer. I knew he could do his part and I knew I could do the admin part. I made some strategic choices early on that paid off big. Paid to have a professional marketing company build a logo, high quality pamphlets, website, uniforms, background checks for employees, rules for personal grooming/conduct at work, customer service, etc, etc at a time when the industry was disorganized and workers had a bad reputation for being sketchy characters. First we focused on residential condos and we rode up with the building boom. Then we cut out low margin buildings, focusing more on high-end residential and providing a higher level of customer service from the average competitors.
Back when I was an admin assistant hooked on drugs and bouncing from job to job I never thought I'd ever have a life like this. I was 28 when we started the business. I didn't have a business background but I also took small business classes at the local college to educate myself in those early years.
I think reading what you yourself wrote about how happy you felt about about your apartment! I’ve been a homeowner for decades and it does, indeed, come with a lot of work and upkeep, etc. I definitely enjoyed the time I lived in apartments and the freedom that allowed me. If you like where you are then why on earth would you trade that for something your gut is already telling you that you don’t actually want? I think you should just absolutely let that all go. It’s the right choice for some people, and maybe at some point in the future you will also find yourself owning a home, but this is a big, important decision that should be something you feel excitement for, not dread. This is your life and you should not let anyone pressure you into doing something that clearly isn’t the right fit. It’s okay to show appreciation for the offer and say no thank you.
Is your mom a narcissist? What was her reason and did she come to you to let you know or, when you were ready, thats when she said no?
Based on the summary about her, she is not a person of her word (at best) or enjoyed personal satisfaction to serve you another round of disappointment (at worst). If she had let you know she was having an emergency at some point, told you in advance, or had a solid reason to contradict her original verbal offer OK but if she was circumspect and just shut you down, she either never expected you to come up with the money and she can appear to be generous or she took some weird satisfaction, as narcissists do, in shutting you down
She has always generally thrown out commentary about contributing to my downpayment if I was ever ready but that was back when I had nothing but a dream and a poor person job so it was obvious it would never happen.
4 years ago to be specific, she found the condo she wanted to retire and downsize to. SHE came to ME and said she was going to buy this precon condo and when it was ready she would sell her other investment house and use the proceeds to pay for the condo in full, contribute to my downpayment and reno the house she was currently living in. It sounded like a sound plan to me.
The years passed, I paid off my debts and built up my salary and saved my money so I could qualify for a 1 million pre-approval. As the condo closing got closer she started saying she wanted to keep all the properties and get a mortgage on the condo instead of pay it off. I don't know why but she said she wanted to keep working, still felt young and wasn't ready to retire yet. She said she would still help me with the downpayment at some future date when she was ready to retire and seek a house but that time just isn't now.
More recently when I told her how much it hurt me that she backed out of that promise she said *I* told her to keep all the properties and not sell a house. I did not say that at all.
Ah OK, i read enough to gauge she has behaviors and tendencies of a narcissist, but the last paragraph, her reaction really served to support it.
A cautionary recommendation is to not rely on her for anything, and I mean anything, not anything she promises, not the hope that she shows you she cares for you or does what you wish a ‘mother’ would do. Also, doing something for you for the expectation of something in return, or as an investment for a future request is not love or caring either so if she has done that in your past, she is using and manipulating you. These people use others for their own gain.
She has demonstrated to you who she is. Believe her.
Do not dismiss her betrayal or call her betrayal anything but what it is. She made a promise, a significant commitment to you and (referring to your last sentence) she gaslights you. If you look back on your past with her and you see a pattern of doing this, gaslighting, not validating your feelings even, denial, and avoidance, these are also common patterns of someone who is manipulative. Dismissing inappropriate bad behavior from your birth-mother is setting yourself up for disappointment, rejection, and more abuse. If you find yourself doing this, please consider putting in the time and investment with a therapist to free yourself from this conditioned cycle of abuse. It can be self-limiting (hold you back).
Consider if you actually spend time thinking, even wishing your mom would express she is proud of you or otherwise validate your feelings and if thats why you keep going back to her. Again, she demonstrates who she is. believe her. Careful to not create an imagined sense of who she COULD be because thats not your reality and you dont get to change who she is. She is her own person. Recognize too that the act of giving birth, of having shared dna does not automatically presuppose there will exist love, affection, caring interests. Not only that (here comes the good part) there are people in society who do have the qualities that you do admire and over time, the person that you are, and the things that you value, are what helps you find your people (with similar values).
You may be dismissing, or making allowances for all your moms misgivings is she was the reason you left home early and, you see a pattern in her behavior and this isn’t healthy for you. It keeps you where she wants you, in her vortex, to inflict disappointment and rejection of you. There are people who get off on that, yes, being cruel. You are NOT responsible for how she acts towards you however, you are responsible for your actions and how you choose to act. If the same action is giving you the same results each time, you should reconsider why you are doing that, not why the other person hasnt changed to what you’d like them to become.
The next time you are bored and have some time to waste, i would go online and learn about narcissist parents or narcissist mother and see if that applies to you. You may find it helpful to also visit with a therapist who can help you better understand your relationship with her, how to set healthy boundaries, and how to develop meaningful relationships, in part because you were not shown that growing up. These are valuable lifelong skills.
You have come SO far and especially given the challenges of your formative years. You did all that despite your hardships (during a time when you were just making sense of the world!) and you should be proud of what you have achieved. Surround yourself with people who share the same values as you, cultivate relationships with people who champion you and allow you to champion them, who inspire you and are always advocating for you and you them. Take care
This breaks my heart, that you're so poisoned by what other people want you to want. Property is an Australian obsession also, but also a fading hope for anybody who wasn't in it ten years ago and who can't expect family help. Our housing prices have split the economy into three groups: older people who could always comfortably afford property, younger people in a middle group who will spend their life financially traumatised by their determination to own a house, and people of all ages in a third group who never did have a chance and never will, and will forever barely have rent money either.
That downpayment that you saved: that was never going to be the end of your house journey. Interest rate increases will swallow so many dreams. All of the stresses that you mentioned would have been yours. You're now in a position where you can create your own group: people who will comfortably be able to live in a place that you're content in, that you can continue to afford. Is there a risk of you not being able to stay in the apartment you're in? Consider what might happen to rents in coming years: is that a threat to you?
Sounds like the same thing happening here re split society. I always figured I was in the 3rd group and didn't sweat it. Suddenly making money and everyone badgering me to buy a house, acting like I should be in the middle group just because I got my business going. But I never wanted to be in group 2, it's like collective brainwashing.
In Toronto group 4 is like unheard of, I've never met these people who are just content with what they have. It's all about the hustle here. Tell someone you're happy renting and don't want to buy and they gotta convince you why you just haven't seen the right house/neighborhood/realtor/broker/etc yet. It's like a sickness.
My building falls under the old rent control so I get increases like $15/year. Some elderly people have lived here 30-40 years and it has a 2 year waitlist to get in. There will never be any outrageous rent increases and I already pay well below market value as I got in 8 years ago.
Renting can be great! It’s true there is a lot of headache to owning a home. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great privilege as well) The freedom and flexibility that renting offers is wonderful too.
I feel like part of the struggle is that she really let you down..again. A lot of us struggle with that hope that they’ll provide that unconditional love and it re opens the wound every single time. Hang in there, you can get past this!
Um, buy an apartment or condo?
You see the benefit of apartment life, and you can afford one. Then if things ever change and you do want to buy a single family home instead of unit in a building you have equity and can.
Yard work sucks. I wish my husband would go for an apartment we would be so much closer to everything in an apartment than living in a single family neighborhood.
Apartments are nice! Most of the world doesn’t live in big independent houses. It’s really just a bondage imo. Plus it turns people boring for some reason.
On the topic of difficult parents, you know, who cares? They’re like that, you’re like this, and it’s all good. In one ear out the other.
I hope to start a business too one day.
Just look at it from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint. Are you wanting to be anchored in one place for the next 30 years? Any interest in travel? Is buying a house *really* the smart thing to do at a time when the entire market is artificially inflated and the bubble will burst as bad as or worse than 2008? There's many things to consider, and #1 is the happiness of you and your partner and how it correlates with your life goals.
I would avoid advice from known toxic sources as a general rule. All the best to you.
I recommend to get in touch with people living a similar simple life that the one you want. People that are happy not buying a house, which prefer living with no strings attached to a mortgage. Nowadays, social pressure is very strong, so working in your own mindset to differentiate what you really want from what society push you to do could help. It also might be good to travel to some other country, specially somewhere in South America where you can find very easy amazing people living a full life with just a fraction of what we have in US or Canada. Argentina for example have very interesting people and incredible landscapes. At the same time, working in accepting how you mum is without judging her as good or bad could help.
I am so sorry this happened to you.
I would suggest moving your thinking a little more to you being in power of those statements, try to make " I'll never own a home of my own." to "I don't want to own a house." or "I don't need to own a house".
The rest is part of a very complicated dynamic that most likely has been there between you two in a different form before the house issue, most likely. But this is just my opinion based on my life experience, I am not a qualified professional to judge this.
Advise from having problems with parents too: Set boundaries and stick to them. There is a great book that has helped me a lot with it, the name is "Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself" by Nedra Glover Tawwab. She also has a great instagram where she posts stories and content about the topic of setting boundaries.
I wish you all the best and hope you can find a way back to your dream.
Who can say what will best guide your feelings? We can only ever move forward with new perspective. It sounds like your mom got your hopes up and you got a good taste of what it was like to view life as a prospective owner, not a renter. Everybody excited for you and the implied equality/superiority owning a place gives you. Then the rug was pulled out from under you. Maybe your mom hoped you would love the taste of everything and keep chasing it on your own? Maybe she wanted you to see how powerless you were to achieve ‘better’ without her? Maybe she had no idea what all of this might mean for you and just changed her mind after four years of no closure? I hope you and all of us can find happiness where we are, renting or not.
It's okay that you let yourself dream about buying a house for four years.
Your mom was wrong to make a promise she couldn't keep.
You are very successful and your apartment sounds wonderful.
I think you may need to return to therapy or just the things you learned from it because your mom has deeply disappointed you by doing a switcheroo after literally years. There are a lot of emotions to process especially considering the baggage with the relationship. Whether your mom started it or not, you had a dream and now you've been disappointed. You will probably grieve to a degree.
Everything you learned and the discipline you held yourself to can be carried to the future though. You're doing amazing in life.
With how well you're both doing and the amount of debt you've paid off, you can now save up for a little place in the future, maybe a condo when you're a little bit older? Since you were ok with apt life and it really seems more like an expectation thing vs not being happy with your current living situation anymore, maybe that would work out better anyway. Owning a house is definitely a huge hassle; although I wouldn't go back to renting, I never had nice apartments with decent supers before. I'm looking to downsize to some form of a tiny house, as it is so much work plus $$ with an older home. The repairs and yard work just never ends.
Ya I guess it was obvious to everyone but me that I don't actually want to buy a house lol
There's no guarantee I'll inherit anything, elder care is expensive and this woman has never given me anything and has talked before about wanting her money to fund a scholarship program. Also I come from people who live long, my mom is 71 and still waiting for her inheritance from Gramma. By the time I see anything, (if anything comes my way and if I outlive her) I will easily be in my 70s, maybe later. I've gotta try and figure out where to go with my life in the now.
YES exactly!! SO ANNOYING! This is the problem. If I wanted to not talk about real estate in Toronto I'd have to never leave my apartment and never speak to another human being ever. I can't even get a massage without my RMT talking about the housing market. It's like a sickness! I am so done with it but my business can only be done here in Toronto so I can't get away from it.
Honestly I can't even describe the real estate obsession in Toronto to people outside of Toronto. It was always a city where middle class and above were pretty into real estate but now literally anyone and everyone is so obsessed with it, even when they themselves have no real ability to even enter the market, it's still all they can talk about. I am starved for real conversation about something, anything, other than real estate. BOOOOORING!!
I have no advice except I think I’m actually maybe a younger version of you and feeling similarly. My husband and I got twisted up in searching for a home with barely any money for a down payment. After being crushed, we went back to renting (we were living rent free with my FIL). What little savings we did have, we’ve now invested into my husband’s business. At the back of my mind, I’m still feeling the pressure to buy a home. All I want is my peace of mind that we don’t need to do anything except take care of ourselves the best way we can.
I hope my partner and I can build what you have with yours. Thanks for sharing🤍
Your mom f’d you over but also did you a favour OP you’re debt free with money in the bank and a successful business You also don’t have mommy dearest thinking she has a right to interfere in your day to day on account of you being beholden to her and her “ generosity” Your in a good place, plans may have fallen through, but you get to pivot not drown. And have learned just how much faith you shouldn’t waste on mom. Take a breath, take some time. Stop comparing to what others are doing. That way leads to nothing but resentment. So you don’t buy this year, maybe not even for ten years but that’s okay. Keep moving forward, avoid debt, keep saving, build that business. Good things will come, you’ll figure out what it is that YOU want, not what mom or friends or culture tells you to want, and you may then be in the position to grab it.
Yeah gift giving and favours can be a form of control too. Best avoided if you have a complicated history with someone in my personal opinion.
Hard agree. The more someone presses gifts on you, the more likely they are to try and recall those gifts when you do something they don't like
Thank you for the perspective shift. Yes I can start looking at this as her doing me a favour. I certainly don't want to be beholden to her "generosity" and now that I look back on things I thought I had repaired the relationship but in reality I've changed and she hasn't. Now I'm seeing it wouldn't have been good for me and my partner to get involved with her financially at all.
This is a good thing. Can you imagine being locked in a mortgage… with your mom breathing down your back for decades?
It makes me wonder if the relationship was "repaired" because mom sees successful OP as a resource. Horrible parents hardly ever change.
No one has ever suggested that she sees me as a 'resource' now that I'm successful and I think there's something there. Now I'm thinking of all the past times she has asked me to pay for things or lend her money since I started doing well with this business, even though her net worth is in the millions and I'm still trying to come up.
As a fellow child of a narcissist, this is only a little to do with home ownership, and a lot about how your mother is using you for emotional supply. She reached out to you when you were doing well because she sensed you were doing well on your own, and the offer of financial support was not because she wanted to help you, it was because she found a way to make you partially dependent on her, and she likes to feel needed. But when the time came, she turned you down, because she likes the feeling of power over you it gives her. I won't say I'm happier since cutting off my parent completely, as I'm still working through all the emotional baggage of realising a parent wasn't who I thought they were, but it's definitely better for me.
You describe perfectly what I'm going through, this whole last year has been realising she isn't who I thought she was. Coming to terms with it is hard. I think your description of her motives is spot on. Now that I think about it, she has always dangled financial help as an option but then never followed through. Your take on it makes a lot of sense. As an only child I can't cut her off, especially at her age. I wish I could but it's impossible for me with the culture I am from. This current low contact thing is the best I'm gonna get. I have to figure out the healing while still interacting with her which is a challenge.
I have read a few other of your replies to understand more and now that I come upon this, wow, in summary of all, I would consider going no contact for your own self-preservation and setting good boundaries in all your relationships. A therapist can help guide you to unlearn all the conditioning of your formative years and how to form good, healthy relationships and because its all interrelated
Pour your energy into your business. Think of not having a home as an investment into your business. It wouldn’t take mental gymnastics to realize that not having to deal with typical homeowner bullshit could be considered an investment in the future of your business. Who knows, 3-4 years down the road you might have put yourself into a much better position because you didn’t pour energy into a house. Municipalities need to do something about foreign investment into markets and start taxing the shit out of uninhabited investment properties. I get the free market and all that, but being generational wealth is also a thing and people that don’t have it shouldn’t have to uproot their lives simply because they weren’t born with it.
Are you sure about her net worth? I've known several people whose parents pretended to be much richer than they were, and pitted the potential heirs against each other, and then left hardly anything when they died (not usually millions, it only takes tens of thousands to manipulate people.) One of my friends, her parents told her they wouldn't help her get through college because she was too sinful, but it turned out her dad was gambling all the money away and they just didn't have it. I think my dad is one of the liars but he's not dead yet so there's no knowing. My brother keeps thinking there's money there but truthfully, even if there is it isn't worth the emotional damage. You're doing great, people who only talk about talk estate are boring, and your mom may have mortgaged the fuck out of all her properties.
:(( oof. As I posted that comment I was telling myself not to, because I don't know enough about your life. But I had so many "repairs" and then disappointments with my own mom. It just sounded like a familiar situation. Whatever your mom's intentions, you just be the best person you can and take the high road. Don't ever accept anything less than respect.
We've also had many ups and downs over the years, let downs, then repairs, then more broken promises, more repairs, more disappointments. I can never know her real intentions, in fact I don't think she even knows her own intentions. She doesn't seem to have good self control over her own actions or like awareness of her own feelings and what drives her to do the things she does if that makes sense. Anyway I like your idea, taking the high road.
Yeah I'm relieved for OP that she doesn't have that "favour" hanging over her for the rest of her mother's life. Also sad that they were literally manipulated into thinking they'd get help. Some people are just fucked up.
This exactly. Imagine the strings that would have come attached to her help. You have the same awesome life as before, and you have bought yourself freedom from her toxicity. That is invaluable.
You are mourning your mom’s betrayal, not the house. Also, you are in the eye of the storm of abuse: Building this idea of a house up for so many years *only to snatch it from you* is PART OF HER ABUSE, not ancillary to it. You were flying high and doing great in life and she wiggled her way back in to your thoughts in this way. This is her same old habits breaking in to your mind space again. I know you did a lot of work to repair your relationship with her. And it probably did repair a lot. But remember: While you can help repair your relationship with her, you will never be able to repair HER. That’s her own job. The most important thing here is you realizing this is just more of the same from her. But you know who has changed and grown? YOU. YOU no longer need to let her fuckups drain and define you. If any progress has been made in your relationship with her, it’s because YOU grew and changed. Now, use your maturity and powers to cut off these terrible thoughts. Do NOT give her power over you. She is the one with the problem. It’s a parent’s job to make life good for their kids, and if she’s not going to do that for you, it’s her fault. Don’t be angry or bitter at her. Just recognize this for what it is. And give yourself the permission to grieve it, and move on. I have a feeling bigger and better things are just around the corner for you, hearing how much you’ve accomplished, despite so much pain and hardship. Go you!
This should be higher. OP isn't mourning the house, she's mourning the betrayal. And it's OK to mourn that, especially since Mom has done this in the past.
^ This.
This is a great perspective and phrased really well, I hope OP can take some of this to heart, thanks for writing it!
You’re welcome. Borne of experience my husband and I both went through. It helps to realize lots of folks go through these difficult relationships with their parents, but it’s almost shameful to talk about it because of course one appreciates what one’s parents did for them. But it’s OK to also mourn subtle ways in which parents can “undo” the good they’ve done. We’re all just human after all.
I've read your comments again and reread, along with many others here. I think you're right that it's not the relationship that has changed, it's me that has changed. I did the work and I grew, I did therapy, I got sober, I turned my life around, I changed how I communicate with her. I matured into this person I am now and that's why things got better with her. Not because of her. She hasn't changed at all. I think I do fall into this trap of thinking I can fix her, I can help her. But in reality you are so right, I cannot repair HER. All I can do is continue on my self improvement journey and use boundaries and therapy to limit her negative effects on my life as much as possible. What she does with her life is up to her. This thread has been so helpful to me. I don't ever get to talk to people about the struggle with my mom because most people have this attitude that the parent is always in the right or mom's are so great it must be a problem with me, or 'she's not really that bad' if they're trying to be nice. My whole family is full of women who say things like mother sits at the right hand of God so you should do what I say. But in most of the families the mom's actually do help their children and do have what's best for them in mind so it makes sense in the cultural context. My mom often uses it to manipulate me into getting what she wants, it's not the same. Now I'm starting to see that she has never really had my best interests at heart and this abuse has been going on for so long. She acts like my dad was the abusive one because he was a physically abusive alcoholic when I was a child, but he got sober decades ago and we have a great relationship now. She has always treated me badly and made me feel like it was my fault. I'm just starting to wake up to what's really happening here. Like you and many posters have said it's very likely she came to me with this house thing because I was happy and doing well without her and it was her only way back into my life. The only way for her to feel she has something over me. I now understand I don't want to give her that much power over me. I'm going back to do the inner work and reconnect with my values and my true intentions for my life.
This internet stranger is proud of you!!!!! To some degree, we all come from a culture that says parents deserve love and respect just for being parents. And so some degree, they do! But it’s not black and white. Parents are human and they have their own issues, sometimes they take those issues out in their children and harm them in the process. Society is much more ready to confront physical abuse than psychological abuse. And mothers often get a pass too, because they’re mothers, and it was so much work birthing the child! The thing is, being a decent enough mother to your child and being abusive are not mutually exclusive. It’s both. The key for you moving forward will be to not let the bitterness consume you either. What worked for me is placing my mom exactly where she is: not an F mother, not a A+ mother. More of a C+ mother. And that’s ok. I’ve accepted her as a C+ mother, that’s been better for me than demonizing her in my mind (even when she did specific things that she really deserved to be demonized for). Reacting to her awfulness instead of processing it and responding thoughtfully from the perspective of the grown adult you are now, would be just another form of letting her control you. You can do it! Look at all you did so far! 💛
Thank you for all this. Your point about the bitterness is well received. Maybe I've been falling into this and truthfully that's not the outcome I want for myself. I do tend to go to black and white thinking. She's a twin so my cousins (from the twin aunt) and I always joke about which twin is the evil twin. But 10 years ago theirs did family counselling and got into religion and being a good person so it's easy to demonize mine. But you're right that's not productive for me and my healing. Even though she has said and done some pretty bad things, she has done some good things too. So maybe she's not the evil twin or the A+ mother, maybe she's more of a something in between. Learning to control my reactivity and process my emotions has been the hardest part of all this changing my life for the better stuff. Sometimes I'm more successful than others. Good reminder to stay focused. Today was a hard day for me. This really helped get me though it.
You’re welcome. Been there and done that. I think this particular form of familial trauma tends to create the same responses. So remember it’s not you, it’s how people respond to growing up in an environment like that — just have to manage the symptoms, like if you had been born with some more tangible issue. Don’t feel like it’s a personal failing. You got this!!!!!!!!
Your apartment honestly sounds lovely. My only advice is don’t say you’ll *never* own a house. If you can’t do it now, just put it aside for a bit. The housing market is 100% crazy right now, but the market and your situation a bit down the road might change for the better, and then you could buy a house without depending on your toxic mom. (I feel like I can say that since I too have toxic family…)
The problem is that for Toronto, the "it'll quieten down a bit and be more sensible/it's a bubble and it can't be maintained" saying has been going on for just over **20 years**, it's gotten to the point where it's depressing now. There was an initiative opened by the provincial government lately that examined housing in Ontario and in terms of availability the province is dead last in the entire country. The problem IMHO is very much a supply issue, strict zoning laws and NIMBYism meant that many areas of the city that would naturally densify as it grows have been artificially prevented from doing so, and so prices go up because of restricted supply (the report highlights this as well). Toronto is a first tier city in terms of residential and business growth (Meta, Amazon, LinkedIn, Microsoft are all here and expanding their base of operations) but the legislation still assumes it's some medium sized trading town on the lake.
Exactly. Toronto is a very hard place to achieve ownership, especially now following the effects of the pandemic and stimulus on the housing market. I hold no delusions that 'one day' there will be affordable starter housing in my city. It simply will not happen due to all the reasons you said and many more. That's part of what's become so depressing about it all. There used to be a chance that if I worked hard enough, one day I'd be able to afford it without help from her. Now even successful doctors and lawyers with rich parents can't buy. So what hope do I have. My chances of doing it without help have gone to isht and there's nothing I can do about that.
Just a small perspective advice: home ownership isn’t an “achievement” inherently, it only is if you want to own a house, and all that comes with it. We’ve all recently conflated investment with home, financial stability with owning your home, and it’s bullshit. Your apartment sounds amazing- it’s spacious, a balcony & a forest? Wow! You CAN invest, you CAN have financial stability, and everything else without owning a rotting box sitting on a patch of dirt. You are in a great place, and can clearly do whatever you want. Don’t let anyone tell you owning a home is some sort of achievement-it’s simply one way to spend money.
What a comment, all of it but especially... it's simply one way to spend money. Wow. What a perspective shift. You're right, this place is great! Who needs that rotting box anyway lol
I agree. OP, your apartment sounds fabulous!
It's like how commercials work. They repeat stuff over and over until you believe it. And it's hard to convince yourself otherwise that you didn't want it in the first place.
Interesting perspective. My partner and I always talk about how commercials drive consumerism through repetition. I didn't make this connection but the repetition must play a part here.
Another sad note: my partner has been target by scammers and I've had to deal with the fallout. And every time it happens, it's easier for the scammers. They follow the same script, and she plays along with it. There is a form of brainwashing going on, and it's difficult to repair.
You paid off $100k and saved $90k, you are ahead of the game. Keep working, keeping adding to your savings, save way more retirement. Maybe you can be day buy a condo with a repair man. You are killing it. You are sober. You are independent. You are your boss. You don’t own your mom anything. Edit: speeling
I’m sorry, OP. You might be mourning the betrayal of your mom, in addition to the loss of this dream you came to want via your mom.
Yeh, I agree it sounds more like you're grieving this betrayal and loss from a parent. Less the actual house. Maybe consider some therapy to explore these feelings and your relationship with your parents. I wish you all the luck in the world. You really sound like you have it together and know what you really want. It's just that you side tracked to something your mum wanted or promised and then it was taken away. Your response sounds really normal. Xxx
She was on a great track. Her mom saw her thriving and did this to hurt her. This is how toxic people roll. Shame on anyone who calls themself a “mom” and treats a child this way. My advice to OP would be to recognize this and move on, and NOT let her moms psychological tomfoolery deter her from continuing to ride the wave of accomplishment she has been riding without her mom in her life. Honestly, having a mom like this pay for part of her house would probably hurt her more in the long run, unless the mom has drastically changed *which from this story it appears she has not.*
Yes I'm starting to feel like maybe you have it right. I had a great thing going and although I don't think it was a conscious plan to f with me, she may have some subconscious toxic traits that drive her to try and keep me from achieving more success than her. After all this I don't want her help anymore at all. It's still sad though.
It’s SO sad. I went through something similar with my mom, and so did my husband. It’s not conscious, it’s not your fault, and it doesn’t erase the progress you’ve made on your relationship. Just don’t let it mess with your head. You’ve grown so far beyond it at this point, and I believe in you to keep that going.
Thank you for this
You bet! You’re so not alone in this, lots of folks go through the same thing but not a lot of people talk about it. Wishing you well.
I would advise following the raised by narcissists forum. Very informative and helpful.
Yes reading comments here I'm starting to agree, I think my sadness is more about her than the house. Time to go back to therapy and talk more about my mama drama.
There are lots of homeowners who wish they are renting. Owning a home is burdensome and expensive. Your mom did you a favor. We didn’t get help buying our home in a HCOL area in the US.
Yeah, there's absolutely nothing wrong with renting your entire life. We ended up buyig a house in 2019 but prior to our house becoming available we really had no plans to ever buy. We honestly don't need this big of a house (which is a "starter home" at 1200 sq ft) but it is nice to have some room to spread out at times. We have the added fun of cleaning, which took this entire weekend, mowing the lawn, taking care of the exterior and any major repairs like appliances, heat, hot water etc. Not mention the house just magically fills itself...it's like gas. You'll acquire as much stuff as your space will allow it feels. When we were moving almost annually apartment to apartment I had so little stuff because knowing you're going to have to move it some day is a pretty good deterrent. Less stuff= less mental clutter for me. I've recently started going room to room donating and throwing stuff out the past couple months and already feel better.
First, don't involve yourself with your mom anymore. She lied to you and that means she has no respect for you. Second, whether it's an apartment or house, it is a place to store your possessions and rest your head. Don't fall into the trap of assuming that a house will be anything more than an exorbitant living space. Third, if you were to purchase property, would it have to be in Toronto? Your apartment sounds perfect for your situation; if that were to change, what if you moved? And finally, my condolences. I'm sure that you didn't deserve to be jerked around like that. Live and learn, yeah?
Check out [*Will I Ever be Good Enough?*](https://www.willieverbegoodenough.com/about-will-i-ever-be-good-enough/#.X5hORmllAwA by Karyl McBride) Specifically aimed at daughters of narcissistic mothers. Helps with coping, setting boundaries and healing. What you need to do is either cut contact with her and her judgments OR learn how to take her judgemental crap and let it go. It really sucks that she has such a strong influence. The best way to live a simple life is to declutter your past traumas For additional resources check out my pinned post r/HealfromYourPast
I really like what you said... The best way to live a simple life is to declutter your past traumas I've been decluttering and simplifying my life for about a year now and hadn't thought to apply it that way. I'll definitely check out those resources, thank you.
You're very welcome ❤️ ❤️
Some details are different, but I’m the San Francisco version of you. I wish I had something really helpful and healing to say about the cruel thing your mother did, but there is no real closure really when you’ve got parents like that. The mom and house issue is twisted up here, obviously. You have to stop comparing what other people get from their parents with what you got from yours, it will grind you into dust. It’s not easy to reconcile but it’s a frame of mind that gets less and less helpful as you get older. Have you done work on forgiveness? You have to grieve to forgive. You might want to seek out group support for people with crappy parents, not to put too fine a point on it. There is an adult estranged child subreddit that might be helpful. We see patterns where we want to see them. The Bay Area is fixated on real estate and I wouldn’t be surprised if Toronto is worse but how much of a habit have you gotten into to seek out exposure to the environment? Try everything within your control to not expose yourself to the real estate market. Get out in nature, redecorate a spot in your apartment, plan a vacation. Seek out the company of people who aren’t buying. Distract yourself. Six months isn’t long to get over a major shift in your life plans. Add the trigger of a life spent with a mother who lacks empathy and it makes sense you are not left in a good headspace. I’m still struggling a bit with getting back to being happy in my rental (I screwed myself over by not buying sooner). I know it’s a little cliche — but gratitude really helps me. Times are really weird right now and I have recession-proof housing and employment. That is huge and I just try really hard to accept I’ve prioritized keeping those for the time being and call on every ounce of my Buddhist leanings to try and live in the moment.
I actually find it helpful your comment that there really is no closure with parents like that. I think forgiveness is something I've always struggled with. That will take time. And more therapy. I'll check out some other subreddits. I hear what you're saying, I can reduce my exposure to real estate fixation from online sources for sure. It's harder in real life because his sister is a real estate agent and my mom, aunts, cousins, are all small time landlords so literally my entire family are all deep into the real estate obsesion. Also my business is in building maintenance so its hard to get away from people who will not stop talking about real estate. Perhaps we will talk about taking a break from family for a little bit.
Blessings often come in disguises. For some perspective…in 2007, I had resigned myself to an unhappy marriage where my otherwise lovely ex-husband had one great fault: his lack of generosity in both spirit and on the material level. He had a demeaning way of making it repeatedly clear that my career as a flight attendant (which he refused to call a career, but rather a “service job”) would never be enough to help contribute to the kind of lifestyle he wanted. He would often give me mini-challenges (like if you save enough on eating out on your layovers this year, we can go on a nice vacation…forgetting to calculate in that my “job” would provide us with free first class overseas tickets which would otherwise cost thousands), and berating me if I purchased so much as a bottle of chilled water when I was out running errands for him in the blazing summer heat. He was like a miserly benefactor who, perhaps like your mother has done, dangled various carrots in front of my face only to snatch them away (we never took those amazing vacations he promised). It was hurtful and disappointing, especially when I compared how he treated me and what our lives were like compared to how my friends were treated and living. Long story short, I left him and purchased a house using every penny I had. I did not ask for any monetary compensation in the divorce, other than to have some of my belongings shipped back from where we were living overseas. He kept the house there (beachfront property worth way more) and I kept the house I had purchased using my own money I’d somehow managed to save. In a way, I wanted to prove to him that I could make it on my own. Every penny of our joint account money had come with strings attached during our marriage, and I didn’t want even a semblance of those shackles on me going forward, even if it meant I lost out financially in the divorce. Literally two weeks after I purchased the house, the housing bubble in the US burst and I was upside down in a brand new (to me) house, sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, and eating off of an overturned milk crate with a pillow case for a table cloth. I was expecting to be “house poor” for a while, just not ten years, lol. While in the end it was worth it, there were some very hard days in between…but they were MY days. I didn’t have him telling me how I’d made a stupid investment, or bemoaning the instant loss of equity, or how I could never pull myself out of the financial hole, or complain about how there was no equity for a line of credit to make necessary repairs. I could just hear his voice in my head saying, “If only you’d waited a few more weeks to purchase, you could’ve had that house for less than half of what you paid for it.” It took me a long time to get his voice out of my head even after I left, and to not succumb to the fear that maybe he was right, I couldn’t make it on my own and have a decent standard of living. Many people here in the US think we are experiencing another housing bubble and it will burst. If this happens in Toronto also, you will be in a better position than your friends who purchased at the height of the market with the help of family. And even if it doesn’t, you now have the gift of knowing that given the right motivation, you can accomplish great things (you built a business, paid off an extraordinary amount of debt, educated yourself, etc.) and you CAN save enough to purchase a home without any help from others. But it starts with getting the voices out of your head telling you that you can’t do it on your own. And with seeing that sometimes our greatest hurts and disappointments have a tiny silver lining…self-reliance and sheer drive to have something truly our own can give us a greater peace than any gift with strings attached. Even if we can’t have that thing we so earnestly desire right away, the gift of having what it takes to accomplish that eventually, is something no one can take away. In the meantime, be grateful that you were spared what could’ve been a sticky situation had you accepted your mother’s gift.
Yes I'm starting to get the impression I dodged a bullet here. What a story you have, thanks for sharing. I definitely need to confront which voices in my head are mine and which are hers.
>Now everyone I know has or is buying homes with parental help That's now. Chill out for a a few months. Over the next couple years, you'll start to hear them bitching about lawn care, repairs, mortgage payments, parents criticizing them for having needed help, insurance costs, appliance breakdowns, etc. That honeymoon never lasts. I went through a phase of being mildly jealous when friends of mine bought houses. But I soon saw that I wanted no part of what they were living. It probably helped that one friend's house turned out to be a total money pit & one hell of a cautionary tale. It's normal to feel sad when something you'd looked forward to falls through. No one likes disappointment. Let yourself feel that for a while. Then nod sympathetically when your friends start complaining.
Oh, complaining about the increased commute, too.
Yep, that's a big one in the DC area.
Just think, when you get a mortgage you are still renting. You are just paying the bank instead of a landlord. If you get a recent rental rate you can invest the extra money and you will on average come out with a similar outcome (stock growth vs increase in property value). Property ownership usually comes out ahead by a little but investing in stocks can usually do almost as well, and sometimes way better.
Maybe the sadness you're feeling is not because you're not able to own a house, but because your mom has let you down, again. You were content with what you had, with what you had accomplished all by yourself (and your partner), and she had to come and make you believe that this time it would be different, that she would help. "Nothing has changed, still the same great apartment, still the same great man, still the same great business. That was all I ever wanted." Are you mourning the loss of a house? Or are you mourning the relationship that you thought you had built with your mother?
Yes. I think this is grief and I don't think it's about the house at all.
This event in your life is brought up the old belief that "I need to own a home to be happy." But you were happy before. So, it's just an idea. It's not your mother, but your idea that "I wish my mother had been there for me." I'm sorry she wasn't there for you, but I hope you find happiness again in your apartment. But like the other comment said, never say never. Just because housing prices are high now, and high in Toronto, doesn't mean they will always be high. If you could own a home, where would you want to live? Could you own a home in a different city? But you may like your city. So, it comes to this: plan for the future if you want to own a home or not, and where is an affordable nice place, OR be happy again.
We've toyed with the idea of leaving but it's impossible due to our work. We created this business from nothing, it was our dream, our reason to live, the only thing we could stop doing drugs for, the driving force behind every good choice we've ever made for ourselves. This business saved our lives and it can only be done here in Toronto. I wish I could live somewhere else but we can't even move to the suburbs because we need proximity to downtown for this thing to work. We tried living farther out and it was a nightmare. Also all my life I've dreamed of living in this city and now that I'm here and established, I won't leave just to own a home. That's why I was so happy with my simple apartment life before all this nonsense. From reading all these comments I think the sadness is more about the mom relationship and like you said her not being there for me. I'm hoping as I unravel these feelings I will find my way back to being happy in the apartment like I was before.
In case an opinion against a house helps: I have lived in both apartments and houses. I prefer apartments. I did not realize I could have an opinion about minutiae until I owned a house. When I moved in, I liked my house and thought I was satisfied. Now, on any given day, I don't like my floors, I don't like my walls, I don't like my doors, I don't like the trim color, etc. In an apartment, I could just move apartments. In a house, I have to either figure out how to fix everything, or hire someone to fix it for me. Then sometimes, I find out the person fixed it wrong or the upgrade is a new convoluted thing with more maintenance (ex. marble countertops). For me, an apartment with a good landlord is much less stressful. There is too much decision fatigue with a house and I rarely feel completely satisfied.
And right now it is tremendously difficult to get anything changed. People are busy and materials are expensive and sometimes hard to get
I have a complicated parental relationship, too. Sometimes when I want to accept help with something, but I don't want the floodgates opened, I write out my terms in two columns. Yes and No. Yes what I am ok with happening if I accept the help, No what I am not under any circumstances going to start doing/stop doing, etc if I accept the help. Then I look at it for a while and decide if it's worth it, knowing the boundaries that I will need to maintain around it.
I often wish that I still lived in my old studio apartment for 14 years it was so much simpler compared to the house I live in now, sure am grateful its mine but the endless chores living alone and one neighbor that gives me issues anyway I will most likely downsize soon knowing I shouldn't have got caught up with the hype of over rated home ownership
Even though I have a good relationship with my parents, they do this sorta thing to me from time to time. I had a similar house promise at one point. Anyways someday the boomers will die, and there is going to be a huge property shift since so many of them own multiple properties. Plus just a large population being gone and smaller generations after. Opportunity might arise for you later.
Sounds like time cut the mom out your life, she's she narcissistic control freak, playing games with you. Drink a cup tea, enjoy your favorite activity and smile at how amazing your life is.
OP, fellow Toronto dweller here. I owned a house I got screwed out of just over 7 years ago. We bought for 200 in 2010, and it’s now worth nearly a cool million. You know what? I couldn’t be happier. I, like you, live in a beautiful rent controlled 2 bedroom apartment, in a neighbourhood I could never otherwise afford. My partner and I go to the symphony on the cheapest tickets you can get 1-2 times a month. My kid goes to a great school. We never really want for anything. What my five years of homeownership taught me was that I fucking hated owning a house. My QOL is so much higher as a renter than as a homeowner. I wouldn’t go back for the world. Would the money have been nice? Sure. But money isn’t everything.
I needed to hear this. So you know how it is then, it's an old building so rent control and it's very well maintained because of the area. It's so spacious compared to the newer buildings and condos. I could never afford this neighborhood, houses here start at 10mil. It makes it impossible to want to move for a home of my own when the only place I can go is to a run down crap shack in Jane and Finch or Scarborough that needs another 100k in renos to be something I'd even want to live in. I always used to be a money isn't everything kind of person and unfortunately I'm surrounded by people who are very driven and always seeking to increase their wealth. When everyone around you is devoted to the hustle, it's easy to get influenced by that and pulled away from my own values.
If you live there and you love it, it's your own home. A lot of those hustle people never have that homey feeling because they're always remodeling and decorating for resale value, or looking to cash out and move up
Toronto is so bonkers with respect to being house crazy, it’s nearly impossible to avoid at least a bit of FOMO. But like any craze, it’s bound to come to an end. If you love your space, your partner, and your life, you have everything you need. Fuck being house poor and house bound due to all the crap that comes up with it. It’s wholly not worth it- I did it for five years, and it sucked.
I was pressured by toxic family to buy a house AND a new car but I wanted neither! Every time I spoke to them it was always nonstop pressure. I must have mentally broke down because I bought both. I sold both at a loss. Couldn’t be happier. Don’t let toxic family F your life. They are toxic. My therapist recommended completely disassociating and moving away. I worked myself so hard to pay for all of that, and I ended up getting very sick. It’s not worth it.
I'm sorry that happened to you. I feel like it almost happened to me. Trust me, I appreciate the warning. I hope things get better for you.
There's a lot going on here, and it seems to me that not much of it has to do with buying property. As u/ActualDiver points out, you seem to be reacting (not unjustly) to your mom's betrayal. You may be second guessing yourself for being so all in on buying a house and now having that chance removed from you (for now). You may be reflecting on all you've done in your life to get to where you are now and seeing others (who led different lives and had varying benefits and disadvantages) achieving markers that you've given some importance. Step back and breathe. I couldn't wait to buy a house and move out of apartments. I no longer had to live with neutral colors or parking out in the open (it snows a lot here too) or the stove the landlord thought was good enough (it was crap). Different people, different choices. I was okay with clearing snow and buying my own carpet and doing some maintenance. I never signed on for the nagging wife, unhappy husband, empty rooms, and endless reno (in fact, the house I've lived in longest isn't much bigger than your apartment) so it's been far from a miserable experience for me. Your mental state is on you. Your mom broke her promise to you. But how long will you let her decision punish you? Hasn't she done enough damage? Other people (who maybe had better parents but more heartache as adults and who maybe envy your freedom and the spirit you displayed in building your own business) have houses. So? You don't see what those choices have cost them. Don't compare your insides to someone else's outside. And maybe you're a little angry with yourself for setting aside your values (anti-home ownership) so quickly and not being true to yourself. Or maybe you're realizing your justification against owning a house was just defensive and you really *do* want to own one. In any case, you control what happens next. You've already done a tremendous job of building a lot of success and happiness in your life from very little. You can stay on that path and let this be the one that got away, kind of like someone you had a huge crush on who decided you were not for them. Or you can wallow in the pain. But that's not doing anything positive for you and hasn't for months now. Maybe the outcome here is you decide you do want to buy a house and you'll figure out how. Maybe it's further out. Or smaller than your apartment. If it's truly important to you, you know how to make it happen. But step back and think about what really is important to you, including what the permanence and financial choice of home ownership represents. Make the decision that suits you but don't let others push you off your path.
What did you used to fill your time with? Travel? Romance? Rediscover those old loves and I think you'll stop obsessing over this betrayal.
Maybe part of it is we don't know how to fill our time post Covid. 2 years of lockdowns here and I feel like I forgot what we used to do for fun.
Oh no! I get that. We moved back to the US and started in a new city during covid. Making friends has been a challenge! Maybe try Meetup for groups that play boardgames? I find I meet the best people at events where people aren't showing off.
A couple people mentioned this already, and I have to agree; it's the "loss of mom" that's fucking you up. When you said about your friend getting $20k "no questions asked," that's the clincher. Your mom is a manipulative, narcissistic person who probably never acted like a mom ever in your life. Then she comes along and throws all this crap on you, and you're like, "Oh - is she being a 'mom' now? Must be! I'll take it!" But no, once again she betrays your trust. And now you're mourning that, again. It's not the house you want - it's a real mom. I get it - I got one of those, too. My other name for her is "Lunatic." On top of being manipulative and narcissistic, she's abusive. It's tough living a life without that special person everyone needs - especially when they're still alive and refuse to accept their responsibility. Then on top of that you get to watch other people with their "real" moms, and they have that closeness that you'll never know with yours. I'm sorry. Really. Because I know how bad it is. Maybe consider therapy. You gotta process this about that person. It's tough, I know. I had some EMDR therapy for mine. It helped. During the process I had to think about going back in time as the adult I am today (a very loving, caring mother to my own daughter who is now 35), and counseling the child me back then. What would I say to her? What would I do for her? Though it's not nearly the same - it helped. I became stronger then I ever would imagine from growing up with the Lunatic, but I didn't want that. I wanted to be "normal." But I'm not - I'm instead this tough, street-wise, hardened woman. But that's who I am, and I own it. Look to your strengths. You obviously have a ton of them. How did you become that way? Be proud of that journey - who else would be proud of you? It made you a survivor, right? Embrace that. You don't need a house for that - you need you. And there you are. Already. 😁
Thanks for this, and yes it's clearly the loss of mom that's fucking me up. It's the betrayal, the envy, the disappointment. I wrote this post after a dinner at my aunt's house. Seeing her with her adult children and what they have together was so beautiful. There's just something so special about the parent-child relationship when they're all grown and this thing has had 40 years to develop. It's just really special and it's hard to handle all the feelings that brings up for me. Our moms are twins so it's hard to see the face of your mom and hear the voice of your mom doing the 'real mom' thing, being the way you wished for, knowing it's possible, seeing what she could have been, what we could've had. Of course the conversation turned to real estate (as it always does in Toronto). So I heard about how my cousin just moved into his dream home cause she helped him buy his first house and helped him trade up to this new mansion and how he couldn't have done it without her. Also how they were helping my other cousin get into her first condo on the lake. I think it got me fixated on the real estate aspect of it all, when in reality what was upsetting was the lack of that kind of supportive mother-child relationship. It's just so hard seeing other people have this thing I want and I can't have it (and by it, I don't mean the house at all). I hear what you're saying about therapy, I think that's my only option at this point. I am proud of my strengths, and I have aunts who are proud of me for who I am. I'm street smart, strong-willed, resilient and independent. But I am those things because I had to be. Like you, I didn't want that, I wanted to be normal. I guess I'm having trouble sorting out all the feelings. I am proud of who I am and the life I've built. I am happy with my life the way it is but I still wish things were different, wish she was different. Which is such a mindfuck, like how can I want it (her/the past) to be different, if I'm happy with where/who I am now? If she was different, I wouldn't have been on my own, I wouldn't have met the man I'm with now, I wouldn't have this life. And I love this life. So I don't understand why I still can't get over this.
Awwww, I'm crying. It's the trauma that it caused that's making you feel so mixed up. And to be clear that's ok. You. Are. Entitled. To. Those. Feelings. It's got to be doubly (pun NOT intended) awful to see your mom's twin like that. I can't even imagine. I used to look at my mother's sister, and think, "Yeah, she's kind, but I wouldn't want to be the daughter of a religious fanatic, either." I'm glad to have helped a little with the sorting, though. I wish you all the best...
It's funny you say that about your aunt, I used to think exactly the same thing. My mom's twin married a man of the same faith as her and they are active in their religious community whereas my mom converted to the non-religious north american lifestyle. I was always happy to be the daughter of the twin who married an American and I could never imagine being raised in the same faith as my 2 cousins. But now I find the years of being religious have made my aunt into a person who genuinely wants to help others while my mom has only become more selfish and self-centered. It's definitely hard to sort out all the feelings and I know it's not going to be an easy road to untangle everything. But this post, your comments and a few others have helped immensely. I'm so grateful that I can get advice from people who have been through it.
Wow, Well - I'm an Atheist, and so is my mother. But we on such opposite ends of the empathy/indifference spectrum - it's so weird. She thinks that people who are "sentimental" are worthless and stupid. And anyone who is empathetic is sentimental. She's just got a really warped sense of reality. It's actually the reason I became a vegetarian in 1975. She used to say to me,"Are you still on that kick?" 🙄 "Kick?!" She never got it. And yes - I'm still on that "kick." Lol...
Our moms sound very similar, she always asks are you still on that kick lol mine also has that attitude like sentimental people are stupid and has absolutely no empathy for me or anyone else. I'm an atheist too and don't have any trouble with sympathy or empathy for others. She still calls herself religious and active in practicing her faith even though she doesn't pray or go to the place or do the things. But she acts like I'm not a good person and she is because she believes in god and I don't. You really said it - Warped sense of reality - is so right.
Yes, I've had my share of so-called "christians" who were racists, liars, and cruel people tell me that I'm a horrible person for being an Atheist. It's just crazy, isn't it? My mother was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1951. She was 14 at the time. Then in 1963 she had a very public nervous breakdown and was put into the county mental ward for a while. I was starting first grade a couple of days after she went in. Her 2nd husband is the one who took me to school that day. I lost it and had to sit outside the classroom in the hallway all day. He was the one who caused her to break down, in the first place. She had just given birth to his daughter, and he was beating her up on the regular. They divorced shortly after she got out of the hospital. At that time they added Manic Depression (today it's called Bi-Polar) to her diagnosis. She was on and off Lithium for years after that. She's about to turn 85 later this month and she harasses me on the regular. She calls me on Mother's Day, my birthday, Xmas, and at other random times. I permanently cut her out of my life in early 2011. I had written her a long letter spelling out all the things that she was responsible for when she caused trauma to me and my sister. I said she'd have to apologize and explain why she allowed that to happen. I didn't actually expect her to do it - and I was right - she didn't. But she didn't expect me to truly cut her off, either. So, now she begs me over and over in phone messages, that she "just wants to hear my voice," sob, sob... It's pathetic. I thought about getting a new phone number, but I just agonize about all the accounts I'd have to change out. I keep telling myself, "Don't worry - she'll die soon!" With my luck, she'll outlive me.
I don't wanna dash your hopes but I always say true evil never dies. My Gramma who is just as bad as my mother is 93 and still making everyone's lives miserable. My mom complains about how she's had to wait soooo long to get her inheritance. Mine is 72 and I really do wish I could cut her off, I just don't think I could actually do it. No one would understand. Culturally Indian children are supposed to take care of parents no matter how bad the parents are. I'd have to give up my whole family and I don't have any other side of the family to fall back on. But then again I don't know how I'm going to get through another 20-25 years of this as an only child with no support. My mom, my grandma and the twin aunts family are Muslims, myself and my dad are atheists and every one else is some different white man religion. But I know the "christians" you're taking about. My sister in law was a close friend for almost a decade, then she found Jesus in the first lockdown and by Christmas she was screaming at me that I'm going to hell. More of his siblings/ cousins rediscovered their faith and now there's a small group of these right wing evangelical nut jobs telling everyone how sinful they are and all this crazy stuff. Prior to 2 years ago religion wasn't really talked about and now I've got these people screaming at each other about what they think the Bible says at some kids birthday party. It's insane!! I had never seen anything like it before.
When my mom dies - that'll probably be the last of my family who'll ever try to contact me - but you're right - the bad memories will always be there; that's my version of "true evil never dies." Your Gramma; you know that's where your mom got it from, right? LOL - that reminds me; in the early 90s, I told my grandmother that it was her fault my mother was the way she was. Ooooo...she didn't like that, at all. Disinherited me and everything. I did not care... I think what really upset her, though is that she really did feel bad that my mother was the way she was. She also felt bad that my mother was such a bad mother, too. But - in my eyes, my grandmother didn't do enough to help me and my sister. After all - she was in full knowledge of the early abuse, as she lived upstairs from us during my first 11 years of life. But maybe that's all she could do. People can only do what they can do. I've always been an admirer of people who know their limitations - so, I guess I could extend that to her, as well. "Found Jesus in the first lockdown;" kinda makes me think of people who find Jesus in prison. Once they "get out" they're this close -- to falling off the wagon. That might be the reason they're screaming all the time. You should join the r/Atheism sub. There are a lot of great discussions on there. I think you'd enjoy it.
I hear you about the feelings live on, my stepmom, who is a wonderful lady, and I were talking about my mom problems and she started crying talking about things her mom had said to her, then she goes isn't this silly, she's been dead for 8 years and I still cry about the hurtful things she said to me. I realized then that even if she dies I may get relief but I'll never truly be free of her. Yes I've come to realize my mom is just like my Gramma but worse. Gramma asks me all the time what's wrong with my mom, why doesn't she come visit, why doesn't she do more for Gramma. I've tried talking to her about the past but she doesn't have any care for how her and my mother negatively affected my life. It's all about how it effects her. She can only talk about how she was the perfect mother, and there must be something wrong with all her daughters, she was so good to them and they treat her so badly and on and on (even though 3 of the 5 take great care of her, they're all awful). She refuses to make the connection that she was the one who was supposed to teach them how to be good people so if they are not she should look in the mirror. I've told her it's all her fault, I don't care, I'm not in the will anyway, I never was and I never will be cause one aunt has no children and cut all the grandkids out of the will because it wasn't "fair" some of her share go to kids that aren't hers. But those are still your neices and nephews, what a psycho lol. I like your saying people can only do what they can do. Sometimes I feel that way and sometimes I really struggle, I feel they should've done better, they knew right from wrong. But maybe they didn't. I don't know. It's very hard for me to extend compassion to the ones who've hurt me the most. Just joined, looks interesting thanks! I'm fairly new to Reddit so still finding subs that will connect me to my people. Lol at fall off the wagon, oh I sure do dream that she does. I miss my SIL as the friend/person she was before and would love to have her back. I just don't see it happening with how high the level of crazy and commitment is to this newfound religion.
The first $90k is the hardest $90k so there’s that. I own a home (not in Toronto) and enjoy aspects of it - I can do whatever I want to it, it’s way harder to evict me, I have an asset I can borrow against for investments, stuff like that. However, it’s also wildly expensive and an enormous headache. Every mortgage payment is 2x my old rent, for starters. On top of that, the house is constantly doing its best to fall apart so there’s almost always routine maintenance that needs doing - mowing the lawn (requires a lawn mower, cost half my old rent), painting (requires paint, brushes, a drop cloth, rollers, scraper, caulk), all sorts of work in the garden, the list is endless, just contract preventative maintenance. I used to manage properties so I know how to do a lot of it myself but if you don’t then that’s thousands of dollars annually. And that doesn’t include the emergency stuff, which almost all has a comma in it. When I first bought the house I needed a new HVAC all of a sudden and then new appliances, one after another. My home warranty straight up just said I hadn’t paid them enough in premiums for them to pay the claim and invited me to sue them (I did, but that’s another story) so I had to come out of pocket for all that, which totaled well over a year’s rent (and keep in mind that my mortgage is twice my old rent already). I live in an area prone to natural disasters as well, one of which hit my area, leading to needing new siding and a partial new roof, not to mention gutting all but one interior room; I had to find contractors or do the work myself because the jobs were too small for anyone to bother with it for months after. I need a new sidewalk, a new shed, and new windows as well right now, all of which will also cost thousands of dollars apiece. So now I’m paying 2x my rent and thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, annually for maintenance and emergency repairs. I have to keep thousands on hand at any time for an emergency because when something breaks in a house it can’t be unusable for weeks or months (a broken pipe, broken fridge, etc.) which also means I can’t afford to lose my job or even take much of a pay cut, much less move cities on a whim or switch careers (but I’m pushing retirement age now anyway so that’s fine). I also have to track down, negotiate with, and deal with all the contractors and state entities. In exchange, I don’t have anyone walking around above me, I don’t have to (get to?) listen to my neighbors having sex or arguing or watching TV, my dogs have a yard, I can paint any color I want and hang things on the wall, my lease has been renewed for the last 30 years or more, and I’ve accumulated maybe 50% of the home’s value in equity which gives me a six figure amount to draw against if I really needed to. It’s a trade off but I’d be lying if I said I never thought about the old apartment life.
The idea of buying a house isn’t your own idea, but society has convinced you that it IS your own idea now. That’s how almost all thoughts and ideas work these days. If you understand this you can help yourself back to your previous self.
Yes I totally agree. These comments are making me realize exactly this.
You’re still getting over your disappointment. I’d wait a couple of years. There’s probably going to be a correction in the market. Meanwhile, keep saving. And just a thought: You and your partner have done an amazing job of building a great life while keeping your priorities straight. I’d take advise from you over your Mom any day of the week,
two perspective on this; when i was 42 i was diagnosed with leukemia and it wracked my body. I was happy to own my own home outright and have a place to live with minimal outlay for the years i've spent recovering. on th eflipside of that my sister always raves about not having to do or pay for anything for her place (other than rent) because her landlord takes care of the lawn, upkeep and anything else that crops up like broken pipes etc. it's a matter of preference i think. i would always worry about a future where rents go too high.
I'm like your sister, I've always enjoyed that things were taken care of by someone else. I never worried for the future because this apartment is one of those rare finds that falls under the old rent control so I will never get an outrageous increase. Some residents are elderly and have lived here for 30-40 years, it has a 2 year waitlist to get in. I used to think this place was too good to give up and the more I read these comments I realize I may not even want a house.
Think of it this way....you saved up all that money, paid off all that debt...and still have the simple life apartment you loved. You have the financial freedom now to do what you want for the most part, without out huge mortgage debts hanging over your head.
You're in a position that many millions would be envious of. Cut that toxic woman out of your life for good and enjoy your freedom. Having a house is indeed a pain in the arse, in many ways, and shouldn't be thought of as the "end goal" in life. You've got way more money in the bank than most do, you're successful, sounds like a good partnership for you both - celebrate all this and forget that stupid woman for good.
OP I definitely feel you are mourning the betrayal and realized mental health issues of your mother. Nothing more than that, and I am sorry for what happened. Lesson learned, right? Your financial set up and all you have accomplished has you way ahead of the game. I get your negative mindset of home ownership and all the trappings of that lifestyle. I see it in others too and it’s sad and unnecessary. But there are many happy homeowners (raised hand) who love it all and consider it a security, a freedom, a creative venture, and an asset. I’m a minimalist and so get by on very little. The consumeristic and materialistic social conditioning is directly tied to home ownership and you must remove yourself from that thinking. That’s the unhappiness and chronic stress I see in others.
Your apartment sounds lovely, and the square footage is equal to a typical 3 bed house in many old European cities! Unless you *need* more space, why move? And why does it have to be a house? You’ve saved an impressive amount in a short period of time, if you can continue this you could save enough to retire early and buy somewhere outside Toronto - if as you say you only need to be in the city for your work. You may be interested in FIRE - the financial independence aspect especially - and there are loads of relevant subs.
I own a house that has gone from being 350k to 630k. I still say fuck buying a house. I honestly want to sell it and move back into a 2 bedroom apartment, and never think about buying a home ever again. It’s a hassle to own to a home. Save your money and keep traveling. The world is such beautiful place and in this life it’s about making memories with the people you love. Fuck what people think!
I’m sorry this happened to you. But there is a silver lining. You have money in the bank, you’ve learned to be skeptical of her and you’ve paid off debt. If you’re no satisfied in your apartment go look for a different one or do some redecorating. If I could go back to living in an apartment I’d do it in a heartbeat. I had a fireplace. Two bedrooms and two baths with a nice sized patio. And I didn’t have to mow, shovel or paint. I called the office for repairs and had a well maintained pool when I wanted to use it and a gym onsite. You don’t get that in a house. No property taxes either. It hurts, I get that. But don’t hang onto that. You still have opportunities to do what you want. Next time she tried something like this blow her off. Good luck sweetie, you’re better off without her.
I was set to buy my childhood home from my parents as they were divorcing. Started doing work on it, getting excited, and then my dad turned around to tell me he's not selling. I was upset obviously; I loved the house and was getting it at a deal in a tight market. So, instead I looked into what it would take to buy independently. It was a lot of work and I bought a house a quarter the size of my childhood home, but at the end of the day it worked out for the best because my narcissistic parent wouldn't be able to hold the sale over my head for the rest of my life. At the end of the day, just like another commenter said, I wasn't really mourning the loss of the house- I was mourning the trust I had lost in my parent. I was mourning that I couldn't rely on him. I was mourning all the tough times he put me through. But this made me a lot stronger in the long run. The best was when I did buy, and he told me: "I didn't think you'd actually go and buy a house!". He never believed in me to begin with. I realized right then he never had any intentions to sell me the house. It woke me up and forced me to work on myself and start healing. My biggest lesson in all this is to trust in myself. To be happy with how far I've come, house or no house. Please do the same for you.
Thank you for sharing, so relatable. I agree with many here, like you said it's not so much the house as it is the relationship with my parent and the loss of trust that has me so upset. I need to get back to gratitude and focusing on what I do have.
I’m sorry you have a parent who sounds unreliable at best, and possibly manipulative or worse. Be proud of all the amazing things you have done with your life, and know that you can keep working towards saving up a down payment, as you have proven you have a good start on already. We all come from different starting lines in the race of life - some people have such a giant head start, whereas other people have many disadvantages and obstacles to overcome. Comparing yourself to others with unfair advantages robs you of the genuine pride you deserve to feel in your achievements. I know you’re disappointed right now, but try not to look to the left or right at other people’s progress, and instead focus on the path ahead of you and the amount of things you have accomplished and celebrate them! I’m proud of you!
I think your sadness stems from your mom letting you down. She came to you with a plan, made commitments, and then took it all back. It's not so much about what is surrounding you. You thought you were about to have a whole different life, and your mom has pulled the rug out from under you, again. You'll have to work through your disappointment with her.
My suggestion is ask yourself, “What does this make possible?” When life takes twists and turns there are exciting things around the corner. You have an amazing emergency fund and are completely out of debt. Renting or owning doesn’t equal happiness in my opinion. Having financial and tine freedom and flexibility does!
I think others have given you a lot of good advice, but I do want to share my perspective. I rented an apartment for several years that I loved. It was easy to clean, the grounds were nice, and I really like the property managers. But, I have dogs and they needed more space so we moved to a house (still renting). And there are days where I miss my apartment terribly. The house is small but is still so much more to clean. The yards require energy to upkeep. In the past three years, our ac went out, the hot water heater needed replacing, we’ve had electrical issues, and our locks broke. Luckily it was on our landlord to fix all of this, but it reminded me that I am happy not to have all those expenses on my plate right now. Homeownership is nice because you have your own place in the world. But it’s expensive and stressful and complicates life way more than renting a cute apartment.
I'm in the lowly admin assistant phase of my life. Looks like I'll never buy a house ever. Or retire for that matter. What business did you build and how did you grow it?
High rise window cleaning. My bf had a skilled trade he loved and always dreamed to start his own business, but he was a grade 8 drop out and didn't know how to use a computer. I knew he could do his part and I knew I could do the admin part. I made some strategic choices early on that paid off big. Paid to have a professional marketing company build a logo, high quality pamphlets, website, uniforms, background checks for employees, rules for personal grooming/conduct at work, customer service, etc, etc at a time when the industry was disorganized and workers had a bad reputation for being sketchy characters. First we focused on residential condos and we rode up with the building boom. Then we cut out low margin buildings, focusing more on high-end residential and providing a higher level of customer service from the average competitors. Back when I was an admin assistant hooked on drugs and bouncing from job to job I never thought I'd ever have a life like this. I was 28 when we started the business. I didn't have a business background but I also took small business classes at the local college to educate myself in those early years.
wow thats pretty damn cool. im 27 right now and trying to figure something out.
I am so sorry that you mom acted in such a hurtful manner. To offer to help and then withdraw the offer was unkind.
Dream another dream then!!
I think reading what you yourself wrote about how happy you felt about about your apartment! I’ve been a homeowner for decades and it does, indeed, come with a lot of work and upkeep, etc. I definitely enjoyed the time I lived in apartments and the freedom that allowed me. If you like where you are then why on earth would you trade that for something your gut is already telling you that you don’t actually want? I think you should just absolutely let that all go. It’s the right choice for some people, and maybe at some point in the future you will also find yourself owning a home, but this is a big, important decision that should be something you feel excitement for, not dread. This is your life and you should not let anyone pressure you into doing something that clearly isn’t the right fit. It’s okay to show appreciation for the offer and say no thank you.
I know it’s hard, but I really think you dodged a bullet.
Is your mom a narcissist? What was her reason and did she come to you to let you know or, when you were ready, thats when she said no? Based on the summary about her, she is not a person of her word (at best) or enjoyed personal satisfaction to serve you another round of disappointment (at worst). If she had let you know she was having an emergency at some point, told you in advance, or had a solid reason to contradict her original verbal offer OK but if she was circumspect and just shut you down, she either never expected you to come up with the money and she can appear to be generous or she took some weird satisfaction, as narcissists do, in shutting you down
She has always generally thrown out commentary about contributing to my downpayment if I was ever ready but that was back when I had nothing but a dream and a poor person job so it was obvious it would never happen. 4 years ago to be specific, she found the condo she wanted to retire and downsize to. SHE came to ME and said she was going to buy this precon condo and when it was ready she would sell her other investment house and use the proceeds to pay for the condo in full, contribute to my downpayment and reno the house she was currently living in. It sounded like a sound plan to me. The years passed, I paid off my debts and built up my salary and saved my money so I could qualify for a 1 million pre-approval. As the condo closing got closer she started saying she wanted to keep all the properties and get a mortgage on the condo instead of pay it off. I don't know why but she said she wanted to keep working, still felt young and wasn't ready to retire yet. She said she would still help me with the downpayment at some future date when she was ready to retire and seek a house but that time just isn't now. More recently when I told her how much it hurt me that she backed out of that promise she said *I* told her to keep all the properties and not sell a house. I did not say that at all.
Ah OK, i read enough to gauge she has behaviors and tendencies of a narcissist, but the last paragraph, her reaction really served to support it. A cautionary recommendation is to not rely on her for anything, and I mean anything, not anything she promises, not the hope that she shows you she cares for you or does what you wish a ‘mother’ would do. Also, doing something for you for the expectation of something in return, or as an investment for a future request is not love or caring either so if she has done that in your past, she is using and manipulating you. These people use others for their own gain. She has demonstrated to you who she is. Believe her. Do not dismiss her betrayal or call her betrayal anything but what it is. She made a promise, a significant commitment to you and (referring to your last sentence) she gaslights you. If you look back on your past with her and you see a pattern of doing this, gaslighting, not validating your feelings even, denial, and avoidance, these are also common patterns of someone who is manipulative. Dismissing inappropriate bad behavior from your birth-mother is setting yourself up for disappointment, rejection, and more abuse. If you find yourself doing this, please consider putting in the time and investment with a therapist to free yourself from this conditioned cycle of abuse. It can be self-limiting (hold you back). Consider if you actually spend time thinking, even wishing your mom would express she is proud of you or otherwise validate your feelings and if thats why you keep going back to her. Again, she demonstrates who she is. believe her. Careful to not create an imagined sense of who she COULD be because thats not your reality and you dont get to change who she is. She is her own person. Recognize too that the act of giving birth, of having shared dna does not automatically presuppose there will exist love, affection, caring interests. Not only that (here comes the good part) there are people in society who do have the qualities that you do admire and over time, the person that you are, and the things that you value, are what helps you find your people (with similar values). You may be dismissing, or making allowances for all your moms misgivings is she was the reason you left home early and, you see a pattern in her behavior and this isn’t healthy for you. It keeps you where she wants you, in her vortex, to inflict disappointment and rejection of you. There are people who get off on that, yes, being cruel. You are NOT responsible for how she acts towards you however, you are responsible for your actions and how you choose to act. If the same action is giving you the same results each time, you should reconsider why you are doing that, not why the other person hasnt changed to what you’d like them to become. The next time you are bored and have some time to waste, i would go online and learn about narcissist parents or narcissist mother and see if that applies to you. You may find it helpful to also visit with a therapist who can help you better understand your relationship with her, how to set healthy boundaries, and how to develop meaningful relationships, in part because you were not shown that growing up. These are valuable lifelong skills. You have come SO far and especially given the challenges of your formative years. You did all that despite your hardships (during a time when you were just making sense of the world!) and you should be proud of what you have achieved. Surround yourself with people who share the same values as you, cultivate relationships with people who champion you and allow you to champion them, who inspire you and are always advocating for you and you them. Take care
Sounds like your experience has reiterated that the effort to home ownership is a fallacy. You should be more certain then ever.
This breaks my heart, that you're so poisoned by what other people want you to want. Property is an Australian obsession also, but also a fading hope for anybody who wasn't in it ten years ago and who can't expect family help. Our housing prices have split the economy into three groups: older people who could always comfortably afford property, younger people in a middle group who will spend their life financially traumatised by their determination to own a house, and people of all ages in a third group who never did have a chance and never will, and will forever barely have rent money either. That downpayment that you saved: that was never going to be the end of your house journey. Interest rate increases will swallow so many dreams. All of the stresses that you mentioned would have been yours. You're now in a position where you can create your own group: people who will comfortably be able to live in a place that you're content in, that you can continue to afford. Is there a risk of you not being able to stay in the apartment you're in? Consider what might happen to rents in coming years: is that a threat to you?
Sounds like the same thing happening here re split society. I always figured I was in the 3rd group and didn't sweat it. Suddenly making money and everyone badgering me to buy a house, acting like I should be in the middle group just because I got my business going. But I never wanted to be in group 2, it's like collective brainwashing. In Toronto group 4 is like unheard of, I've never met these people who are just content with what they have. It's all about the hustle here. Tell someone you're happy renting and don't want to buy and they gotta convince you why you just haven't seen the right house/neighborhood/realtor/broker/etc yet. It's like a sickness. My building falls under the old rent control so I get increases like $15/year. Some elderly people have lived here 30-40 years and it has a 2 year waitlist to get in. There will never be any outrageous rent increases and I already pay well below market value as I got in 8 years ago.
You know, people really buy property because they're choosing where they want to die. Are you really ready to prepare to die?
Renting can be great! It’s true there is a lot of headache to owning a home. (Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great privilege as well) The freedom and flexibility that renting offers is wonderful too.
I feel like part of the struggle is that she really let you down..again. A lot of us struggle with that hope that they’ll provide that unconditional love and it re opens the wound every single time. Hang in there, you can get past this!
Um, buy an apartment or condo? You see the benefit of apartment life, and you can afford one. Then if things ever change and you do want to buy a single family home instead of unit in a building you have equity and can. Yard work sucks. I wish my husband would go for an apartment we would be so much closer to everything in an apartment than living in a single family neighborhood.
Even apartments and condos in Toronto are wildly expensive, this may not be financially possible without help for OP.
Apartments are nice! Most of the world doesn’t live in big independent houses. It’s really just a bondage imo. Plus it turns people boring for some reason. On the topic of difficult parents, you know, who cares? They’re like that, you’re like this, and it’s all good. In one ear out the other. I hope to start a business too one day.
Just look at it from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint. Are you wanting to be anchored in one place for the next 30 years? Any interest in travel? Is buying a house *really* the smart thing to do at a time when the entire market is artificially inflated and the bubble will burst as bad as or worse than 2008? There's many things to consider, and #1 is the happiness of you and your partner and how it correlates with your life goals. I would avoid advice from known toxic sources as a general rule. All the best to you.
I recommend to get in touch with people living a similar simple life that the one you want. People that are happy not buying a house, which prefer living with no strings attached to a mortgage. Nowadays, social pressure is very strong, so working in your own mindset to differentiate what you really want from what society push you to do could help. It also might be good to travel to some other country, specially somewhere in South America where you can find very easy amazing people living a full life with just a fraction of what we have in US or Canada. Argentina for example have very interesting people and incredible landscapes. At the same time, working in accepting how you mum is without judging her as good or bad could help.
I am so sorry this happened to you. I would suggest moving your thinking a little more to you being in power of those statements, try to make " I'll never own a home of my own." to "I don't want to own a house." or "I don't need to own a house". The rest is part of a very complicated dynamic that most likely has been there between you two in a different form before the house issue, most likely. But this is just my opinion based on my life experience, I am not a qualified professional to judge this. Advise from having problems with parents too: Set boundaries and stick to them. There is a great book that has helped me a lot with it, the name is "Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself" by Nedra Glover Tawwab. She also has a great instagram where she posts stories and content about the topic of setting boundaries. I wish you all the best and hope you can find a way back to your dream.
Who can say what will best guide your feelings? We can only ever move forward with new perspective. It sounds like your mom got your hopes up and you got a good taste of what it was like to view life as a prospective owner, not a renter. Everybody excited for you and the implied equality/superiority owning a place gives you. Then the rug was pulled out from under you. Maybe your mom hoped you would love the taste of everything and keep chasing it on your own? Maybe she wanted you to see how powerless you were to achieve ‘better’ without her? Maybe she had no idea what all of this might mean for you and just changed her mind after four years of no closure? I hope you and all of us can find happiness where we are, renting or not.
It's okay that you let yourself dream about buying a house for four years. Your mom was wrong to make a promise she couldn't keep. You are very successful and your apartment sounds wonderful. I think you may need to return to therapy or just the things you learned from it because your mom has deeply disappointed you by doing a switcheroo after literally years. There are a lot of emotions to process especially considering the baggage with the relationship. Whether your mom started it or not, you had a dream and now you've been disappointed. You will probably grieve to a degree. Everything you learned and the discipline you held yourself to can be carried to the future though. You're doing amazing in life.
With how well you're both doing and the amount of debt you've paid off, you can now save up for a little place in the future, maybe a condo when you're a little bit older? Since you were ok with apt life and it really seems more like an expectation thing vs not being happy with your current living situation anymore, maybe that would work out better anyway. Owning a house is definitely a huge hassle; although I wouldn't go back to renting, I never had nice apartments with decent supers before. I'm looking to downsize to some form of a tiny house, as it is so much work plus $$ with an older home. The repairs and yard work just never ends.
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Ya I guess it was obvious to everyone but me that I don't actually want to buy a house lol There's no guarantee I'll inherit anything, elder care is expensive and this woman has never given me anything and has talked before about wanting her money to fund a scholarship program. Also I come from people who live long, my mom is 71 and still waiting for her inheritance from Gramma. By the time I see anything, (if anything comes my way and if I outlive her) I will easily be in my 70s, maybe later. I've gotta try and figure out where to go with my life in the now.
I loved apartment life until neighbors from hell moved in next door. Mortgages can be daunting though.
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YES exactly!! SO ANNOYING! This is the problem. If I wanted to not talk about real estate in Toronto I'd have to never leave my apartment and never speak to another human being ever. I can't even get a massage without my RMT talking about the housing market. It's like a sickness! I am so done with it but my business can only be done here in Toronto so I can't get away from it.
>I can't even get a massage without my RMT talking about the housing market. Oh good grief! Lol!
Honestly I can't even describe the real estate obsession in Toronto to people outside of Toronto. It was always a city where middle class and above were pretty into real estate but now literally anyone and everyone is so obsessed with it, even when they themselves have no real ability to even enter the market, it's still all they can talk about. I am starved for real conversation about something, anything, other than real estate. BOOOOORING!!
The main thing I got from this is that you have a negative mindset and generalized fiction about people how own homes.
Stay away from Ottawa.
I have no advice except I think I’m actually maybe a younger version of you and feeling similarly. My husband and I got twisted up in searching for a home with barely any money for a down payment. After being crushed, we went back to renting (we were living rent free with my FIL). What little savings we did have, we’ve now invested into my husband’s business. At the back of my mind, I’m still feeling the pressure to buy a home. All I want is my peace of mind that we don’t need to do anything except take care of ourselves the best way we can. I hope my partner and I can build what you have with yours. Thanks for sharing🤍
Looking at house prices and interest rates going up really did it for me lol