AIBU to be tired of living next to other people?

Go and see the film Restless
You'll either feel better about your neighbours, or get some inspiration.

I couldn’t agree more

I’m a bird nerd and also do bird photography, so being surrounded by the sounds of birds and nature is just absolute bliss to me 😍

I 100% hear you

I live in a flat. I’ve had nightmare neighbours over the years that have driven me to despair and impacted my health.

If I won the lotto tomorrow, I’d be off to buy a nice barn conversion/cottage somewhere more rural.

I can quite happily endure cows, sheep, tractors etc over loud music, screaming kids, and antisocial noisy gits.

I have nice neighbours except one set. There was originally an elderly gentleman living in the house, very quiet and only made a noise once a week which was when he cut his lawn. Unfortunately he died and the house was sold to a builder. He has been busy renovating and rebuilding the house for his family, adding a stick on shoe box extension to the back of the house. The noise has been continuous for over a year 6 days a week and a couple of times 7 days a week. Now the house is finished he is busy turning the front garden into a concrete car park and building a large home office in the back garden. The back garden is flood lit and there was music and bright lights until 2.00am a couple of weekends ago. I could hear their music over my TV set.

He also has two zappy little dogs and two screeching toddlers.....

I love your friend's auntie too!

Well I don’t - born in the 70’s where most people were pretty considerate to others and in fact it was frowned upon to make any kind of disturbance without apologising after.

OP if I had the money I would live in a detached house - yanbu

YANBU. It is not living near people that is the problem. it is living near thoughtless cunts that is the problem. I'm considering moving north partly to be closer to family but also to get out the increasing shit-hole that is SE England and its inhabitants. My estate used to be quiet but now I have screechy sprogs on one side and a dog that barks every time a mouse farts in the garden on the other side, and combined with the effects of house building leading to the town feeling rammed full most of the time, it has just got less and less pleasant living around here.

We are in a small terraced house and similar.. why don't people pull door handle down rather than slam. The neighbours obv have some issue with front door (prob due to the slamming for years...) and now to shut it they have to bang it many times...drives me mad..also they can't talk to each other..every thing is full volume

Yes I feel exactly the same. We love our house in a quiet leafy street. It's semi-detached and for years a older chap, a widower lived next door. At the beginning of this year a family with three boys under five moved in. As you said screaming and shouting constantly heard through the wall. The parents are loud too! Now they are about to undertake a huge building project that will last months. We are at our wits end. Looking for another house, probably still in suburbia as we like the convenience but will definitely make sure we check out the neighbours!

Totally agree. I can't tolerate other people's noise... I go sit in a field to relax because I can. Other people's noise becomes all consuming and an effort to ignore.

When my b vitamin or iron levels are low I can’t stand any noise at all (or if I’ve had too much caffeine- all noises seem amplified!)

I understand that- our previous neighbours were lovely people but they wanted to talk as soon as they saw us in the garden. I'd sit outside our French windows, nowhere near the fence, with a cup of tea and a book and they'd be shouting me over to give me the latest boring instalment of the things their grandchildren had said. I started putting headphones on and pretending I couldn't hear them.
It gets you down when someone keeps invading your privacy.

Do be aware sound carries - my friend's next door but one neighbours are a couple of fields away across a valley, the neighbours are 'town' people not country, the kids shriek and scream and it is SO loud you can barely converse in friend's back garden because it just bounces across the void of the valley as though they're right next door.

Agree with a pp who said the layout of modern homes is wrong. When we were viewing, I ruled out all the houses in newbuild developments, even detached 4/5 beds, as they felt so squashed in. Built with hardly any space between houses, small gardens, tiny public playgrounds at the end of each street. Even the roads felt cramped! On paper they looked lovely, these majestic old-styled newbuilds with up to designer kitchens. Standing in the tiny scraps of garden, where the noise of the whole estate seemed audible, I realised I didn't want to live like that. There was something deceptive and sad, as if the estate had been designed to look spacious and eco friendly, yet packed in so many houses everyone was on top of each other, no natural features of a real town or village (like schools, shops, woodland, golf courses) just endless rows of houses. Lots of rooms with high ceilings yet floor space very tight. No attics, no proper storage, no garden privacy, no garages or sheds. They felt 'flimsy' somehow.

One seller had yappy dogs in her garden, that didn't shut up even after we left. We actually cancelled a viewing in the same street because of those dogs, they would've been intolerable.

In the end we bought an older house in an older part of town. Smallish garden but it wraps around house and is carefully designed with mature trees and shrubs that give privacy and block/absorb sound. Birdsong drowns out other people's noise too. I can live with an outdated kitchen and bathrooms and fewer bedrooms (some with wood chip paint) because each room is large with loads of storage space. And we have options further down line to convert attic and/or garage, re-decorate. It has high walls instead of fences, which also shut out noise from street and neighbours. Some of the local trees are ancient ones, under protection orders, so they can't be cut down to squeeze a few more houses in.

Maybe less people grow up in 'quiet' neighbourhoods nowadays, so they don't realise how mutually beneficial it is if everyone respects each other's need for peace and quiet or become immune to barking dogs, music, power tools, screaming kids. Such a shame.

Omg I love her!!! Total hero.

I said earlier in this thread that I know it’s me who’s the problem…I’ve changed my mind now, the old twat next door, knowing we were in the garden with our 1 and 4 year old, first sunny day of the year, on a Saturday, decides to fire up the power tools. He’s a total prick!

Personally, I think consideration for neighbours is a thing of the past 😢

I say we bring in Sunday quiet laws! 🤩

My cat's screeching is on a whole other level. She is extremely territorial and if the cat next door tries to come in our cat flap she starts this high pitched screaming and smacks the poor cat in the face with the cat flap door. The neighbours have actually come over to see what the noise is.

Yes I hate it when kids scream in the garden too. I've taught mine you only screech and shout full volume if there's an accident or you're frightened, not when playing. Like the boy who cried wolf. I'm horrified by the behaviour of some i've invited on play dates, full blown screaming as soon as feet touch grass 😬
Mine do make noise playing, but I tell them to keep the volume down and respect the neighbours. Or they come in. Our lovely neighbours do the same if their dog barks, he gets shushed then brought in.

At a friend's bbq recently it was awful, narrow garden with same each side. One side had 4 screeching kids on trampoline, other side was revving up some sort of garden machinery and making everyone jump with the racket. And her dogs barked at guests almost constantly. We left after an hour as it was overwhelming and hard to talk.

OP i think you just have to find a quiet area, where neighbours make an effort to limit noise. Then people tend to copy. Don't assume rural hamlets are quiet. I lived in an idyllic lake district hamlet for a few years, but in summer it was a constant racket of screaming kids, older ones screeching up and down each culdesac on bikes and scooters. Dogs barking, lawnmowers, extensions being built.

It's a bit easier if you can find a house with a big garden that backs onto a field or narrow road, at least then the sounds are further away.

Yes op i agree noise in general and people in general have got worse ! I have a whole block of flats to myself it’s absolute silent biss ! Well for 9 months a year until the airb&b people come then it’s hell on earth ! Screaming shouting slamming doors banging around at all times of night. Never know who is turning up one week to the next ! I am incredibly lucky that my landlord has offered me a long term rental a lot of people who live here can’t find anywhere to live. Everything is being bought by rich foreigners or rich people from the capital to airb&b and then locked up for the other 9 months. There is no massive profit in long term rental. I can’t even get to know my neighbors because they change every week.

My parents have no neighbours that they can see from their farm house. However a dual carriage way was constructed and it's less than a mile from the house. At times it's noisier than my terraced street in London.

If it's not noisy people, then it's traffic. Do your homework before you move.

I was at a BBQ last year where all the children were making that awful screeching noise and the parents just looked over indulgently every now and again saying ‘Aww aren’t they having fun?!’.
It was driving me round the bend and then all of a sudden the hosts Auntie, a formidable Caribbean lady, bust out of the French doors like a SWAT team and told them all ‘NOBODY wants to hear that noise. You scream you come inside with me and prep some vegetables’. I could’ve kissed her on the mouth. She was glorious. They were angels from that moment on.