To not understand suburban/domestic bliss

[saltnpepa]

I am beginning to wonder if I am the only person that doesn't aspire to the suburban/domestic dream of a detached modern house with a double garage, manicured lawn and 2 weeks a year in Tenerife. It seems adverts on TV and pretty much everywhere sell this dream, this image of modern family life, but it leaves me cold at best and fills me with dread at worst. Surely there's more to life than that?

I realise the OP hadn't used the term, I was just commenting on it as it'd come up on the thread.

I also don't have any problem with the fact that humans are herd animals. Absolutely true. Which is why I really can't stand the term. It's imbued with all sorts of self-righteousness/smugness, and wholly unjustifiably so, since the people who use it are 'sheeple' too, just running with a slightly different herd and making a slightly different set of choices.

The OP hasn't really 'said' anything though has she

No, I didn't even realise she'd mentioned the husband that wants this lifestyle that she doesn't want.

Just imaging different herds of sheeples, each with their own distinctive characteristics

I live the life you describe OP (sort of). I grew up on a working dairy farm. We all worked like stink to fulfil my father's ambitions. It was a relentless existence with no mod cons (in the house) and definitely no holidays at all.
We lived on the top of a hill with 400 acres of land, rolling hills around us etc. Would I want to repeat that life? Who knows? Who cares?
I feel lucky to live in a modern detached within walking distance of good shops etc. etc.
If you don't want to be dragged into suburban life by your DH then have it out with him instead of boring us to death with your inane musings. (And not giving any juicy details.)

You are right in a way OP, the media does present this as the 'live your dream' lifestyle and doesn't represent the whole range of ways that people live. All the ads - mum, dad, 2.5 adorable kids, nice house, nice car, holidays abroad. That's because I think that we can all look at that and think it's a happy life, even if it's not what we want personally, or have personally. Advertisers present a vision of life that isn't supposed to reflect reality for most people.

'Well-off' Suburbia has never appealed to me much, although I have to say it looks better than most of my living conditions through my life, and I could put up with it if I had to. On the other hand, DP lived that life to a pretty good extent for a long time, nice house, nice kids, nice car, plenty of money, lots of holidays abroad, but left it because he wasn't happy in himself and now lives a life a skint hand-to-mouthing in a little rented flat in a grot town with me, but is happier. We have our dreams of course. Suburbia isn't it. One of my in-laws lives a lifestyle you'd think would be perfect and very happy, loads of money, fab big house, BMW, private schooling, not having to work, but she's starting making noises that not all is rosy. Material possessions don't seem to have much connection to happiness. But of course advertisers can't tell us that, their whole aim is to want us to crave more material possessions, the ones they are selling. they have to present this as the ideal.

Well I have friends who live near Peshawar in Pakistan, they are 'well-off' but live in an area of Northern Pakistan where 1000s of people die in terrorist attacks, children live & work in the streets, electricity is often off, and 100 children were murdered in a Taliban school shooting recently.

They would love to live a 'safe, boring' suburban existence.

I love the idea that all our Continental cousins live in chic town houses. You see it on the news about Ukraine. It just looks dahling having the shit bombed out of you.

Exactly, Latera. Our suburbs were generally built after the devastation of WW2 on our country. Pretty soon, post war teenagers were invented and they had the luxury of rebelling against this much longed for stability. And they produced some of the coolest music, art and popular culture driven by suburban ennui. Or did you miss that?

As the chinese proverb says Latara " May you live in uninteresting times".

I live a very "ordinary" life, but not a day passes when I consider myself very lucky.
My children have enough to eat, clean drinking water, a safe place to play, free education. superb health care. In the great scheme of things I am very fortunate.

I don't have a husband or children but I'm very lucky to live on my own in a mortgaged 2 bed semi on a nice estate where there is minimal crime & minimal anti-social behaviour.

I used to rent in worse parts of town and have had some horrible noisy, nosy neighbours who dealt drugs & made life very unpleasant, with flatmates who were messy, noisy, drunk all the time or stoned, or who were just bitchy people where I felt I was treading on eggshells with them in my own home.

Seriously I go to the local CMHT Outpatients every 3 months & it makes me appreciate my suburban lifestyle because there are many other patients who are homeless or vulnerably housed.

I'm struggling to afford my house but I'm doing my total best to hang on to it, even if it means renting out the bedrooms & sleeping on the sofa I will still be able to pick & choose who lives here. I do not want to go back to the insecurity I had before.

I aspire to a large house over looking the ocean, with a housekeeper, and several holidays a year in various parts of the world.

I think TV tries to depict the "average" family. Mum, dad, one boy one girl. Probably a dog. I think a lot of people have lives almost like this if they have kids...because it's the easiest way to to things. Living in the middle of nowhere, or in a flat in the city, a weekend in New York may cost the same, but isn't as easy.

The very thought of two weeks in Teneriffe fills me with horror. I went for a week once. Give me Cornwall any day.

sparky I love the idea that all our Continental cousins live in chic town houses. You see it on the news about Ukraine. It just looks dahling having the shit bombed out of you.

I think the EU countries is what they meant. Certainly, you get more individual houses (and self build) in much of Belgium and France, and in The Netherlands, you get urban housing with more storeys, and while you get new build estates, more of them tend to be terraced so as to save space for more green belt between places, which is very protected.

So you don't get this awful merging of housing estates and retail parks which is happening in some parts of the UK. There has been an absolute frenzy of housebuilding where I most recently lived in the UK, unfortunately it doesn't even include building pavements alongside new roads, so congratulations to the planners for creating such an unhealthy environment for the future, where its made almost impossible for people to walk or cycle safely should they wish not to leave their homes by car.

I'd hate to live in one of those housing estates. Absolutely depressing.

LynettScavo The very thought of two weeks in Teneriffe fills me with horror. I went for a week once. Give me Cornwall any day.

So did we. We stayed in a quiet village type resort, hired a car, and spent most of our time exploring forests, volcanos and lush northern side of the island which is hardly touched by tourism at all. Its stunningly beautiful.

Domestic bliss just means loving your home life whether that's living alone, with friends, partner or your own family. That's a big jump to assuming everyone wants to live in the suburbs.

Assuming that Tenerife is all bars and clubs and sunburnt tourists is crashingly ignorant.............

I don't understand why the majority of you have been so defensive?
Is it because it is the Easter holidays?

Why are people so defensive?

The lifestyle described to the OP is what we're all lead to believe will make us happy. That way the government can keep us all busy paying our taxes and the mega corporations can keep selling us stuff.

This was Margaret Thatcher's vision of how to keep the masses in line . Probably nicked from Brave New World.

Now if it actually does make you happy, then grand. But it aint for everyone.

What a load of patronising and condescending trash. Op, you've given us a good one here.
Love the term "special snowflake", BTW.

Yes but we all know that, TheWordFactory; it's not exactly a new concept to the average fairly intelligent person. We're all aware that on some levels we are partaking of the opiate(s) of the masses, and yes, we're sold certain ideals and values, of course we are. Doesn't mean there's not some truth and some value to those particular aspirations and visions.

If she'd worded it differently or maybe been a little more direct about what exactly she was talking about, the responses likely would have been quite different. And the qualifying comments didn't serve the OP any better because she still didn't quite grasp that it was her language that was getting people's backs up.

If she'd said, 'my husband is desperate to move to the suburbs, stay in every night, have 2.5 children, a dog and a cat and for me to be a SAHM, HELP ME I'm a city girl at heart with a good career or a job I love, I want to travel, see the world, enjoy myself while I'm young and haven't got major commitments. His vision is suffocating me and I don't want that life right now (or maybe ever), what should I do?' I expect the vast majority would have answered the actual question with thoughtful and probably quite helpful advice.

although her language has generated some lively debate which I appreciate ...sitting here in suburbia with my dc... mummifying...think I'll go and make a cup of tea.

Heheheh yes, made for a much more exciting Easter Holiday afternoon

I have a secret wanderlust. Most people do, I should think. Just like most people are convinced they could write the next great work of literature.

Doesn't mean I can't also find joy and contentment in the daily banalities of a safe, settled life.

Lots of us in my generation (born 1975) and younger are rejecting the idea that you have to move to the suburbs to have kids. More of us are living in cities instead. I have no interest in a yard- from my point of view, the best yard is the one that bothers me the least. I don't have a big or manicured one (we do have a landscaping company keep it up to a reasonable standard). Instead, I live in a neighborhood where we can have a detached house, but still be able to get to shops and such without having to drive to them.

I think some of the appeal of the suburbs to previous generations had to do with high crime rates in cities, which have since gone down substantially (in the US, I don't know about the UK). Some of it may have had to do with racist ideas of not wanting to live near people of other races, which are also in decline.

I'm American, we don't go to Tenerife. (DH did go to the Canaries recently, and it was a pain in the butt to get there from the US) I guess our equivalent would be Florida? I don't find beaches interesting or much fun, so we don't go on beach vacations. I'd rather go to a city with interesting historical stuff to see.

We live in suburbia I guess in a detached house. By next summer we'll have the lawn (only a single garage though). I don't give a shit if that makes me dull. We wanted a nice house for our children to grow up in, in a nice area where they don't need to be driven everywhere. We still have a life, we do fun (some even may say edgy) things.

If we wanted a house in the country or in the city centre we wouldn't have the space we do, and that wins for us.

A yard does sound dull- I know that is the American term, I always think of yard as a place where bins are kept, empty beer crates and overflowing stinking drains.

A garden on the other hand can be a prallell universe for children. Growing vegetables, making hibernation hotels for ladybirds, planting butterfly loving plants, making jam from fruite you have grown, yourself collecting caterpillars and nurturing them into butterflies, picking apples, watching spawn turn into tadpoles, not to mention digging for "fossil", digging generally, a place to build a snowman, to saw bits of wood and clean bicycles,, to make mud pies, to play in the rain, to have a sandpit, a trampoline, a blow up paddling pool.

My garden has been a joy to my kids.

I always think of yard as a place where bins are kept, empty beer crates and overflowing stinking drains.

Me too. 'Yard' sounds so scrubby and unloved.