To find my copycat neighbour a PITA?

[Molotov]

We aren't friends, just happen to be neighbours. She increasingly copies what I do/what I buy. Her child even has the same name as mine (my dc is 2y older). She's copying more and more personal things now, and it's just starting to boil my piss. What's especially annoying is that when we do speak, she's very snarky about my house/dcs - very passive-aggressive, low-level, but present.

AIBU? If not, how do I deal with it? other than move

Love it SoupDragon. Would look lush in the conservatory.

Hmm. Problem is, "copying" is often subconscious. Without knowing your child's name, it's difficult to comment but it is surprising how often even "unusual" names come up within an area.

You'd be surprised how "similar" people within a given area will be. It's one of the reasons postcodes are used to predict life expectancies.

Stop calling her by her name, call her Ditto, and the little one, mini ditto.

I still can understand how you both know what each others rooms look like?

*can't

When you say she might report you for "nuisance behaviour, do you honestly mean she would report you to a LL for... something? Time to pre-empt this by chatting to your LL about whether the LL/ previous tenants had any problems with Nutty Neighbour...

I like Kings advice,

"Borrow a dog, wear hotpants, rent a posh car "

I might do these things anyway - sounds great!!

Maybe it's just coincidence?

If she peers into the room, put a sign on the wall saying 'Stop copying me you weirdo and while you're at it, stop staring in my house'.

And yes to the gnomes. Also, is she similar to you in size and shape? If not, is there anything you could start to wear that would look really really silly on her? eg if she's bigger than you then wear teeny tiny shorts and wait for the (quite literal) fallout when she copies you? Or if you're bigger than her start wearing a toga as the new fashion statement? Or full evening wear during the day?

Or maybe do nothing except give a faintly puzzled smile and slight head tilt every time you see her, then carry on as normal?

1. How do you know?

2.why does it matter?

Someone gets married, buys a house and has a baby and is accused of copying someone.

Seriously.

I had a neighbour like this - I told them we were pulling up the carpet on the stairs and having purple walls in the hallway/up the stairs with lime green gloss work.

2 weeks later she invited me into her place to see her newly decorated hallway/stairs. Yep, it was exactly what I'd said we were going to do and it looked horrific.

Wasn't the end of all the copying but it was the funniest outcome. (We never did rip up the carpet or paint!)

And also you must be rubber necking out the window at her to know she's goggling in at you..

maitlandgirl

Did she ever realise? What happened next? And did you manage to keep a straight face?

Suggest you hold a swingers party in the room she rubber necks into. Invite all the neighbours, and spend ages throwing your keys into a bowl.

What you get up to next is up to you....

ExitPursued Yes, I thought that was a bit funny. Particularly as pretty much all my friends got married the same year (we were all 29/30 ish) and had babies within the 30-35 window.

I agree with running

I know it must he annoying, but I would feel sorry for her.

She has so little sense of self that she has to copy you.

Alternatively, I had heard that this is an aspergers trait - feeling the need to copy others to feel normal or doing it subconsciously. Or a kind of social anxiety.

Alternatively it could be neither of these, but still quite sad for her.

We've had the same with our ASBO needing neighbor.She hates us and is a huge Twat! But yet every time I am in my front garden she has to come out and watch what I'm doing,what I've bought,what I've planted ect.

She does the same if we have anything delivered,when we've been shopping,when we get back of holiday,when we get back from a day out.

She try's to copy what I'm doing,have done in my garden.Thankfully I have very green fingers and she doesn't

So to get his own back my husband has started talking very loudly about where he's going to put the new pond in our back garden and what it will look like and how much it will cost.We are not getting a pond ever!

He's a wicked sod,but after everything she's put us all through I'm letting him get on with his wind up.

I am having a pond created.

Thank-you all for replying. It's been good for me have responses from both those who can see my POV, and those who don't understand the big deal. It helps to give me valuable perspective. I know it shouldn't bother me, it's pretty petty in the grand scheme of things - but it does bother me. I can't do anything to change matters so I just need to learn to deal with it.

OfficerVanHalen (love your username, btw ), I think you are right to say that this can't be directly addressed as she'll either deny it, or I'll look unhinged. I need to play it cool, which is why Kirsty's head tilt and sympathetic smile as if to say 'oh you poor, sad, person with no ideas of your own' will work best, I think.

To the pp who asked how each person can see into each house, it's because we have a glass roof on our extension; so does she. In fact, hers is identical to ours (built about a year after). I know she can see into it. I decorated ours and have an unusual lighting arrangement, which she now has in precisely the same way. I know I haven't copied her style, and I'd need to walk around blindfolded not to notice. I'm not a curtain twitcher. I have eyes and have just seen its the same as mine. Other clues are the things such as bed linen, lamps, garden furniture. It's a bit creepy, tbh.

Head tilt, sorry smile. Yep.

Don't suppose you have a friendly estate agent you could borrow a for sale board from?

I'm with the posters who can't see what the issue is, but like the idea of borrowing a for sale board ;)

Honestly, OP, I've moved from London to a small Midlands village and have been inside numerous neighbours' houses, and the houses of mothers I know from a toddler group in other villages - and the look of so many of the houses are incredibly similar. IKEA/John Lewis furniture/bed linen, the same few types of kitchen, Roman blinds, feature walls, leather sofas, flatscreen TVs, similar toy storage and children's bedlinen and beds. Two (who I'm pretty sure have never been in one another's houses) have the same motto stencilled on the wall in the hall, and there are three who have those Kirsty Allsopp big letters that say LOVE or HOME on the kitchen wall.

There seem to be two main trends - either twee and cottage-y with wicker hearts hanging in the windows and painted furniture, or Clean Modern Lines.

But half of these people don't know one another, and I'm certain they aren't copying. I think there's just a fairly standard approach to home decoration.

Ours is considered alarmingly original because we rent and inherited the 'look'.

What Cait said. The number of identikit houses I've come across recently is a bit scary.

Sure it wasn't the same in the 80s and 90s? Maybe I just don't remember properly.

But it would be easy to think people were copying you when, in reality, you're just one of several people to have the same canvas picture of pebbles on a beach, Ikea furniture, flat screen tv, pebbles in the fireplace, wooden letters spelling LOVE and wicker baskets everywhere.