Impossible adult daughter still at home

[Worldwearygardener]

My daughter is 25 years old and still lives at home with us. We are retired. She has never had a proper job as she cannot decide on a career that would suit her. We paid for her tuition fees and rent/living fees when she was at university so she has no debt. She works periodically but keeps all the money for herself and never offers to contribute financially to the household in any way.
She does cook meals for the family but always at a time that suits her so it’s often closer to 9 o’clock than 8 o’clock - even though we’d prefer to eat around 7.30pm. If we ask her what time dinner is going to be, she gets very angry and will not tell us. Apart from meal preparation and online food shopping, she does little in the way of household chores.
Our daughter’s love is theatre and we have always supported her fully with this hobby. She doesn’t drive so we take her back and forth to rehearsals and encourage all our friends to see anything she is in. We have not paid for driving lessons as she seems to have no appreciation of her own safety. She goes running in dark, deserted areas whilst wearing headphones - despite us telling her how dangerous that is. Even crossing roads, she expects the cars to stop for her. She doesn’t like to follow rules and doesn’t seem to understand that some rules are put in place to protect her and other people.
Every morning, she takes her breakfast back to bed and regularly stays there until after midday. She will then stay up until the early hours of the morning, usually sitting at the family computer.
In addition to this, our daughter is regularly rude and condescending when interacting with me but is verbally (and occasionally physically) cruel to her father and the two of them rarely speak. This makes him both sad and angry and he takes his anger out on me.
Our daughter has always been very controlling but also volatile. We spend our daily lives treading on eggshells so that we don’t make her angry. I learned very early on that punishing our daughter didn’t work. There was no point in putting her on the “naughty step” as she would never understand that she had done anything wrong. I think she did, and still does, consider me a little unhinged and petty. Taking away any privileges just made her angry with me, it did not encourage her to behave properly.
Our daughter could not enjoy school as she could not respond to discipline and saw little benefit in a good education.
There is no point in trying to discuss all of these issues with her as she refuses to talk through the problems. She flounces away and then there is a horrible atmosphere in the house and nothing is ever resolved.
Our daughter willingly admits that she doesn’t like people although she has a few friends she has made through her drama society.
She struggles to engage in regular conversations unless, again, it is theatre related.
The obvious answer is that she should find a full time job and rent a room somewhere before our relationship with her is ruined completely. However, we love our daughter very much and don’t want to make her life completely miserable. In any case, she could not share a house with people as she demands the kitchen to herself and has some OCD issues.
Any suggestions and advice would be gratefully received.

If she ignores suggestions, there are consequences! You don’t need to kick her out but she needs to paying a decent rent full stop.
She will either have to claim benefits or get a job.

Just stop with the lifts, those people rely on her not you. You aren’t letting them down she is.

You will be in the same position in 5 years time.

When I say about accidentally getting people's backs up I am talking in general about the pattern of behaviours seen in undiagnosed autistic women, not about any specific violence described in the OP. OP's DD actually does do this a lot - doesn't think to contribute to family finances, doesn't cook when others would like, doesn't have many friends, takes certain age inappropriate behaviours such as being driven everywhere by mum and dad for granted. Why do her parents do this, when their other child has "launched" fine?

Running at night wearing headphones, running across roads whilst out exercising and just expecting cars to stop - is that rude? Or is it actually an illustration of being really very vulnerable with a poor understanding of personal safety? What about her is unsuited to learning to drive?

I don’t think she sounds autistic. I think she sounds like she might have a personality disorder. She would benefit from an assessment but she possibly wouldn’t agree to it

I say this kindly as an adult daughter living with her parents (and DD!).
What ground rules are in place? i.e. have you discussed how long you are prepared to have your daughter live with you? Aim for 7.30 for dinner? Certain % of the chores? I'm not clear if you and your husband are still working or retired but if your daughter is the non-working adult in the house I would expect her to do more in terms of a contribution than those working outside of the home.
If she isn't claiming benefits then she should be - doesn't it impact NI contributions? Also, you can then request a % of her income as keep. If she wasn't living with you then it would be a house share, with expectations from her housemates.
I haven't read the full-thread but it seems that whilst you want things to change you don't want to have a difficult conversation to force that change. I've had some difficult conversations with my parents in the past, not so much recently as I'm a much more considerate house guest. Provided they are respectful there's nothing wrong with asking for rent/keep or laying out some ground rules. If she hasn't lived alone outside of university it's unlikely she appreciates the full cost of running a house.

I didn't say that at all. But knowing if she is autistic might be a start.....

It says they are retired, in the second line of the post.

On the one hand.... my instinctive response is "you've created a monster"

On the other hand, yes maybe as some people have suggested, there are other factors at play.

Apologies, i missed that.

I’m a little bit confused about what did you expect from this post if you’ve dismissed every single suggestion, really.

If you have the funds maybe some family counselling wouldn’t be a bad idea.

I’m sorry if you think I’m being defensive but I actually feel I’m being attacked and I don’t need that at all. Pointing out my shortcomings as a parent is completely pointless as what’s been done has been done. What do these snearing comments even hope to achieve? They’re just plain insulting and I came for constructive advice. I can’t go back in a time
machine and change what has caused this problem so why hurl your accusations at me? I have asked people to stop commenting as I’m feeling very overwhelmed. I’ll need counselling next. Presumably you’ve all got perfect childen so you’re unable to understand how I’m feeling.
Thank you to those who have offered kind advice but I really want to end this here. I feel considerably worse about all this than when I started. I’ll continue to tackle it my own way. My apologies if I haven’t accurately described the situation but it doesn’t warrant some of the nasty comments that have been aimed at me. I am surely some people feel they’re being helpful but it’s too much. Mumsnet is not the right place for me. Quite frankly, I’ve found some of you far more monstrous than my daughter could ever be.

Ask her to move out or move to a small place with no room for her or continue to live miserable

I did think it was a bit of a pile-on, OP. Hopefully there were a few useful remarks.

You can report your own thread and ask Mumsnet to delete it if you feel it's too identifying.

Sorry the thread has made you feel worse @Worldwearygardener ,
Hopefully you can take some pointers from it.

I didn't word my post well but from the little you posted it is easy to think that a lack of boundaries could be an issue or contributing factor, BUT none of us are there living it. And if your daughter has a mental health condition or neurodivergence then it may be that there's nothing you could do.

I hope you can find a way forward and a way to protect you and your husbands well being and support your daughter towards independence.

You CAN make the decision NOW to do something and challenge your daughter though.

The problem is you've said numerous times that you can't do x,y and z. You can it's just you are choosing not to.

Something needs to change here OP. You are unhappy. Your choice is to either do something and challenge her in some way or to just put up with the current situation.

You need to stop saying you can't do something and work out what you can do. You don't ask her politely to do something, you tell her the house rules going forward and that she MUST agree to them otherwise there are consequences.

That's if you really want things to change.

This isn't about the past so much as the present and future and you doing the same as your done in the past which hasn't worked.

OP comes on here for advice, doesnt want any advice and blames everyone else except herself and daughter

no wonder her daughter walks all over her, hope she stays there forever

Notwithstanding, this daughter does sound as if she’s likely to be autistic.

@Worldwearygardener personally I wasn’t referring to the attacking comments (I have a similar problem as yours that I’m dealing with and I’ve posted before, but mine is younger and not as combative), I was referring to you shooting down every single practical and useful advice.

Realistically, you don’t really want to act on any of the viable options, so chances are very little can change. That’s why I mentioned family counselling.

bye bye

100%

Autistic/OCD/EUPD (or not), the first time she was physically cruel to her father is the time you should have called the police. Actions have consequences, and she may never forgive you if you refuse to allow her to live with you. But are you and your husband not deserving of a safe home? She needs to leave.Now.

Treat her as an adult. Cease overhelping. Adult adult relationship not parent child relationship.

My daughter who is 22 now lives with my mum and dad.
why? Because i threatened to charge her rent. As i was sick n tired of the disrespect and the constant bickering for her to do her share of the house. As well as constantly borrowing money from me.
my dad who thought the sun rose and fell in her, said he would never charge her rent, to allow her to save money for a deposit for a place.
Guess what?

She hasnt changed and still not saved a penny despite being in full time employment. She thinks she should be able to live without commitments and then be able to have a mortgage and run a house, have expensive holidays, car clothes.

My parents now have they’re eyes opened to why i gave her a age in which she needed to move out. It was 25. If we didnt, what is she learning? What are we teaching our children if we continue to enable them?
We are teaching them life is free and someone will always bail you out.

I would be having a serious conversation and be honest with her. Cut of her money supply, so she has to work.

Have you considered family mediation? Or family therapy? It sounds like you all need a professional to support you out of this situation.

She must to some extent like her home environment- i was desperate to leave home by 18, and if I hadn't got into uni, would have gone into another career that enabled me to leave.

People always will point to autism on these threads, but I don't feel having that diagnosis is a license to behave so rudely.

As for eating so late, I would suggest eating separately!

She's classic pda profile but they're smart. She'll flourish if she focuses on it

Someone grilling me for diagnosing is welcome. I've learnt the term on the Internet and that's how one of my amazing strong daughter was until she determined she's marrying and all fell into place. Loving supportive Czech husband, willful great grandkids

They aren't autistic though. Ocd often presents around adhd but I'm not into labels....odd is often the other label for pda ....excusa me if the labels are wrong