I truly love my job. Which is real estate investing. Yes, I’m going to keep flipping those houses until I turn 105z. 
Yay!
105, eh? 24 Hour Fitness would love me… (Come on Dude, you’re only paying $2/mo, will you just kick the buckle???)
You can leave your workplace. I’m stuck with these guys for life. Well, I can give the boot to the kids if necessary at 18, but the way one of them is acting, I might need the police to evict him.
I will meditate on what you have said though.
(In all fairness, I have one kid who is totally awesome, and makes my day everyday. But the rest of the family makes me feel like I’m herding cats.)
You are not stuck to anything. You can always give them away to fosters and divorce your husband.
I’m not sure you can give your kids away like that… Though I’m curious what people do with abusive teenagers. I’m hoping I won’t be in this situation, but I am concerned that I may end up with one.
Yes, that would be hard but not impossible. Well, at most you just suffer until they turned 18…
My brother lived with my parents past 18 (still there now and he’s in his 40s). He spent at least 5 years not talking to my mother while still in her house.
Does he have autism?
Wow, I would not put up with that for a sec. We all are extremely grateful for what our Mom has provided for us and we go all out to take care of her 24/7 now that she is over 80 and on dialysis. The weekends that I spend with her in my care are in many ways therapeutic for me. If a person can not appreciate the reason why he/she is even on the face of the Earth, well…
1 Like
No. Possibly ADHD, definitely anger and depression at various points, but overall, he’s as functional as anyone else here. He just didn’t get along with my mom (or me), ran away before 18, didn’t graduate from high school. Finally got his GED, and just this year, a BS. Been in and out of the house depending on how his finances are going.
He’s really smart and a good businessman. I think he could’ve been the next Jeff Bezos, but he didn’t have any support from my parents. Hard to be someone great when you’re being told you’ll never amount to anything without a degree. I mean, it’s hard all around, but when you have negative emotional support for doing the things you’re good at–like starting a business–it’s extra hard.
So then your dad offers you free room and board (over the protest of your mom because “family is family”), you lock yourself in your room, play games all day and come out to get food from the kitchen, then go back to your room. So in part, they’ve both created the behavior and enabled it.
I’m still trying to get past these issues myself. I don’t live with my parents, but I still have what she instilled in me “Starting a business is a losing proposition.” “3 out of 5 restaurants close in the first year.” and this feeling that only “special” people can do it. I don’t have the support of my husband in anything I want to try, and I can see how it is hard to be on your own if you’re not someone who’s seriously confident in oneself. You’re not just going to get beaten by your competition, you face deep criticism and negativity from those who are supposed to be your best support network and are around you the most. Every mistake is an opportunity for people to criticize you and say “I told you you couldn’t do it.” You pretty much have to lock yourself away and not tell anyone what you’re up to which is then viewed as being a bad wife.
I hear you. While, as a Catholic, I believe in trying to stick it out in a marriage, that would definitely cause me to move out. Husbands should prioritize the wife’s safety over the adult kid’s. Probably even over a non-adult kid, but that’s a trickier issue.
That’s the way the world is. Not just you or your brother. Everybody experiences negativity, especially from your closest friends and relatives, whenever you try to achieve something. They always say something like “you’ll never achieve this because you are not good enough” or “stick with the status quo because you’re going to get hurt if you tried something new”.
In order to be successful, you have to look past those negativity and believe in yourself. Successful people change people’s perception of them by achieving the unachievable. If you are able to prove to them that you can do this despite their disbelief, then you have achieved success.
2 Likes
Strength of character. Subjected to an identical environment, people behave differently. Some become energize, some perish. This is Darwinian theory. If you want to save a person don’t deserve to be around under Darwinian theory, you need to devote a good part of your life to do that. Could you, would you? Is a personal decision even for a mother, a parent who supposedly has maternal instinct. Remember, devoting your time for a person means not just robbing the time for your own personal development, it also mean trading the time that could be devoted to your other children, parent, spouse and the society. I have no stand on what is the right thing to do because I don’t know.
1 Like
Ok so you are saying that if your kid happens to be dumb or handicapped, it’s best to disown him and invest your time into something else more productive. I think a lot of people are probably going to cry foul from an ethical point of view. But from a Darwinian standpoint, that is the correct thing to do.
1 Like
For better or worse, humans have compassion 
Remember the movie, Saving Private Ryan?
So help me preserve my marriage while trying to block out the negativity:
I don’t want my husband’s advice on starting a business or on the things I want to work on. I think that it creates friction, and honestly, I don’t feel like he’s an expert by any means on the things I would want to do. How do you politely tell him you don’t want to discuss what you’re working on without driving a wedge in your marriage? Many people feel like your husband is supposed to be your BFF on all things, but if he’s not going to act like one, how do you put down boundaries without destroying the marriage.
Because honestly, I’m not here to be the next Jeff Bezos and get divorced. I just don’t consider that success.
Also, from what I’ve heard, most people who are successful do have someone who believed in them against all odds, and it is generally their spouse or parents. And the books I’ve read on starting a business have cautioned against doing it if you don’t have a spouse on board (then again, most of them are assuming that the business needs to bring in a livable salary from the start which doesn’t have to be the case here).
IIRC, one historian defines the beginning of civilization as the time when you start to find healed femurs. Because it meant someone had to feed and take care of the person while it healed.
I’m not into Darwin, but I do see the tradeoff when it comes to launching capable adult kids. But I guess when you give them the boot, there are two choices–downward spiral, and picking up the pieces and driving oneself to success. If you fear the downward spiral for your child, you have compassion and keep them home. But for many it doesn’t push them towards the upwards spiral. Hard decision.
You can make it clear with your husband that in order for you to listen to him, you would need him to give you x amount of money every month. If he fails to do so, then you would have no choice but to try making money yourself.
That way you put the pressure back on him to make him feel that it is his own incompetence that drove you down this path.
Having your adult kid at home is ok, a lot of parents have done that and it did not ruin the kid’s career. I guess there are other deeper reason than this.
But you can ask the adult kid to pay a reasonable amount for rent and food. If they are unemployed, providing labor to do household work or take care of parents, or make effort for training or job seeking.
Also I think getting a self supporting job or the ability to do so is the basic requirement before a risky business venture
1 Like
That’s not quite what I meant. He knows that I’m going back to work because he’s making me do it.
I just don’t enjoy discussing work with him. He tends to be critical of my job or the programming languages I’m using (get a life! It pays the bills!). I’ve discussed business (self-employed) ideas to him and he’s dissed them even though i think they’re very reasonable. His comments are generally not good advice, and the current business proposal is manufacturing, not software at all, and he has no business experience, and no experience in this field. So I don’t want to discuss it with him… The best I’m going to get is neutral comments that aren’t useful, and the worst I’m going to get is more negative comments and “I wish you’d just do programming instead–it takes up less space.” He wants to control my job. I guess I feel like that’s a little inappropriate.
The question is: How do you tell the person you’re married to that you don’t want to discuss your business decisions with them? That you’re not looking for advice from them. Without it being an attack on them. There’s got to be a polite positive way of saying “I don’t want to discuss this with you.”
Right now, the only way I’ve figured to not discuss my job with him is to take a job with the company that competes directly against his company.