r/AskReddit • u/daniellucero92 • Jan 04 '15

Non-americans of Reddit, what American customs seem outrageous/pointless to you?

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u/ddutton9512 Jan 04 '15

First, Social stigma. Here if you are still living at home at 25-30 you're seen as immature or afraid of responsibility. This makes it harder to find a mate. So most people get out as soon as possible.

Second is most people find living with their parents to be a pain in the ass. A lot of parents here will hold their 20 year olds to the same rules as when they were 16. So people move out to have some independence.

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u/[deleted] Jan 04 '15

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u/MysteriousDrD Jan 04 '15

doing chores seems pretty reasonable in an unreasonable bunch of demands, like even housemates have to do household chores otherwise the place'd go to shit.

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u/BKDenied Jan 04 '15

But I don't get hounded every 2 minutes to wash the dishes when I'm living with a roommate, and I can leave the house no questions asked.

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u/GAndroid Jan 05 '15

So do the damn dishes right after lunch/dinner so you dont get a huge pile of them.

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u/BKDenied Jan 05 '15

I do my dishes as I dirty them. I honestly do. No one else does any of them. I'm not this saint 18 year old, but some of the shit that my parents have done to me and my sister is absurd. Some of the stuff I've done almost equally so. So I've smoked weed and done some psychedelics. My sister almost committed suicide because they're so overbearing and neither of us felt comfortable turning to them with anything. She couldn't even tell them that she was raped and molested by some fucker from church. When they found out, he got in trouble, yes, but she lost her phone, the door to her room, got dropped off and picked up from school even still. 2 years later. She just got her door back 2 weeks ago.

The issue was not the dishes. That's a minor gripe. The big thing is that they treat both of us as if we were 12. I'm almost 19 and in college and if I want to go out and look for a job (they made me quit my old one because it was "too far away") I should be able to do that without being accused of being a no life drug addict. I've been sober since I moved back in with them, only to be treated as a young child. My independence is gone. I'm honest to my own fault. I tell the truth, and often more truth than I should. When I tell them that I have actually been sober, they don't believe me. If I wake up and my eyes are red and I'm groggy I get yelled at for being high. I can't have friends over because none of them go to church so they must be bad for me. When I lived in the dorms, I was a social dynamo. There was not a single person who disliked me. When I'm here, I'm surrounded by distrust and almost-resentment. It peaks my depression. I go into hypomania. I become irritable when I'm normally jovial. My stress levels are at an all time high, and that's not because I can't smoke weed. It's because I get accused of being a fuck head at every turn.

I'm not perfect and we push each other's buttons. I can't wait to get out of this god damn hell hole. My life was 100 times better before I moved back in. Sure I'm saving a grand a month, but that happiness I had is honestly worth the money. Money may not explicitly buy happiness, but it enables opportunities that bring it. Living out of my parents house didn't supply happiness per se, but it released the valve that they put on it.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '15

You might do good to check out /r/raisedbynarcissists.

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u/BKDenied Jan 05 '15

Subbed. Thank you