My grade-school aged son, my partner and I spent three agonizing, seemingly endless years in a beautiful, upscale southern California suburb I dubbed Stepford. Lovely home, lovely neighborhood -- but it was hell.

So my advice to you is GET OUT. Run, don't walk. Listen to your gut. Go. Even if you have to take a loss on your investment. Go. It's worth it. Don't waste any more time wondering. You already know what to do.

I moved to the 'burbs to be closer to my aging parents, even though I was very reluctant to leave my urban rental lifestyle. I bought into that notion that it was a good investment, time to settle down, good for my young son to ride his bike home from school on safe quiet streets and roam freely, etc. There were so many good, practical reasons to live there, especially with a kid. I thought I could transcend geography and, as they say, bloom where I was planted.

Instead, the suburbs sucked my soul dry. After 2.5 years I truly felt that part of me was dying on the vine. The strip malls, the chain stores and restaurants, the endless driving, the whitebread attitudes and emphasis on sports sports sports. I telecommuted and never felt so alone in my life. Daytime in the burbs is like siesta time in Spain ... not a soul visible for miles. In the evening people drive directly into their garages. The only time I saw my neighbors was when we had a chance encounter at our mailboxes. I saw the neighbor's gardeners more often than I saw my neighbors.

I had a nasty health scare and when I recovered, I said, I have got to get out of here. So we sold the house, got out moved back to where I belong. It's worth the sacrifice. Turns out my son is much happier in our new place too (I was worried about moving him.) The happiest day of my life was handing that key to the realtor.

If kids are in your future, raise an urban kid. Better that than a Stepfordian robot. Most suburban kids are just being raised to be good little consumers like their parents.

Suburbs seems so benign and harmless. Sure they're bland, but how bad could it be, really? Very bad, as it turns out. Get out while you can. Good luck.

Here is the truth of the matter: you live in a beautiful house in a beautiful area. You have a job that YOU CHOSE, and if you do not like it, you have the CHOICE to leave it. You are assuming a lot about the suburbs. There are a lot of people who live in the suburbs, and they are as ethnically, as religiously, as politically diverse as any other place.

Give yourself a few years. Start thinking about what is GOOD about your situation, and you will start to see more good.

A couple of years ago, I was laid off, at the end of my unemployment, and my new business had NOT yet taken off. I was constantly worried, constantly panicking about the future.

So I made myself stop. I started getting up 1/2 hour earlier in the morning, went downstairs, sat in a chair where I could see my lovely (even under the snow) backyard, and recited all the things that I was grateful for. At first, the list was small: my husband, my kids, a roof over my head.

But as the days went by, life seemed to be easier, the list kept getting longer, and I was able to lose that sense of dread. I am not stupid nor am I unable to see that there are things that are just plain WRONG with this society. But today, instead of feeling the anger and helplessness that your letter screams out, I KNOW that there are winters and there are springs. That if I keep my eye on what I want and need, and work towards that, I will get it. And "it" includes the ability to help to improve the lives of many other people. THAT has begun to happen, too.

Here is the reality of the real estate situation, tho. If you are planning to stay in your house for at least another five years, you really really don't need to worry about it. Real estate values trend upward in nearly all of this country. Downward turns are much shorter than upward ones, they have been for over a century.

Put a smile on your face, kiss your wife, and get some good, happy CDs to listen to on your commute. You'll be a better man for it.

Figure a way out and do it, don't look back. There are lots of ways to live, and this is just one of them. One upper-middle class suburban dream does not fit everyone. That's like saying one shoe should fit every foot, or one profession should fit every pereson. It's an absolutely asinine idea but lots of us have fallen for it because it's shoved down our throats daily. Personally what you describe sounds like my own personal version of hell. I escaped; so can you.

There are other ways to live.

Long term, big picture - your life is entirely too important and your time way too valuable (because how much do you have left? who knows!) to sit and rot in a place that makes you miserable. Sell your place to someone who will want it and find a space that makes you happy, that fits. Do it now. You're trying to live someone else's dream because that's what you've been told you're supposed to do, and you're probably surrounded by people living this same life at work - so to want out makes you weird, makes you an outside. Well, good. That's a compliment, really.

Drum up some courage (it's there, I promise), uncover your own dream and then make it real. No time to lose.

Yet again, Cary misses the entire point of this letter. I have little sympathy for the writer of this letter. "Living the Dream" is facing the consequences of his and his wife's own investment into the narcissistic and self-serving ideology that ruled the economic windfall we all benefited from the past 5 years. They chose to move into a much too expensive house in a neighborhood where they've made no emotional investment. I'm sure based on his description of his wife and himself, they have saddled themselves with much educational debt, or at the very least have very little equity/liquidity to show from working in academia and decades (between the two) in school. They weren't thinking about long-term planning or even what they really wanted, they were looking to keep up with their friends they saw at summer barbecues and cocktail parties who talked about the new estate in Connecticut or the house they got on the Eastern Shore for the upcoming season. Spare me the suburban martyr act. You made the decision, live with it.

Rather than tackle the issue head-on, Cary chooses to attack the idea of suburban living and goes on a rant of new-urbanism with a tirade for eco-living. Do you really want to compare the carbon-emissions between urban and suburban dwellers? You're an idiot and so are your readers if they look to you as some moral authority, and whether it should be based on where you live. It's just like a liberal and their entitlement mentality to enjoy reaping the benefits of the swelling economy, but completely incapable (financially, emotionally, and apparently mentally) to uphold the responsibility of the decisions made during the hey-day of more prosperous times. Sounds to me like "Living the dream" is experiencing a mixture of a pre- midlife crisis, liberal guilt over his job in a clearly capitalist industry, as well as remorse for living like a Republican with his Democratic beliefs. Get over your self-importance as it relates to society as a whole. Your choices may very well reflect the state of the nation, but you didn't lead us here. If anything, your weak-willed ambitions made you part of the lemmings that are facing the credit-crunch, temporarily downturned economy, and the shambles left from a reckless real estate run.

Just be glad that Rebulicans are taking care of your finances for you, renegotiating your interest-only loans with financial institutions, and even sending you a little check to enable you to grab your soy latte, crystal therapy massage, and have a little cry about why you're not out saving the world one HeadStart program at a time. Instead you chose to go work for a hedge fund. Seriously, John Edwards, you've been out of the election for less than a month, and you're already second-guesssing your life decisions that completely conflict your ideology? What a pussy!