I have read, over and over today, that "it will only get worse" that "your feelings won't change."

Well, guess what? That is NOT a given. Unless you have some organic disease that causes depression or anxiety, YOU are in charge of your response to your environment, not the other way around. Is it easy, when you are used to blaming the environment and other people for your feelings, to think that leaving that environment, leaving the people, will make everything better.

But YOU will still be with you, and unless you teach yourself to find the real cause of your unhappiness, it will happen all over again. I have no idea whether the LW is going to be happy in the long run in a career in hedge funds. But he can control his day to day responses to working in that industry. He lives in a beautiful house, that he is afraid he will lose and isn't sure that he likes. If you can make a 20x20 apartment feel like home, surely you can make a house feel like home. What is missing? What in your home feels uncomfortable? Find it and change it.

I highly recommend counting blessings, because you have them. As does every person who believes that they are in/were in/has friends who are in impossibly horrid situations. Find the blessings and go with them.

Suburban living is going out of style in the same way that urban living went out of style 30 years ago. So your McMansions is going to lose value while the kind of place you'd like to live in gains value.

Take your lumps and get out now, it's only going to get worse. There was a good article in the Atlantic Monthly about this, check it out.

Years ago, I bought a house just before a "correction" in the market. Got divorced, wanted to get rid of the house, and discovered that the house's value had gone down and I couldn't sell. So I held on, though it felt like a stretch to afford (and I had to make an agreement with my ex that he'd get his share out of it too).

Because I lived in a place where people generally want to live, a relatively nice neighborhood, the housing values eventually recovered. So 5 years later I sold at a profit.

In the meantime, I did what I could to make the house more pleasant to me and to the future buyers. Because I waited out the bad market, I was able to get my money back, plus enough profit to buy a good place in an urban neighborhood I liked.

So LW has my sympathy. IF your neighborhood is a desirable one, you'll probably get your money out of the house, but maybe not this year. While you weather this little storm, go out and learn about neighborhoods, check out open houses. Decide which neighborhood you really want to live in, and get to know it well. If you're planning a family, schools will be critical so learn about them as well. When it's time to jump, you'll be ready.

View this as an assignment in an alien land. Make your space as pleasant as you can while planning your escape.

Haven't read the other LoCs yet, but I just wanted to say that everything the LW said about modern suburbia is true. If you want more information, read Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health, and Money by Joel Hirschhorn.

Cary's suggestions are good. Also, look up "sustainable communities", and placemakers.com.

I movd from San Francisco to a college town of 60,000 people about 7 years ago. The town is completely surrounded by farmland and we have a slow-growth measure in place, so we're not really a suburb (even though a large city is 15 miles away), but an isolated community that isn't part of any suburban sprawl. I guess some people would consider my house to be a typical suburban house, but I bike to work on a dedicated bike path, and can walk 4 blocks to a grocery store, bank, four restaurants, a non-chain coffee place, etc. We have a fantastic farmers' market two days a week all year round, virtually no violent crime, and great schools. I'll probably leave when my son goes off to college next year, but no way would I ever move back to San Francisco. If your idea of "soul" is people urinating on the streets, trash everywhere, pandhandlers every block, and all at exhorbitantly high housing prices, well, then I guess I'd rather be soulless. I was back there last Sunday and I can't believe I ever thought that was a good quality of life. Great restaurants don't cancel out all the negatives.

I'll take your house in the 'burbs with a nice kitchen, central heating, room to have more than three friends over at a time, and best of all a yard where I can sit in the summer and drink a cocktail at sunset, let my kitty cat out to hunt beasties without the thought of her getting squished by a car, and grow a real garden that gets sunlight and attracts bumblebees and hummingbirds.

In exchange, you can have my first floor apartment in a 1905 Victorian with a throw-rug yard, that hasn't been renovated ever, with little to no insulation in the walls, steam heat that only heats the living room and kitchen before the thermostat trips and the boiler shuts off, and Brazilians upstairs who play really good music at really bad times (like 2am), and a landlord who took 4.5 years to install the double-glazed windows that required by my state's building code and fix the crumbling drywall in the bathroom. I won't even ask about the cracking lead paint that covers all the trim.

But hey, there's a cool subterranian bar and an overpriced "indie" coffee shop in walking distance, and we're right on the bus line so if you don't mind waiting for 30 minutes in 15-degree (with windchill) weather for four months a year that should be OK, right?

Thanks! I'll pack my stuff this weekend!