There are good reasons not to live in a McMansion in the suburbs. For one thing you use a lot more of the world's natural resources heating and furnishing a big house and buying lawnmowers and pool supplies. I guess it's nice to wander from room to room. Still big houses are wasteful unless they are filled with people. I raised my kids in a small apartment in Manhattan. They went to superb public schools (nothing wrong with Bronx Science.) My kids' friends were a diverse bunch. I didn't have to worry about them driving around the suburbs with drunken teenaged drivers..they took the subway. We never had or needed a car. We lived briefly in the suburbs..when they were little. I fled and am glad I did. I never once heard a kid complain that there was nothing to do. Flee.

I'm just fine with suburbs that have character, the kind where all the houses look different to each other. But I react the same way you do to those places where every house is one of 4 models and a little wall around the block complete with home owners association. Stifling and isolating as hell. Short answer is, move to a less ritzy suburb, they won't give you such heebee jeebees. The cost difference will probably make up for the $50k too.

But I don't think moving back to the condo area is really an option. Life is choices dude. Every choice has pros and cons and you can't resent the fact that the cons will still be there to be dealt with once you've picked which choice to go with. You moved for a reason, if you go back you'll probably have that feeling of living in the past, of picking up the confetti while everyone else left the party to grow up and live in the burbs. It won't be the same. Its just time to stop resenting the facts.

Oh, for Christ's sake. This is first-time homebuyer's anxiety. I experienced it myself, and I've seen it several times in other people. If the house wasn't new, he'd be agonizing over his purchase because of cracks in the plaster and when to repoint the chimney. Furthermore, unless you are one of those "arrive and conquer" types, it takes well over a year, and more like 2 or 3, to get comfortable in a new community (geographical or social) and make your place there. The LW is mistaking perfectly understandable and temporary discomfort in his new and unfamiliar surroundings with a life crisis.

As for career choice, if his soul was being crushed at his job, he'd know it, and he'd have said so in his letter. I say this speaking as a restless jobhopping contractor who is now 17 months into her first permanent (unglamorous, but satisfying) job in 11 years.

I also notice he doesn't talk about his neighbors or a social life at all when he talks about his unhappiness. If "hell is other people", find different people. (LWs to Cary who have this sort of problem never seem mention social or artistic communities when they talk about their lives.) Again, it can take like two years to build a new social or extracurricular life from scratch. If he wants drama, he can join a community theatre. (If he wants a lot of drama, he can serve on the board.) If he wants meaning, he can volunteer someplace, or find a church. If he wants growth, he can take a class or music lessons, or, as someone else much much earlier said, he can have a garden. If he wants to make a difference, he can get involved in local politics. In the meantime he and his wife can take advantage of being kid-less by exploring what their new community has to offer on their own terms in their own schedule. Music festivals, local fairs, coffee houses, historical sites, nature centers, small town centers, cultural offerings at the local community college or satellite campus--I cannot believe that his surroundings are as stultifying as he makes out.

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!

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.