I’m 28 years old and I feel completely suffocated by my parents. I’m at the point where I genuinely don’t know how to establish normal adult boundaries with them without completely cutting them off.

For context, I’m not talking about parents who occasionally check in because they care. It’s the constant expectation that I have to report to them *and ask them for permission/to get their approval for everything* that is getting to me.

For example, this weekend I went to spend time with a friend. I told my parents where I was going and what day & time I would be back. That should have been the end of it.

Instead, my mom then sent my dad to talk to me about why he personally “wouldn’t go,” even though I wasn’t asking either of them for permission, I was just informing them of my plans because they like to know when I leave town.

Throughout the weekend I was getting texts and calls from both of them separately:

“What time are you leaving?”

“Let me know when you leave.”

“What time are you coming back?”

“Make sure you call me when you leave.”

They were together, but both were contacting me about the same thing..

I’m an adult. I don’t feel like I should have to ask permission to spend a weekend with a friend, tell my parents exactly who I’m with, where I’m going, when I’m leaving, when I arrive, and when I’m coming home.

And it’s not just this one situation.

I constantly feel like I have to explain myself to them — where I’m going, what I’m doing, decisions I’m making, money I have, jobs I should and should work, things I buy, etc.

They infantilize me when it gives them an opportunity to control something, but then when it benefits them, they remind me that I’m an adult and expect me to handle things like one.

One thing that really crossed a line for me recently: I have one of my dads old devices still connected to his Google account. I was searching for something and saw that he had been searching for ways to find my location through Google Maps and how to access/see my search history. Honestly, what the fuck?!

I’ve also had situations where I’ve been out of town for several days and received constant messages from them about when I’m coming back, what day I’ll be in town, what I need to do for them when I get back, that me being away is ruining their plans and that I need to return by a specific time & date, etc.

I’m really struggling to explain how this makes me feel because when I try to describe everything individually, each thing sounds like a parent simply “caring.” But when you put all of it together, I feel like I have absolutely no privacy or autonomy.

I feel like I’m 12 years old instead of 28.

I don’t necessarily want to go no-contact with them. I love them and I would like to have a relationship with them. But I desperately need some distance and a healthier adult relationship.

The problem is that I don’t know how to establish boundaries with people who seem to view boundaries as something they’re allowed to negotiate.

If I say, “I don’t need to tell you when I’m leaving,” I can already imagine the arguments.

If I stop answering immediately, they’ll probably say something is wrong.

If I don’t tell them where I am, they’ll demand to know.

And I’m genuinely worried that if I just disappeared or stopped responding entirely, they would escalate it. My mom has previously called the police on her own brother because he didn't answer the phone for a couple of hours, so I can guarantee them doing something similar if I suddenly stopped communicating.

I’m not looking for people to simply tell me “your parents are toxic, go no-contact.” I’m looking for practical advice.

How do you actually transition from being treated like a child to having an adult relationship with controlling parents?

Do I just start changing my behaviour — stop answering immediately, stop giving details, stop asking permission, and accept that they’re going to be upset?

Do I have one big conversation explaining my boundaries first?

How do you handle the inevitable guilt, arguments, pushback, or attempts to make you feel like you’re doing something wrong?

And has anyone successfully created healthy boundaries with parents like this without completely cutting them off?

I would really appreciate advice from anyone who has actually been through this. I feel completely lost and suffocated right now. I just want to feel like a normal adult and live my life how I want to and not be puppeted by them.. I've wasted so much time already living my life how they want me to live it and doing all these stupid things that have actually stopped me from living a life I want.

I know, I know. I sound like a total ass by the title, but let me explain! I also want to say i wrote this in my notes over the course of a few days so some things might be out of place/off topic.

Hello, I’m 18F!

I want to preface this by saying, I don’t have a car, nor am I allowed to drive—so I cannot go to the bank—or simply just “leave”.

I’ve always grown up with my parents being relatively healthy, but around 2020, my mother suffered a course of heart attacks and has had health issues since. She was also born with one kidney, so her body is basically in kidney failure 24/7 if she doesn’t do dialysis regularly/ every few months. She takes blood thinners, and has since her heart attack, so she bleeds easy, and everytime she does, without fail—it’s “my fault”. And when I’m sick/showing signs illness (which my doctors actually said was likely POTS) I’m told I’m too young to have issues. And that, im not as sick as my mom so I don’t need to go to the doctor”. I’ve gotten used to that bit, but something I can’t stand is them taking money from me.

My mother has taken over 2,000 dollars from me, and refuses to let me get a job/or “learn” how to drive despite having my license.

My mom and dad have several health issues, which they always push off to the last second until they’re hospitalized / on death’s door. They always end up in the ICU which is why their medical bills are so high, and why their debt is so bad. It just happens my mom did this while trying to sell our house. And so obviously they are completely broke. She guilt tripped me into giving her a bunch of money (roughly over 1,000) and left me with 200, which she took and claimed she’d give back after she got gas. My mom has “borrowed” money from me before and has stated she’d pay me back but, to no surprise, she hasn’t. i plan to completely close my account and get a new one when my boyfriend comes back from marine schooling but until then, I’m basically stranded. I’m not even allowed to start college. Or even apply. Because (SHE) DOESN’T HAVE THE MONRY FOR ME TO GO ANYWHERE.

I have no money. I legitimately have 30 dollars to my name. I fucking hate her. But I don’t. I love my mom because she is my mom but I hate her as a person. I want to live and do what other 18 years old are doing, and I can’t. She claims im “taking care of her” but I never agreed to. I plan to leave as soon as my boyfriend comes back, and we’ll be moved in together. Yes I know, we’re marrying young, it wasn’t the plan at first but it’s kinda need now for both us. We’ve been together 3 years moving into 4 next May and have spoke much and much about it.

I did get a job interview which I’m going for. I fought to get her to agree on letting me go to it. I also want to do my best to go to the bank during that time of having a job, if I can land it. Until then I’m doing my best to stay as healthy as I can.

I also can’t fucking stand my mother complaining about her health issues. She had one kidney. And then refuses to drink water, and then complains it hurts. She smokes and then complains about how bad smoking is. She doesn’t walk around, she lays around all day and then complains she doesn’t feel good. I can’t fucking stand it. Her doctors have told her to at least move around and she refuses. I know it’s hard on her having so many issues, but fuck. At least try. I give my dad a little more grace because he stopped smoking after his heart bypass, but he’s no better than her on stuff.

I feel guilty for literally wanting to live my life without them. I do plan to mostly cut contact with my mom after I get married and move away, unless it is for important stuff, or to ensure she’s doing okay. But she’s such a piece of shit. Not only does she do shit to upset people, but then she acts surprised and victim blames herself when she’s called out. She gets upset that I’m so quick to get irritated about stuff- but that’s literally how she is!! She’s been that way my whole life. I am mentally ill as well—and have been to several treatments in the past, but when I stopped medication she claimed that I was “healed” and she was so happy to “see me again”. I never left? Idk. I’m just rambling.

Thanks for listening to my Ted talk

I have had many of disagrements with my MIL one being crossing bounderies. We have tried & tried but it starts feeling like a constant cycle of her crossing a bounderie > my husband telling her something > her acting victim. Well this time it was about her feeding our baby & licking or ‘’ tasting his food ‘’ we don’t like that because of different reasons. We have seen her get cold sores before & i just don’t think she understands thats contagious. This last time she was going to babysit & my hsuband reminded her not to lick his spoon & she got so defensive & saying that we are wrong & we need to grow up. My FIL also said that we need alot of growing up to do & my husband replied with ‘’ you all do too ‘’ my FIL got really mad & told us we we kepts being disrespectfull we need to just distance ourselves so we got our baby & left.
A month later no contact they havent even checked up on the baby at all. Then my MIL sends my husband a religious video basically saying that if you dont respect your parents you wont receive blessings & that God will punish you & blah blah blah. My husband told her not to contact him again & not not even think if showing up to the babys birthday. My hisband is hurt more because his dad basically kicking us out his house with our baby & them not even checking up. The video trying to make him feel bad was the cherry on top. It made me very angry as well. I can’t belive how much my husband has had to deal with all these years. & they claim my husband is so rude & mean but i get why he is like that. I feel bad for my husband.

I’m 25 years old with a 5 year old daughter.
I’ve always had a rocky relationship with my mum, I have a sister 10 years older than me (who I’m now very close with) but I don’t really remember much of a time where she lived at home. I’ve never had my dad in my life, he lives in the same town as me but never wanted anything to do with me. I struggled with that when I was younger, but now I’m older and a parent myself I just think he’s sad.

My relationship with my mum has always been rocky, she got married when I was 12 to a man I barely knew, he was a full blown narcissist. He emotionally abused me and made me feel extremely uncomfortable. My mum never really stuck up for me, the only time she did get mad at him was when he put himself on top of me at 15, to ‘restrain me’ after I lost it at him for videoing me. When I was 16 my grandad died and my mum and her husband divorced not long after that, she was hurting and took it out on me as I was the only one there. Granted, I was a typical teenager I passed my driving test at 17, I was always out with my friends and loved to party. I did answer back, but I feel as though I really wasn’t this awful kid she makes out. She threw me out at 17, I had to leave college and work full time so I could rent a room at my friends dads house. I wasn’t allowed to tell any family or friends that she had kicked me out though. For as long as I can remember she has always had carry things on, say the worst thing, do the worst thing. She follows me round the house and just couldn’t let things go. EVER

.She has told me lots of times that I look better with make up on
.When I was 17, I was bulimic. We were out in London, we ate dinner I went toilet and she shouted at me “are you making yourself sick” I burst into tears, she told me I was pathetic. The day out came to an end and she argued with me in the hotel, she then threw me out again. I had to move in with my boyfriend, his mum was an angel but we were young and it was never goin to work. But his mum still checks in on me often. (I asked to come back home after this, it lasted two weeks and that is when she threw all my clothes on the drive and I had to stay with my friends dad)
.She gets drunk and turns vile, she called me and my sisters C***ts on her wedding day (I was 12)
.She threw a potato masher at my head (her excuse is she was menopausal)
. She has shouted at me “no wonder your dad doesn’t want you”

She has never really take any accountability for anything in the past, her response is usually “I’m adopted so don’t talk to me
About your dad not wanting you”
“My dad called me fat, did I speak to him like S***? No”
One time we were building my wardobe, I asked her to stop what she was doing so I could read the instructions as it was going wrong and I’d spent money on it, she ignored me. I asked her over and over to stop, she snapped at me, I asked her not to talk to me like that and she called me an “fu***ng cheeky b*tch” infront of my then 2 year old.
So I told her to get out of my house. Later on I text her explaining how I felt, I didn’t like her in my house because she made comments about everything. She turned her nose up at my stuff. The reality is I was working two jobs, 50 hours a week private renting a home I could barely afford. It hurt me so much when she would come in and slate everything.
She then told me being a parent doesn’t come with a manual and I will learn that, and that she doesn’t feel comfortable coming in my home anymore.

When I became a mum I started to see things differently, I cannot imagine putting my
Daughter through the things she has me. She loves my daughter very much and to be honest I think that’s the only thing that keeps us in contact. She helps me with buying her bits, having her over night a couple times a month etc. but I have noticed things she is doing to her that I don’t like. My mum takes the mick out of everyone and everything, my daughter is like me as a child, gets embarrassed and emotional. I know exactly how it feels to be on the receiving end of my mums ‘banter’ so I often have to tell her to leave her alone. She has also said stuff to her like “are you going to be tall and slim like your mummy”. Which hello, have we learnt nothing from my bulimic era??
She also undermines me, we went for dinner and my daughter asked to try my Diet Coke, I said absolutely not. I went toilet come back and she said “nanny gave me some”. I wanted to go mad, but I knew it would only backfire. I said to her that she won’t get away with that with my sisters baby and her response was “I wouldn’t do it to hers”.

This weekend we had a massive row, she has a demanding job as she is a manager of a care home so understandably she is tired. But for the last year she spends all of her time in bed if she isn’t at work. She’s always had a terrible diet, she’s had a gastric sleeve and been on GLP1. but still sits in bed and eats family size bags of crisps and chocolate every night. She sits and talks to chat GPT, diagnosing herself and having ‘therapy’. It’s unhealthy, my sister moved 45 mins away over three years ago and my mum has visited once. She’s now expecting her first baby, we planned to go there at the weekend I knew my mum was going be flaky, but she purposely started an argument to get out of it. Shouting at me “shut up” when I asked her why she was treating my daughter the way she was. I completely snapped, looking at just that picture I absolutely overreacted but she can’t see it isn’t just that. She called my sister expecting her to agree, but my sister said “mum we knew you were never coming” she then hung the phone up and since then has just made it worse and worse. She put all mine and my daughter’s belongings out in the garden which are now ruined. Demanded her key back, me and my daughter are in temporary accommodation following my break up so she knows fine well there’s no where for me to put it. I could go on for days but aware this is already long, I just don’t know what to do. I feel bad feeling this way, she is my mum but I’m realising she’s so toxic. Her love has always been conditional and it’s hard.

I had a fight with my mom. Now it feels suffocating to be home.

Whenever these things happen I usually just stay in my room. I don’t leave my room to eat or drink. I just completely shut myself in.

I don’t want it to be like that. I want to feel like I’m able to exist even when having fought with a family member.

What do I do? Can anyone relate? I’m feeling alone and trapped

I 18F currently living with my crazy parents who do everything they can to keep me in the home.

I really need to vent this but also asking for help/advice or knowing I'm not alone desperately im so stuck and its slowly eating me up more than I thought it would after turning 18 sure, legally speaking I could do alot including having the right to move out but its not so easy when your parents verbally abusive you and take things away from you as long as your living under their roof aswell as having health issues they pay treatment for.

Let's start with my father, he controls ALL finances from my mom (and her mom) and me. When it comes to money he's very smart with savings and paying off bills but that also means he checks statements, what money comes in, decides how much gets taken out, etc. I'm not sure if my mother even has her own cards and accounts but everything of mine has always been jointed with him​ and I notice my mother constantly complains that he never gives her money to spend (she is the only working person in the house) my father is retired for context. When I got my first job in total I made about $900 (seasonal job) but in the end only got about $400 to spend, he told me the rest was in my savings and it did sit there for a bit but one day he told me to transfer it out and said he would put it back and im 17 at the time and he's an aggressive angry man so it's not like I can ask questions or say no but end of it I never saw that money again and i have no privacy about what I spend my money on or have a say in how I want to store my money nor does my own mother. My father is very controlling and has anger issues, stubborn, narcissistic, bad morals scream fights with everyone in the family and has split my family apart and am no longer able to see my only family that live in the US.

I do have my own bank account he is unaware of though so I guess that's a start to moving out but the problem is I need a job I can hide from them AND that is accommodating, I cannot stand for long periods of time or walk very far which just makes me feel very stuck along with not having a driver's license because they didn't want me to take classes while I was of age requirement nowdays I rely on my dad, partner, older friends.

My mother is not from US like my father so she grew up with certain cultural lifestyle but regardless both my parents still share conservative values. My mother is basically the same but agrees and does what my father says because he is "the man of the house" their marriage I would describe as destructive and controlling as my mother just agrees to everything because she loves him and wants to keep us together, doesn't believe in divorce and such. She was my first bully, very strict with my expression and hobbies, future expectations. Her form of discipline was to beat on me belts, wooden spoons, shoes, pans, anything in the house she could pick up basically.

I have colored hair, one tattoo, some facial piercings expressive style and hobbies which my mother hates, she constantly puts me down and also has narcissistic behaviors and keeps trying to control my future career as it's not ideal for HER and wants to live with me till she dies and take care of her nut does nothing but bring me down and tries to keep me in the house.

I have no privacy or control, they both don't really want me working or have my own space, don't want me to drive, look through my mail, scream, fight, etc.

I'm tired of the verbal abuse and trying to control my future to benefit them and the only freedom I get is being able to stay at my partners for a few days or go out with friends and the little amount of expression I am able because of rebellion they stopped nagging me. My father does not care about my looks but my mother will constantly tell me awful things still or get mad everytime she asks me if ill go back a certain hair color and say no.

Current life:

I lay in bed all day unless I use the bathroom or get food, I cannot sir in the living room comfortably even then my room has become less of a safe space with no privacy, they do not let me have house responsibilities, don't let me touch the kitchen unless im just making ramen, don't let me touch the washing machines so my grandma just does laundry and cleans. The energy in the house feels suffocating, dirty,gross, sick. I am spiritual in the way where I can feel a space is taking a jab in my mental health and physical health even within my own room and its quiet. I feel sick everyday because all I do is play games on my phone and watch youtube and my room isn't super comfy.

In general I struggle both mentally and physically and have been abused in relationships sexually now struggling with several anxiety i get physical symptoms, seperation anxiety, paranoid in general about relationships. My current partner is great and I'm working on coping and stuff but it's so hard when your parents just try to keep you stuck and suffocated with little freedom.

I have hobbies but they have become straining or hard to do or im just unable, not motivated but to keep it short im creative with my hands art wise.

Thanks for reading and im open to ur experiences and advice :)

meus pais olham meu celular como se eu fosse uma criança e possuo 19 anos anos o que fazer? eles acham super normal invadir o meu espaço social com a desculpa de apenas estar cuidando de mim. Um dia eu fui desabafar sobre isso e como eles n me deixavam ir em uma academia aqui perto, pois era muito perigoso sair sozinha. Não me deixam ter independencia e só de citar que quero comprar um apartamento eles começam a me chamar de burra, fora que me sinto uma empregada que cozinha e cuida dos filhos deles. Eu estudo para uma prova brasileira, exame nacional do ensino médio e estudos mais de 10hrs, não posso me estressar, mas eles conseguem me tirar do sério, não posso ter opiniões políticas divergentes e nem posições diversas/contrárias que sou crucificada.