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Imagine living in a neighborhood where you become friends with your neighbors and everyone seems kind and generous. Then imagine moving to a neighborhood where the neighbors aren’t as friendly and seem upset when you’re trying to be nice.

Would you want to move back to the old neighborhood even if it was in a bad part of town, or would you prefer to stay in the “nicer” neighborhood even if the people aren’t as nice?

In this story, a woman is in this exact situation. She moved from a “bad” neighborhood to a “nicer” neighborhood with her boyfriend, and she hates everything about it. However, her boyfriend thinks she’ll eventually get used to it.

What should she do? Let’s read the whole story to decide.

AITA for wanting to move back to a “bad” neighborhood after my boyfriend wanted to move to a “nicer” suburb? I hate it here

I lived in a studio apartment before this. I loved it; despite it being seen as one of the worse neighborhoods in the city.

It could get noisy sometimes but everyone in my building had a kinda mutual agreement to be understanding of each other’s noise.

My neighbors were always ready to help each other out; I’ve seen a lot of generosity, neighbors helping each other with car repairs, taking turns doing grocery runs for the older people in the building during quarantine, etc.

She really does seem to miss her old neighborhood.

There were parties sometimes but they often came with an open invitation; like “I’m gonna have a party, sorry in advance about the noise but you’re welcome to come by for a few drinks!”

Someone put a firepit out back and my neighbors and I would hang out there on summer nights.

I made some great friends.

It was also the kind of place people wouldn’t rat on each other for the little things, like smoking weed, having a cat in a no-pets building, driving a car that wasn’t inspected, having backyard fireworks in the summer.

It was just a really friendly chill place, like yeah it was the “bad” part of town, but it was also a place full of generous kind people.

Her boyfriend didn’t like her old neighborhood at all.

Anyway, I’ve been in a relationship with James for a few years, and he never really cared for my apartment or neighborhood.

He was bothered by the noise, the cigarette smoke in halls, the broken bottles and litter in the streets, etc.

And he convinced me to move somewhere “nicer”.

So we rented the ground floor of a house in the suburbs.

She doesn’t think the neighbors are nearly as friendly here as they were in her old neighborhood.

And honestly, for how “nice” this area is supposed to be, I hate it.

I feel like I’m being watched all the time; like literally I walk down the street coming home at night and people peel the blinds past and watch me till I’ve passed. Or stare from their yards. It’s bizarro.

There’s a lot of people here who will walk right up to you and tell you they don’t like what you’re doing. Like I was trying to fix my car, which was parked on the street, and a guy came over to say that you can’t legally do car maintenance on the street.

Coming from a place where people would come up and offer help, and give someone the benefit of the doubt that they’re working on their car on the street maybe they can’t afford a car or mechanic, it was so different… In a bad way.

Here’s another example.

Same with having a little party in my yard, I had friends over and invited the renters from upstairs plus the adults from the neighboring houses, for a backyard bbq.

And instead of anyone accepting, a couple people got judgemental I’d been having a 21+ party rather than a family garden party in a family neighborhood.

There are just so many more little examples of this stuff.

She does not see eye to eye about this situation at all.

I finally got upset with my boyfriend, for choosing this place when I had my doubts. Not only is it hard on my budget, it’s not even “nice” like he promised. I miss my “trashy” but friendly old neighborhood.

My boyfriend got kind of rude about it, saying I can’t live like an irresponsible kid forever, wanting to party and slum it up… Which I thought was really rude.

I don’t know if I can stay, I hate this so much. My boyfriend thinks I’ll grow to like living somewhere “nice” but I’m not so sure.

AITA, reddit?

They might need to break up. They clearly don’t agree about where they want to live, and he insulted her. That’s pretty rude.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

This person calls her boyfriend a snob.

Another person calls the boyfriend a “massive snob.”

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who is thinking of alerting the city to their neighbor’s campers being lived-in while parked on the street.

But this person thinks OP needs to give the new neighborhood a fair chance.

However, another person points out that more expensive isn’t the same as nicer.

They clearly want different things.

It seems like she lived in a neighborhood where the rules were more relaxed, and everyone became friends. However, if the new neighbors are more concerned about family friendly parties, they may have moved to a neighborhood that’s dominated by families with kids. That’s going to have a different vibe since many of the neighbors are in a different life phase than OP and her boyfriend.

I’m not sure this relationship is going to work.