Thank you all for your answers. As both anmarschel and mochabelle said, I’ll try and focus solely on the outcome, on feeling grateful, and overall on thinking positive thoughts. It would be indeed vital to find new friends in this area. I tried to rekindle (the few) old high-school ‘acquaintances’ I had, but it didn’t work out, mainly cause I left this town when I was 18 and most of them either don’t live here anymore or they’re so wrapped up into marriages or whatever it’s going on in their lives, that they probably don’t have time nor energy for ‘new’ friends. I just have to build everything back from scratch.

About the ‘gratitude’ thing tho (and this is for losp33d), I haven’t mentioned it in the original post, but I remain grateful for the fact of having a roof over my head and someone who still cares enough to share their food with me, and I always thank my parents also verbally for whatever they do to help me out. It’s not like they’re this kind of horrible, heartless, monster. But you probably need to have experienced ‘controlling parents’ first hand to know what I’m talking about. They haven’t totally changed their attitude towards me, if I have to compare how I’ve been treated back when I was a child or a teenager: yes, maybe I managed to soften the ‘control-freak’ bit around the edges through years and years of living far from home and trying to make them reason, to talk to them in an adult way, to show them I’m a responsible person. It’s not as bad as it was in those years. But believe me, some behaviours hardly change – because it can’t be always you, you know. Sometimes, sadly, it’s just them. And you can’t do anything about it, it’s not in your power to change certain thinking patterns in others, apart from accepting reality for what it is and move on mentally.

In anmarschel’s boyfriend example, there’s probably some old-fashioned belief on his parents’ side for which the man has got to be the ‘bread-winner’, and ‘earn’ his place in society (thus earning his parents respect too, being the family strongly connected and concerned about formal ‘society rules’, in their minds), while for a woman is perfectly acceptable to stay at home and be a ‘spoiled princess’. Therefore they project on him all their frustration for seeing this ‘rule’ suddenly disrupted. In this case, a person perceives their parents’ love as ‘conditional’, meaning it’s subjected to the satisfaction of certain ‘rules’ or expectation the parent created in their minds. And this simply makes us sad, as sons and daughters of such parents. Like she said, It’s like having their child move back in sent them decades back in maturity and now they’re acting like the control freaks they once had to be.

Thus said, I just wanted to know how other people in a similar situation managed to get through it, mainly to know there are other people who’ve been there and actually got to ‘the other side’, which makes me hopeful. And yes, I’m grateful for all your answers.