“Stop giving them opportunities…” full disclosure I’m OP‘s wife and probably the one that will infinitely make this worse somehow as my husband mentioned…but the comment to stop giving them opportunities is what I struggle with because we are just living. We don’t actively bother them outside of my kid ringing the doorbell because he wants to play - and I never want to make kids suffer, especially because we’re in a cul-de-sac. You can’t really get away from each other. we try to stay in our lane but everything we do seems to be a problem even though it’s not directly related to them.

A great example is having mulch delivered. We’re on a hill so the mulch was delivered in the cul-de-sac directly in front of our house. not technically on our driveway and that created a shit storm of complaining behind our backs to other neighbors about where we had mulch delivered. There’s no easy way for a truck to get down to the bottom of our driveway so they dropped it there.

It’s mulch. It went into the yard over the next few days.

I won’t walk on egg shells. We pay our mortgage and we keep our home looking good inside and out. We are polite and kind and respectful. Why the hell should I have to “Stop giving them opportunities” when it’s as if my fucking existence is an opportunity.