What kind of answers are you looking for?
It sounds like you feel intimidated by the cost of housing where you live and are maybe looking for reassurance from other people who have come to grips with having to spend so much on housing?
I know a lot of people who have spent a ton on housing due to living in VHCOL areas, some of them are okay with it and some aren't. Some shrug it off as the cost of living where they do and others angst over it and fantasize about moving somewhere cheaper.
I live somewhere that is becoming quite expensive, but DH have chosen minimalism and to live in a small apartment in a high-rise, so our home will never be much of our NW. By the time we're both retired, it might make up 20% of our NW, maybe, depending on how the housing market behaves.
Like pp, we also used to want a bigger house, but as we increasingly embraced minimalism, we went radically in the other direction because it made us happier. We love our home.
If we wanted a big, detached home, we just wouldn't buy here. But that's easy for us to say, because we both prioritized geographically flexible careers so that we would never be tethered to a given location. Especially me, geographic flexibility was the main driving force behind my career choice.
It's a matter of balancing priorities. If living in a VHCOL location AND owning a sizeable home are both top, top, top priorities for you, then you are going to have to get comfortable with the financial trade offs.
If financial comfort is more of a priority, then you will have to give on either house, or location, or both.
Life is a series of trade offs, only you can know which trades are worth it for you.