If you had children, and you had raised them with the (American) values that you hold dear; and then they moved to Saudi Arabia; would you expect them to instantly become Saudi, to abandon American values where they conflicted with Saudi ones?
Yes I would. though it wouldn’t, nor would I expect it, to be an overnight transformation, but a process. (and I’m pretty sure I said so above) Would I grieve that they felt the need to leave for such a foreign culture? Hell yes!
But do people actually believe time changes the past? Just because time has passed doesn’t change what was done to you!
Gosh, I don’t know, folks. This doesn’t seem all that much different from dealing with American parents. When I was 20, at home during summer break, I wanted to go visit my out of town boyfriend for the weekend. My parents were extremely reluctant to endorse this plan, even though they knew that we virtually lived together when we were at college. Finally, my mother said, with great exasperation, “BetsQ, I’d really prefer if you went to visit your boyfriend’s roommate for the weekend!” Obviously, that’s not a logical position, but ideas about propriety aren’t generally logical.
When I graduated from college, the boyfriend and I moved in together. I debated not telling my parents, but decided to let them know. It was really difficult. My mom cried regularly for a month. (I learned this from her co-workers.) His parents weren’t thrilled, either. Whenever we visited either set of parents, we were expected to sleep in separate bedrooms - again to keep up appearances of propriety. Irritating, but tolerable. And my parents are decidedly left-of-center Americans who wholeheartedly approved of the boyfriend.
OP- You’ve probably given up on this thread long ago, but maybe two small apartments in the same building would come close to satisfying everyone?
BetsQ-How financially dependent were you on your family after college? (and to other posters-Yes, I brought it up again! Most people who want to “make their parents happy” are really worried about “being cut off”) If you were reasonably independent, why didn’t you and the bf get a motel room when you visited? Everybody wins, you get to share a bed with your bf, your parents get to pretend their “little girl” is as pure as the driven snow.
I don’t understand why parents are so concerned with their family’s image. It’s nobody’s business to people not involved in the situation, who don’t have all the details.
Surely you don’t presume that there is one, single, easily identified, monolithic, static and universal “American” culture to which “non-Westerners” must conform, do you?
The expectation of the majority of Americans is that whatever my family does is the one and only American culture which “non-Westerners” must adhere to, when in in reality “American” culture is in constant flux, because it’s continually cycled by new populations. Things do gravitated toward general means, but even those means are in flux.
Just because time has passed doesn’t change bad things that were done to me OR the good things that were done to me, yeah? You seem to be saying, forget the good things and remember the bad, or am I missing something? (I’m really not trying to be snarky. I’m trying to reconcile this with your posts that say you should discount all the care your parents lavished on you in the past if they currently are being annoying about something.)
I’ve never been worried about being financially cut off. I’d actually prefer that, because whoever puts in the money gets a say in things (and my parents understand that too, which is partially why they sometimes insist on paying on things, e.g., our wedding, for which my husband and I would have FAR preferred to pay ourselves – although some of that was, too, my dad’s tortured relationship with his father and how that’s shaped the way he thinks about things, which was why we allowed it).
Getting a motel room is even worse than staying in the same bed in one’s family’s house, you know. At least in the family, odds are no one will be disturbed except one’s family. If you get a hotel room that’s like shouting to the public that you are not getting along with your family – a capital offense; you don’t air your family’s dirty laundry in public – and that you and bf are Doing Things Together. (Even if you’re not! We had this fight too.)
Again, I’m not saying I endorse this, but this is the way that my parents would look at it.
First, family image CAN be important. I believe that in Korea it used to be instrumental in things like getting a job, for instance. In the US, not so much so, although you still run into pockets of places where women are labeled as “sluts” for “putting out” and such-like, and as a parent I could understand not wanting my child to go through that, or at least worrying that it might happen even if it doesn’t generally happen much anymore.
Also, being in one’s kid’s business is something I understand a little more now, cross-culturally, that I have my own child. This kid was inside me for nine months. I was able to control everything about her surroundings. Now that she’s 1 1/2, I can still control almost everything about what she does, what she hears, what actions she takes. And when we have a difference of opinion, e.g., I think she ought to take a nap and she doesn’t, guess what? I can always win, and I am pretty much always right when I say she’s tired and I know better because I’m the mom and older and know more.
…I can see how that might be tough to let go of when the kid gets older. I mean, I hope I do, and I know tons of parents that were mostly able to do that graciously… but emphasis on the “mostly.”
raspberry hunter-Your 1st point brings a song lyric to mind,“Remember the compliments, forget the insults, if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.”
“Being cut off” and being okay is great (and better for all involved), I meant worrying about “being cut off” and wanting.
And I’m talking (and have been all thread) about adult children. (i.e. 18+) About the hotel room, you’re not going to see these people again (or at least the other guests) so their opinion “isn’t worth a pail of warm spit” 
I completely agree that: American culture is both regional, AND organic. But American culture is distinct from European culture, and Asian culture 9and of course others as well)
I have to say, raspberry hunter, you are a more patient and kinder woman than I. Just reading some of the posts here makes my blood boil. I agree with everything you say, but it seems like you’re banging your head against a brick wall. 
Question to all who’ve participitated in the thread (especially recently) have you READ my post detailing my family history? I’m sorry it’s a wall of text, but it WILL give insight.
Heh, thanks Hazel. I guess I’m doing it for Sunspace! Also, I used to have a very good friend who came from an extremely opinionated, independent family who could not ever understand, probably still doesn’t, how I put up with my parents. He probably told me a hundred times that I should just cut them off, and never did understand why I didn’t. I wonder if my conversation with etv78 is just me wishing that my friend ever understood that. (He later married a mutual friend who knows me and my family both well enough that she understands a little, so maybe he does now.)
I’m not saying it is easy – it’s taken me 30+ years. Like I said, having my own kid was probably the biggest aha! moment for me where I could really understand that my parents were trying to do the best for me and sometimes failing, but not because they didn’t want the best for me even when they were annoying the crap out of me.
While I’m seriously okay with being cut off financially, and would even like to be, I’m not okay with being cut off emotionally. I dare say Hazel and Anaamika would say the same.
I actually think we agreed way back in the first 50 posts or so that in my case the (current, even!) positives of my parents outweigh the negatives. I’ll again say that I think this is the case for the other non-Western-culture people in the thread, with the exceptions (Anaamika, Cherrie), when they decided the negatives outweighed the positives, making the opposite decision. It doesn’t mean that they don’t regret what they’ve lost, any more than it means that by making the choice to keep my parents around I don’t regret that they annoy the crap out of me sometimes.
I dunno, information tends to get out, at least in the hotbed of gossip of my parents’ town. Someone will come over in the evening and you’ll just be leaving to go to the hotel and before you know it, the whole community knows. I mean, not that they would necessarily care – almost certainly they wouldn’t – but my parents’ attitude that it’s in the public domain is not completely out of left field.
I have to admit I’m a bit… Not baffled… Confronted is probably a better word… at the idea that lying to your family is a better option and more respectful, and that what would otherwise be seen as emotional blackmail or even emotional abuse (at some levels) in other relationships is handwaved away because “It’s just their way” when talking about parents.
I do appreciate those of you who are trying to explain it, but unfortunately I do think it’s going to be one of those situations where ne’er the twain shall meet. I CBF scrolling back up to see who said it, but someone in the thread prodded etv about seeing relationships as possessions. But in the other direction, the parents in question here seem to be treating their children as possessions, and lying to capitulate to that seems very alien to me.
False, moose-lips! People can and do die from hurt feelings.
As to the topic at hand, I’d go with the lying option if I were you. I’m guessing your parents would be way less hurt by a revealed lie versus a flat-out betrayal (in their eyes). If Korea is like Japan, which I suspect is the case, the appearance of harmony is just as important as actually having it.
Broken Heart Syndrome? Really, seriously? :rolleyes: (there aren’t enough of those in the world for this) BHS is the after-effects of stress! So BHS could just as easily be attributed to an aneurysm or a stroke. Most of the people weren’t healthy anyway, so I find the stroke or aneurysm more plausible. BTW, you do know anyone can write a wikipedia article, right?
You know wikipedia articles contain cites and references, right?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11446-2005Feb9.html
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/Press_releases/2005/02_10_05.html
Even as a dirty furriner, John Hopkins rings a bell as a legitimate medical establishment in my mind. Who knows. Maybe I’ve just been snowed by the flashy webpage and John Hopkins is no better than Dr Nick Riviera’s Cut & Shut?
Since you ask . . . it reminds me of something a SDMB poster said in one of our frequent “deaf community” Great Debates. She said that she was having a conversation with a professor at a school for the deaf, who himelf happened to have been deaf since birth. She somehow incidentally remarked that as a hearing person, of course she got some things out of music that a deaf person never would be able to. The professor became FURIOUS at this remark, clearly insulted, and declared that since he could read music, he already knew all he needed to know about it, and there couldn’t possibly be any further enjoyment or insight into music that a hearing person could have beyond his own experience, just because he happened to be deaf and she wasn’t. He challenged her to prove otherwise, which of course she couldn’t to his satisfaction.
Not sure if you can get the analogy, but there it is.
What happened to the OP?
She probably ran away screaming. Not that I blame her.
Funny, I thought pretty much the same about you by about page two of the thread.