Yes. It sounds like you’ve never loved or truly been loved, and explains perfectly why you don’t understand why anyone is reluctant to hurt their own loved ones.
I’m sorry for you, and hope things get better, but for now it looks like the other posters here are banging their heads against a brick wall trying to explain purple to a blind man (to borrow a metaphor from later in the thread!).
Yeah, you seem to have absolutely zero relationships with members of your family, and probably have no concept of what it’s like for people to love you unconditionally. You sound like you’re estranged from every single family member you could possibly interact with, due probably in part to the idea that if someone in your family pisses you off you should just cut them out of your life like you’ve been advocating here. It doesn’t sound like you have a better situation than the many people here who have detailed the struggles their families have gone through together, and the strong relationships they have now because of them.
I will have to defer to HazelNutCoffee’s, Aanamika’s and others’ closer knowledge of the type of cultural family dynamics involved.
In the larger scheme of things, IMO having your parents angrily disapprove of your dating/relationship preferences by itself, is not the equivalent of a pattern of neglect or abuse. I can fully understand having as part of your core value set that if you can avoid it, you should not hurt someone who has otherwise tried their best to do right within the norms of expectation. OTOH I can also understand that for someone for whom even limited autonomy/independence has been a constant challenge, the idea of someone foregoing any opportunity to assert she’s her own woman must be aggravating to consider.
[Nitpick]:
JohnS Hopkins. Named after his mother’s maiden family name.
[/Nitpick]
FWIW my mother has her own theory that it’s the liver that gets hammered by stress.
Not financially dependent at all. It would never cross my mind to get a hotel room when visiting my parents or in-laws because A) hotels aren’t cheap, B) the point of visiting people is to spend time with them, and C) my parents/in-laws would feel totally snubbed.
Yet you seem to think that all of these are mutually exclusive, with no overlap. You seem to think that the OP must confront or challenge her parents in order to “be American.” Every generation re-manifests its culture, reshaping itself in the various ways those re-manifestations play out. Culture continually remakes itself in a syncretic process, not a exclusionary process. “Becoming American” is not a de facto act of rejection, (though that ideology is often convenient for political ends).
The problem with “what’s best for the child” is a HUGE hand wave. It usually ends up with the parent wanting for the child what the parent would have wanted for themselves. It often completely overrides the context of the current society and the skills and interests of the child.
By the time I hit high school, I’d spent 8 years living in Okinawa, Japan. The “parental contract” is about the same and certainly they had a tremendous history behind that tradition. I had a ton of friends and the pressure to “perform and conform” was unbelievable for them.
I had a very good friend in 6th grade who was teaching me Japanese chess and we got to talking about his schooling and leisure time. Now keep in mind that this young man was in “accelerated” classes with me. We talked quite a while about this stuff and after a while he broke down and cried. I can’t imagine the pressure he was under to open up like that.
Now of course one anecdote doesn’t mean much. But it wasn’t that uncommon. A ton of kids ended up acting out when they got out of the home because their behavior was so regulated there.
IMO, it’s unreasonable for anyone in urban society to point to tradition as an excuse to compromise your life. The rate of change in modern society is too fast for tradition to be anything more than a guideline to bridge the generations. It can’t be a blueprint for change.
etv89, ok, I very rarely read walls of text (my eyes tend to glaze over really fast) but I made a good faith attempt. I now see where you’re coming from a little better. Honestly, your parents sound quite a bit worse than mine even if they’re okay with cohabitation, but obviously I’m the last person who should be judging someone else’s parents.
I’m going to assume, then, that you’re serious about wanting to know how to hold on to relationships, all of which require some amount of forgetting the bad and holding on to the good. (With my husband, there’s not much bad and a whole lot of good, but yeah, there are things he does that drive me batty (and vice versa), and times we’ve hurt each other in the past.) A whole lot of it, as I’ve alluded to before, is me trying to put myself in the shoes of my loved ones and trying to see it from their point of view. Understanding that they think they’re justified in whatever they’re thinking, and trying to figure out where they’re coming from and what habits of thought made them do what they did. Understanding that we are all human and make mistakes, and that there are people who view what I do or say in a negative light and judge me harshly when I’d prefer them to take my entire situation into consideration. Understanding that under similar circumstances, I’d maybe act the same way. Understanding that good people can sometimes do things that cause great pain.
I’ve already mentioned some things that helped me with this (again, I highly recommend Jhumpa Lahiri’s work to anyone who wants to understand more about the immigrant mind), but I’ll also add reading To Kill a Mockingbird, some of the earlier works of Orson Scott Card (before he went off the deep end, he was very good at really getting into the head of the evil characters and making you sympathize with them); going to church (I know this will draw ire from all the atheists at the Dope, and I myself am agnostic, but church can be really helpful because you’re around other people who are also trying to love one’s fellow humans even when they’re unlovable, and the encouragement and practical tips have helped me a lot); reflecting on my own friendships and other relationships (because every friendship has moments of bad mixed in with the good); realizing that there have been times I have caused people I love great pain or disappointment, and hoping they still love me anyway.
Yes. Yes! This!
Heh. Yeah. Tell me about it. It’s kind of awful how many things I want for her that are really things I either want for myself or think I benefited from in my upbringing, without knowing yet (she’s not even 2!) what her personality or skills are going to be. At the same time, there are things my parents gave me (musical skills are the ones that leap to mind) that they gave me before I was old enough to know I wanted them. So… it’s a hard question.
…Aaaand now, with this post, I’m almost entirely off topic! Excuse me 
Don’t get me wrong, I’m loved, it’s just that my family backround leaves much to be desired! (but that’s true for every family, right.)
If they don’t want to feel snubbed, wouldn’t treating you like a grown woman behoove them?
Thnaks raspberry! Your second paragraph is something I need to work on! What I found interesting about my post, after reading it: the descriptions of my family were coldly biographical, the section about me, loaded with emotion. I’d assume this is true of everyone when writing something like that. BTW, I’m 11 years older than you said I was. 
Damn, that’s a sweeping set of assumptions right there.
As someone who has family members on both sides of the extreme span - uninvolved vs overinvolved, I have to say that the uninvolved side is better for me personally. The overinvolved side just creates too much drama about life in general.
Part of the problem I think comes in when it’s been a specific development on the grown child’s part to move away from what the family thinks/believes. For me, the biggie is that I’m an atheist. Now, I’m out to all of my friends, my coworkers know, and my in-laws know, but I’ve never told (and never will tell) my own family.
That’s a little sad, you know?
I mean, can’t the people who have overinvolved and judgemental parents/family just admit that it’s really hard to have things that are vital to your personal development which are totally off-limits to discussion with your family because they are “from a different culture” or “from a different generation” or “only have what’s best for you at heart” when their culture, generation, or their hearts tell them something WILDLY different from what you now think?
Is it that hard to admit that it does make things less happy when you can’t talk about your life truthfully?
Is it that hard to admit that you really would sometimes like to bash them against a wall until they realize that you’re doing what you feel is right for you because it’s right for you, not because you’re crafting a personalized insult to everything they stand for?
Is it that hard to admit that you really secretly wish that they’d man up and be the “mature” grownup about their cultural hangups, instead of leaving you to feel out your life choices with friends or acquaintances, or with random people on a message board?
I think that’s largely where **etv **is coming from. Sure, I love my family, but their hangups make a continued close relationship really hard to keep up. It’s hard to feel close to someone when you spend all your time with them actively pretending to be someone you’re not, and to hold beliefs and opinions that you do not. Eventually, it all just seems like a huge play that you’re acting in, and there’s no real feeling left for the other actors.
And that’s the sad part.
No, it’s not. That’s what you seem to be unable to grasp.
I understand that, for some people, family relationships can be poisonous, and that’s better to disentangle yourself from them as much as possible. You seem to be incapable of acknowledging that for others, family relationships are something worth holding on to, even though it means a bit of sacrifice on their part. It doesn’t mean you have given up your autonomy and your freedom and your sense of self. It means that you have learned to pick and choose your battles, and that some battles are better avoided.
Perhaps your personality makes it imperative for you to engage in all those battles with your family to make a point. Your situation is very different from mine, and I’m sorry that your parents treat you in such a manner. I can understand why you would feel hostile towards them and unwilling to accommodate them in any way. Just know that it isn’t the same for all of us.
[/stay out of thread fail]
Hazel-While I appreciate your overall point, the Dostyevsky quote applies,“All families are happy in the same way, all families are unhappy in their own unique way.” (I bet messed it up somewhat)
I don’t see why that quote is relevant here.
Mainly the fact that the quote is from Tolstoy.
KNEW it was a Russian! :smack:
But from what I read, etv would consider you foolish for even trying, or for spending an iota of time feeling conflicted about it. These meatbags you call “family” bring you no immediate benefit, so why modify your behavior in any way? “Hard to keep up?” What is there to keep up? They should mean nothing to you. Cut them off. Never speak to them again. There, your problem’s solved.
etv78, thanks – and sorry for getting your number wrong, must’ve had my fingers too far to the right
Nope. Not hard at all. All these things are true. My family has, as I’ve said multiple times in this thread, many awesome and wonderful qualities. But as my best friend said to me once, acknowledging their awesomeness doesn’t mean that I can’t mourn the terrible things (and some of the things are hard and are terrible), especially when I know people (like my best friend’s parents, in fact) who basically embody almost all the good things without the bad.
But mourning the terrible things doesn’t mean I can’t acknowledge their awesomeness, either, which is all I’ve been saying. I think (?) etv78 and I have come to the agreement that this can be a good thing to do (often, though not always), but is awfully tough. Just today I talked to my mom and really wanted to bash her or myself or both of us against the wall (and not for any deep profound life choices reason, she was just being unreasonable about our Christmas plans)… sigh. This thread is gonna help me shape up, so I don’t let etv78 down by breaking all the reasonable calm things I’ve said here and getting all angry and bitter with my parents
Oh, never mind non-Westerners vs. US, etv78. “Assimilation” is intensely dreaded by the families left behind in almost every country, heck, even among people moving within America from the “heartland” to the coast cities - and the biggest dread is about assimilating in the sense not of dress or language or economics but of values. The expectation of many left “back home” is that you may “become American” in that you’ll learn English, adopt fashionable dress, drive everywhere instead of taking the train, watch Jersey Shore and listen to Lady Gaga, become active in local community issues, be more tolerant of diversity and critical of government authority, etc., BUT, *of course *you *will *remain faithful to the TRUE moral values - ours.
Back before modern communications and transportation, that sort of movement was a one-way lifetime commitment or at least a very-long-term thing that would be out-of-sight-out-of-mind, but now it’s hard to avoid the friction.
(Not moderating)
Keep in mind, though, the OP is an individual and her situation is a specific one concerning the couple and others. It’s a bit of a stretch, IMO, to regard the comments in this thread as imposing American culture on anyone. It’s not like taking down the leader of a country or trying to impose our language or government on anyone.
ETA: Just noticed it’s six pages, so in the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t read every reply yet.