How do you deal with Korean parents who do not want you to move in with someone?

[LurkerInNJ]

@KoreanGirlInDC

I am not ready to get married any time soon – I am ambitious about my career, and don’t want to start a family for a good few years yet. But, I love my boyfriend very much and know without a hint of a doubt that he is the person I will spend the rest of my life with.

Marrying him doesn’t mean you still can’t have an ambitious career and not start a family for years, if that’s what you really want to do.

[Boyo_Jim]

KoreanGirlInDC, I apologize for hijacking your thread to squabble with ladyfoxfyre. I have given my thoughts for whatever value they might have to you.

I do hope you understand that I do not think you should either ignore or insult your parents. It is possible of course, that is how they will perceive it if you explain to them that you are not obeying all of their commands. I don’t have a solution for that, but it is an experience millions and possibly billions of parents and children have gone through.

I also think the reality is that if you wait a couple of years, or however long you wait, it will really be a matter of waiting until you are less disturbed about dealing with possible consequences, and not so much about them and their attitudes.

And when I think about it that way, I can’t say I have a big problem with that.

[Boyo_Jim]

@AgentKeyserSoze

… I’m a huge proponent of co-habitation before marriage. But don’t do it against your parent’s wishes.

You are Korean. You understand all the formalities (from the perspective of a parent) that must happen before marriage/living together (they are the same in the mind of a Korean parent). …

The answer is clear. Wait.

This is a serious question, and I don’t mean it in a sarcastic way.

Is it realistic to expect Koren parents will eventually change their minds and say it’s ok to cohabit without marriage?

Also, what is your opinion about making up some kind of cover story, fake address, etc., and doing what you wish while maintaining a fiction that you are an obedient child?

[guizot]

@HazelNutCoffee

To me, the cons far outweigh the pros. I would rather have a lie on my conscience than irreparably damage my relationship with my parents, and give them heartache on an issue that we will never see eye to eye on.

@Koxinga

Another aspect of the cultural thing here is this (I think naive) horror over “lying.” I’m not sure about Korea, but in Taiwan there can be circumstances where it’s well understood that what’s being said publicly may not be quite the same as what’s going on privately, and so what?

Yeah, I gotta wonder. Is what HazelNutCoffee doing, what the OP is considering–that is, living together but lying about it to maintain the illusion of traditional “propriety” solely for the edification of the parents–Is this an unusual thing, or is it actually common in Korea, just not openly recognized? I work a lot around fob Koreans in Koreatown, and they won’t give me a straight answer about this.

I know that some immigrant communities in the States shift into hyper-tradition, because there’s a perception that “Americanization” will erode their families. Meanwhile, in the home country, people are much less concerned about tradition, and changing along with the modern world. Could the parents here be doing the same thing in this case?

[raspberry_hunter]

Korean-American here.

@Simplicio

The traditional solution:

Find a friend that will let you rent a room for relatively cheap, put some of your stuff in that room. Use it as your mailing address, at least for stuff from your family. Stay there a couple days a month.

Stay over at your boyfriends most of the time, so that your effectively living together.

There you go, now your not lying to your parents, your renting your own place. You still get 99% of the experience of living with your boyfriend, and as an added bonus, you get a “liferaft” if living together doesn’t work and you need to find a new place to stay real fast, or if you just have a fight and need to stay somewhere else for a couple days.

Downside: it’ll cost you one or two hundred bucks a month for the room, but such is the price of love and filial piety

This was my solution as well, although I did actually use it as a residence and was there more of the time than I was at my boyfriend’s. The other pros and cons of this solution are that it turns out to be a lot harder to hang out at one’s boyfriend’s place in terms of intruding on each others’ space than to just get a joint place already. On the other hand, when we actually did get married and move in together, it was really easy, and we sailed through that adjustment easily.

@Boyo_Jim

I want to remind you that this treatment will never end until you make it clear that they can no longer make decisions for you.

You’re wrong about that. My parents backed off a lot once I got married. I mean, yeah, they still tell me what to do, but they respect that they can’t escalate now when I tell them that i’m not going to do it, because my primary allegiance is to my husband and not them, and they understand that, because that’s a family thing and this is all about family.

@etv78

Here’s the problem Hazel-By being so concerned with your parent’s opinion, you are ceding your autonomy to them. To become a functioning adult, you need your autonomy, and if parents want their kids to become functioning adults, this autonomy is crucial.

Hazel and I are both functional adults, thank you very much. The thing is that in a Korean family, you are so tight-knit that everyone in the family is bound tightly to everyone else until another family comes along (that is, until you get married). It works both ways. When my dad needed me to proofread his English he expected me to do it immediately if I had nothing else going on, but at the same time if I needed my mom to fax me something, I expected her to do it immediately as well. When my sister was applying to college she’d call me daily expecting me to read essay drafts. So yeah, you don’t have autonomy, and neither does anyone else in the family. My American-Midwestern husband thinks this is all crazy… he and his family talk maybe once a week, and never ask favors of each other at all, hardly.

@Captain_Amazing

They want their kids to become functioning adults…just functioning adults who do whatever they say. It’s not an autonomy thing…it’s the idea that your parents are older, wiser, and you have a moral duty to listen to them and obey them, because they’re your parents. Whether you want to or not is irrelevant.

So, yeah, I’d say if you’re going to do this, lie and hope they don’t find out. All that will happen if you tell them you’re doing it anyway is that they’ll yell at you, call you a disobedient daughter, and as long as you’re with the guy, make your life miserable. Then, if you ever, God forbid, break up, they’ll remind you that they told you not to do it in the first place, and see what happens when you don’t listen?

Hee. Yep. QFT.

I don’t think you Westerners talking about how you should just stand up to your parents already! understand just how miserable Korean parents can make their offspring.

[etv78]

@Koxinga

It sounds like Hazel has found a solution that works for her, but you’re stepping in and saying “no, no, no Hazel, you’re doing it wrong.” Isn’t that a bit presumptuous?

Sorry, especially Hazel, not my intention at all. It’s just my American perspective is that autonomy is too critical to cede to others.

[raspberry_hunter]

@guizot

Yeah, I gotta wonder. Is what HazelNutCoffee doing, what the OP is considering–that is, living together but lying about it to maintain the illusion of traditional “propriety” solely for the edification of the parents–Is this an unusual thing, or is it actually common in Korea, just not openly recognized? I work a lot around fob Koreans in Koreatown, and they won’t give me a straight answer about this.

I don’t know how common it is in Korea, but I can tell you for sure that there are subjects my mom has never brought up because she doesn’t want to know the answer. She’s talked to me about how she’s pretty sure that my sister had a healthy sex life before she got married, but she never ever asked my sister about it because she knew that my sister would probably tell her the truth. (I suppose my mom’s had the same sort of conversation with my sister about me, now that I think of it, but I’m not sure I want to know about that either )

Boyo Jim, along the same lines, my mom always preferred my way of appearing to be obedient and then weaseling out of it to my sister’s way of loudly declaring disobedience and then later knuckling down. Though both methods gave the two of us some things to work out when we grew up. Interestingly, I think that I had an easier time working things out than she did, because American society (as evidenced in this thread, for instance) is pretty clear on what I did being totally lame, so I knew going in that I couldn’t do that in an adult relationship.

[etv78]

@HazelNutCoffee

I would disagree that I’m not autonomous. There’s a different between blindly obeying your parents and trying to maintain a good relationship with them.

I am very grateful to my parents in many ways. They sacrificed a lot for my education and have brought me up to be a decent human being (I think). I love them and I have a lot of respect for them, even though we disagree on a lot of things.

What would I gain (or the OP gain) by being honest with them about my current situation with my boyfriend?

Pros: I don’t have to feel guilty about lying to them. I can say that I am an “independent” adult (by Western standards) and that I know how to stand up to my parents and show them that I am no longer a child and can make my own decisions regardless of how they feel.

Cons: My parents feel betrayed. They feel that they did something terribly wrong in raising me, since I turned out to be a woman with no sense of propriety. They turn against my boyfriend because they feel he has corrupted me. They feel ashamed of me and ashamed for themselves.

To me, the cons far outweigh the pros. I would rather have a lie on my conscience than irreparably damage my relationship with my parents, and give them heartache on an issue that we will never see eye to eye on.

If you are financial independent, I fail to see what you lose by telling your parents to butt out of your life. Sure, it’d be nice if you had a relatiosnhip with them, and they weren’t ashamed of you, but you (and nobody) has ever died from a lack of love or from shame)

[Koxinga]

I remember when my sister-in-law started going out with a foreign guy in her mid-30s, having never had a(n acknowledged) boyfriend up to that point. She and father had a good laugh at the dinner table when she said she had wondered whether he would dislike the fact that yet another of his daughters was seeing a foreigner. Her dad’s response: “Dislike you seeing a foreign guy? Heck, I’m relieved, all this time I thought you might be a lesbian but didn’t want to ask!”

[Koxinga]

@etv78

If you are financial independent, I fail to see what you lose by telling your parents to butt out of your life. Sure, it’d be nice if you had a relatiosnhip with them, and they weren’t ashamed of you, but you (and nobody) has ever died from a lack of love or from shame)

And there you go again. If Hazel is OK with it, and she places a value on her relationship with her parents that you feel you could go without, why do you have a need to express your disapproval? You’re not just asking for a new cultural perspective: admit it, when you declare you “fail to see” why it shouldn’t be otherwise, you’re bringing a value judgment to the culture in question.

[Isamu]

@Koxinga

Another aspect of the cultural thing here is this (I think naive) horror over “lying.” I’m not sure about Korea, but in Taiwan there can be circumstances where it’s well understood that what’s being said publicly may not be quite the same as what’s going on privately, and so what? If the OP decides to maintain a separate fictional address for her parents’ sake, while actually living most of the time with her boyfriend, I’ll bet the parents will sooner or later figure out what’s really going on – and further I’ll bet they won’t say boo about it. As long as you maintain some pretense for them to grasp – and to allow them to maintain it in front of the neighbors – this may turn out to be a tempest in a teacup after all.

I agree with this. Oftentimes parents can be happily ignorant of their children’s situation. So long as everything seems fine and dandy, they won’t ask any questions that might uncover the ugly truth.

[etv78]

@Koxinga

And there you go again. If Hazel is OK with it, and she places a value on her relationship with her parents that you feel you could go without, why do you have a need to express your disapproval? You’re not just asking for a new cultural perspective: admit it, when you declare you “fail to see” why it shouldn’t be otherwise, you’re bringing a value judgment to the culture in question.

Maybe I am. You believe people don’t have a prejudice in favor of the culture they were raised in? :dubious:

[Koxinga]

@etv78

Maybe I am. You believe people don’t have a prejudice in favor of the culture they were raised in? :dubious:

There are people like that, sure.

@George Bernard Shaw

CAESAR (recovering his self-possession): Pardon him, Theodotus: he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.

[arseNal]

@etv78

You believe people don’t have a prejudice in favor of the culture they were raised in? :dubious:

It’s one thing to be biased in favor your own culture, it’s another to keep telling people they’re not autonomous adults even tho they repeatedly disagree. Yes, you know more about their lives more than they do :rolleyes:

[etv78]

@arseNal

It’s one thing to be biased in favor your own culture, it’s another to keep telling people they’re not autonomous adults even tho they repeatedly disagree. Yes, you know more about their lives more than they do :rolleyes:

Once again, for clarity’s sake: from my (Western) perspective, autonomy is ONLY gained when you are able to live your life without fear of disapproval from people whose opinion aren’t worth a warm pail of spit. Now, if you LIKE living in fear of hurting people who should mind their beeswax, knock yourself out.

[HazelNutCoffee]

@etv78

If you are financial independent, I fail to see what you lose by telling your parents to butt out of your life.

My parents are not an interest-free bank account. I love my parents a lot, and have a lot of respect for them despite our differences. As I’ve already said, they have sacrificed a lot for my education and have always wanted the best for me (even though what they think is the best is not always what I think is the best). It’s true that they’re sticks in the mud when it comes to certain things, but no one is perfect. My relationship with my parents is not something that “it’d be nice” if I could keep it going. It is a huge priority to me. I totally agree with what raspberry hunter said - in Korea, family comes first. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.

I know not everyone has this kind of relationship with their family, but I would be devastated if something happened that pushed my parents out of my life.

Mind you, I’m not saying that their desires come first in my life. I have stood my ground with them on many issues, and usually they manage to come to terms with my decisions. But living with a man before marriage is one issue that I know they will never, ever bend on, so I’m content to lie if it means I can preserve my relationship with them.

ETA: etv78, I think the problem here is that you are seeing this all wrong. We do not live “in fear of disapproval” from our parents - or at least, I don’t. And they’re my parents, not people “whose opinion aren’t worth a warm pail of spit.”

[arseNal]

@etv78

Once again, for clarity’s sake: from my (Western) perspective, autonomy is ONLY gained when you are able to live your life without fear of disapproval from people whose opinion aren’t worth a warm pail of spit. Now, if you LIKE living in fear of hurting people who should mind their beeswax, knock yourself out.

I’m not the one lacking clarity here. Being an autonomous adult does not mean you automatically get to tell everyone to piss off and not have it possibly affect you in some way. Maybe you didn’t know this, but autonomous adults still often have to consider the wishes and feelings of other people. Especially of people they care about. Sometimes it’s unpleasant. But doing so doesn’t rob them of their precious freedom and individuality and autonomy.

Who are you to tell someone that their parents’ opinions are worthless?

[etv78]

@arseNal

I’m not the one lacking clarity here. Being an autonomous adult does not mean you automatically get to tell everyone to piss off and not have it possibly affect you in some way. Maybe you didn’t know this, but autonomous adults still often have to consider the wishes and feelings of other people. Especially of people they care about. Sometimes it’s unpleasant. But doing so doesn’t rob them of their precious freedom and individuality and autonomy.

Who are you to tell someone that their parents’ opinions are worthless?

I UNDERSTAND that autonomous =/= sociopath! :rolleyes: But if your decisions don’t cause grevious, bodily harm to someone, it doesn’t really matter what their opinion is!

[HazelNutCoffee]

etv, do you not have people in your life whose opinions matter to you, even if you don’t agree with them all the time?

[arseNal]

@etv78

But if your decisions don’t cause grevious, bodily harm to someone, it doesn’t really matter what their opinion is!

I’m gonna go ahead and just let this statement stand on its own. If you really think this, then I’m not going to bother trying to discuss it anymore.