I’m Indian-American and I’m here to chime in that it’s a predominantly Western idea that you can stand up to your parents and tell them you will do things as they choose and that’s OK. It doesn’t happen in Indian families, either, and it took a lot of angst before I was able to reconcile the two sides of myself. I lied to my parents for a long time about whom I was living with as well as did my SO. Now both sets know (well, my mother is dead) but my mother never approved, until her dying day.
And many of us don’t see a need to get married just because others think it’s necessary.
The OP will do as she wishes, but I wish for the best for her. It’s just the other way around in Asian cultures. In western cultures, it’s all about the individual. In Asian cultures, the individual is literally the last and least important. You are supposed to be a cog in the machine, not your own Special Self. I am Westernized, but I’ll never stop feeling a tiny bit guilty for being so.
How is she going to maintain that lie? Koreans don’t do elopements and weddings in courthouses. If she says she’s getting married, her parents are going to expect a ceremony with all her relatives present. If she refuses, that’s going to cause another shitstorm.
Koreans don’t care about last names anyway - in Korea, women don’t change their last name when they marry.
ETA: Sorry, I don’t mean to come off as angry or aggressive. Them’s just the facts.
I thought of that, which is why I said the lie is that she got married, not that she’s going to get married. Sure, there’s an explosion, but it’s presented as a done deal.
And perhaps she’ll get some nice gifts out of it.
And maintaining that lie is way easier than maintaining the lie that she is an obedient chaste daughter still living alone.
Lying that she got married without their permission will be another shitfit. You can’t just tell your parents you went and got married! That would, in their eyes, be like lighting their house on fire. “Done deal”…ugh. I can’t even imagine the upheaval.
This kind of thing just seems like a no-win situation all around. On the one hand, what did the parents expect when their kids went to a new land? On the other hand, how to maintain connection? On the third hand, why do the kids have to do all the bending?
I don’t think I could live a lie like having a decoy apartment and all. I’m a lousy liar.
Just one more thing that goes to show you have no idea what goes into an East Asian marriage, and the kind of shitstorm that’d result from what you’re frivolously suggesting. From what I’ve observed, getting married on the sly with no notice, and without the parents ever having met the young man, would be a much bigger slap in the face than living together. And once we’re through all that and the family finally accepts the “marriage,” the girl should be prepared for enormous pressure from her mother to pop out some babies tout de suite.
I think the parents think that they do a lot of bending as well. Things we tend to take for granted are compromises on their part. Like me. “Allowing” me to live on my own even though I’m not married, being accepting of my white boyfriend, “allowing” me to travel with him abroad even though we’re not married - in my parents’ eyes, these are concessions. (By “allowing” I mean “not raising holy hell over”.) It’s ridiculous, but there it is.
To the others: Look, I had to threaten to call the cops on my parents when I first moved in with my boyfriend to get them to stop harassing me. My aunts showed up at my work place and grabbed my arm so hard they left bruises in it, trying to drag me away. It was the hardest fucking thing I ever did, breaking away from them, and it cost me heavily, because what Westerners then don’t understand is I loved them. Now I have no adult women to call to discuss recipes, or ask how to make something, or ask about aging issues. I am not completely cut off from my family; I never could be, because I am one daughter amongst three sisters, but there will always be distance.
It is a no-win situation. I just read a book called “Shanghai Girls” which gave me a lot of insight into my mother, actually. They bring us here for a modern life, they raise us American, but what they want are traditional Asian daughters. My father still expects that I will jump to serve his every request (thankfully, he doesn’t command) because I am a girl and I am his daughter.
I will never be the girl they wanted, and that’s hard for me, too. And it is always the kids who bend, or you become like me - estranged, practically. The parents Do. Not. Bend.
Yeah, um, the explosion caused by “I’m going to disobey for once and live with him to see how it goes” is a stick of TNT. The explosion of saying “oh, BTW, got married without telling you, or inviting you or anyone else in the family” is 35 Hiroshimas in an enclosed space.
The grand majority of traditional cultures emphatically do not fuck about when it comes to marriage, both as an institution and as a big shindig.
I never watch movies like that, I admit. Mostly because a) I lived it, and b) those movies so often have happy endings, which make me :rolleyes:. Too close to home, I guess!
Koxinga, you are correct. I know nothing about East Asian marriages. But I do know a fair amount about lying. And if you’re going to live a major piece of your life as a lie, you are better off with fewer, simpler lies than many small ones. Any number of things could expose the lie of being the chaste obedient daughter living alone – a visit from a family member, even the wrong person answering the wrong phone, and who knows what else. With the marriage lie, well, that’s it. You can live your life exactly as you want to, and blame your occasional disobediences on your new husband.
And… as evidenced by the other responses, this is not a totally off the wall idea.
Anaamika, it seems as if you opted for the honesty route. That is what I suggested at first, and what I would do personally, but according to most that’s even crazier than the idea of lying about marriage. Go figure.
I wonder if you are willing to elaborate a bit about why you chose not to maintain a fiction for your parents.
In answer to your previous things, if they find out we are living with a man, even lying about it, that is still way less than getting married behind their backs. Even I never considered it, not seriously. I’d at least tell my close family.
And why I chose not to maintain a fiction for my parents? Personality, mainly. My parents were lying liars that lied, and I got so sick unto death of all the lies I couldn’t stand it. Lie about my adoption. Lie about my real father and mother. Lie about moving. Lie about why we’re moving. Lie about so many big things in my life that it made me sick to my stomach to lie anymore. I couldn’t take anymore lies, I just couldn’t do it.
So when they called me shortly before Easter Break and said “Don’t come home anymore unless you are willing to _____”, I didn’t come home. Cue the increasingly angry phone calls, the yelling, the stalking. I am as stubborn as my mother - whether I like it or not, I have a lot of her in me - so I stood my ground. Cue the pleading and the placating - “You can come home if you marry a man right away”. I stood my ground and ate ramen noodles and half-starved but I didn’t go home.
Ah, the stubborn… we have that in common, you and me and my whole family. If I decide to do or not do something, it would take an asteroid strike to change my course. Even when there’s a little voice in my head saying, “This is stoopid, Boyo Jim…”
Anaamika-Why would you want to maintain contact with people who made you miserable? You don’t have female friends you can discuss recipes and aging issues with?
Because they are my family? Because it wasn’t all bad, not by any means. Because I may not like them or respect them but I don’t stop loving them, no matter what. Plus they installed all the buttons that say "Honor thy mother and father’ and “family comes first” and those buttons cannot be uninstalled, even now.
Because I’m 35 years old and desperately wish I had a mother to help me, to tell me about her time at this age, to share stories with me, to warn me about things, to call when I am hurt, who will scold me and love me and talk to me.
Because friends aren’t the same. Because I’m human and I’m hungry for a family and I’ll never get mine back but I can’t stop wishing.
Because my mother is dead, and even though there was little hope of this when she was alive, now there is no hope and it hurts.
And at the bottom line, because they love me. Even if they are bad for me.
