There was a great documentary I watched a couple of months ago talking about how Middle Eastern families come to Canada and have a lot of difficulty with their kids growing up as Canadians - to the extent that some of the fathers or brothers have actually killed or tried to kill young women who were doing things that they thought shamed the family (but were considered completely normal in Canada, like dating boys). It obviously isn’t as simple as just do what you want, and your parents will get used to it.
Oh Anaamika. Yeah. This is what would have happened in my family had we done the “complete honesty” route. (My sister is very much like you, but she just kept her own apartment, went to visit her boyfriend a lot, and both she and my mom were happier Not Talking About It – no lies, and like I said my mom knew on some level but wasn’t going to ask, and my sister would have told her the truth had she asked.)
This. I don’t know if I even agree that it’s ridiculous, in the sense that I know it is kind of a paradigm shift for my parents to be accepting of my white husband – I know way too many Asian parents who are extremely disapproving of their kids’ white boyfriends. It’s hard to change the way you think, all of a sudden! Not that it doesn’t mean they’re wrong
You make a good point. Unfortunately, it’s kind of a foreign one to a Korean family, especially if they’re my parents and had a quasi-arranged marriage (my mom could’ve said no, but she didn’t) and didn’t even know each other very well before marriage, much less co-habitated. And they have a strong marriage, even if it’s not one I want to replicate exactly.
They think it is their right to have their child marry someone they are comfortable with…someone who speaks their language, and understands the old ways. It doesn’t make it right, but they uprooted everything they had to come to a new country, and they are scared, whether they even realize it or not. Then they get kids who suddenly grow up and want things they never even thought about getting, so they resort back to tradition and the old ways.
Then they look at their nephews and nieces, who are doing the “right” thing, and having arranged marriages, and doing whatever their parents want, and having little single-breed children, and they think, “Why can’t my kid do that for me? I don’t ask for much, I let her do everything, I just want her to marry right.” Whereas to us it’s like “I want to run your WHOLE life by making you marry this fellow, and every decision you ever make will be shadowed by this one.”
It makes for a very difficult adjustment. And different people react in different ways.
If they loved you, they had a weird way of showing it. I also don’t get this idea from many posters in this thread why you’d want to maintain contact with people who make you unhappy? Yeah, they’re family, but that doesn’t give them license to make you miserable.
Which why I still wonder if these might be cases of hyper-tradition from abroad or if they are something that would happen exactly the same way had their daughters stayed in Korea. Would HazelNutCoffee and the OP have to lie if this were playing out in ROK? Would they even get into such situations?
I’m not Anaamika, but I’ll tell you why I want to maintain contact with my parents (in addition to what I said in an above post).
My parents focused their entire lives on my sister and me from the moment we were born. My mom became a stay-at-home mom for us. She changed our diapers, she made meals for us, she taught us how to read, she schlepped us to music lessons even though the closest music teacher lived thirty miles away at the time. She took me to math competitions when I got old enough to want to do those. She stuck up for me when I was bored at school and fought to get me into advanced classes that didn’t bore me. My dad, at this time, was working crazy hours to try to get our family into financial security so we could have the kinds of things he always wanted our family to have and be secure about it.
When we grew up, my parents insisted on paying for college for my sister and me (my dad’s parents refused to, so this was a bit of a point of honor for him). They worry about us and love us, even if sometimes they have an odd weird control-freakish way of showing it. When my daughter was born, my parents came and took care of me and cooked meals for us and changed my baby’s poopy diapers at 3am and fed her from a bottle when she was having trouble latching so that I could pump and sleep.
Also, my mom is really fun to talk to when she’s not trying to tell me what to do, and we have awesome conversations sometimes, and she knows all the gossip on my childhood friends, and she knows everything that’s going on in my life, and I love her very much. My dad is funny and happy and has gone through a lot of crap in his life and come out a better person, and we’ve had a lot of fun together doing things like roller skating, and I love him very much.
So, okay, on the flip side of that scale, my parents flip out and make our lives completely miserable when they think my sister and I might be having premarital sex. This is, of course, not a great thing, but it doesn’t even come close to all the things that are awesome about my parents.
I did cut them off for many many years. My mom and I didn’t speak for six years, and then only tentatively renewed contact. My aunts and I renewed contact much better. I love my aunt to death, I can’t help it. So I do my best to keep my distance, and not be hurt by them, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the good times.
raspberry hunter-I get the distinct impression the good outweights the bad, if that’s the case, I TOTALLY get why you’d want to keep in touch and have them around. I just question why people say,“She makes me miserable, but she’s my mother.” Just becasue she gave birth to you (or raiseed you) doesn’t mean you have to put up with her crap.
You really aren’t getting any of what they’re trying to explain to you, are you? They have developed a lot of respect for their parents because of the sacrifices their parents have made, and “putting up with their crap” is a really disrespectful way to describe parents who continue to want the best for their children, even well into adulthood.
Yeah, I was starting to feel like she wasn’t listening at all. Not everything is so black and white. You miss the good and sometimes you are willing to put up with the bad to get it.
Anyway, I think people who are talking about this from a purely Western perspective forget what a short time ago that it was when conservative Western parents would have been devastated at the thought of their daughter living with a boyfriend. This isn’t a totally alien concept, but it’s not like our version is more evolved than the Korean/Indian/Asian perspective. It’s like they’re accusing you of living in some dark and unenlightened times, without acknowledging that sometimes you just want to keep the peace.
Just because you appreciate your parents doesn’t give them license to tell you what to do! If your decisions do not adversely effect your parents, I don’t see what leg they have to stand on to be angry with you.
That’s nice, dear. : pats head: I’ll be sure to tell them that next time.
Sorry to be patronizing, but in their minds, it does give them the right. So now you have two pepole, squaring off for battle - or one could give a bit. It varies from family to family how much you want to square off. My best friend from childhood agreed to an arranged marriage from a man directly shipped in from Pakistan to keep her parents happy. I admit, she lost a lot of respect in my eyes…but that is what she decided to do.
It’s not as trivial as you make it sound, and yes, in some ways it does mean you let them tell you what to do. HazelNutCoffee and Anaamika have clearly demonstrated that it does adversely affect their parents to do this against their wishes. Maybe not physically, but certainly emotionally. Look at it from the parents perspective, not too long ago a woman who was unmarried and living with a boyfriend would have been seen as promiscuous even in this country by our cultural standards. Given that their cultures put a much heavier stress on the value of public perception, in their eyes, by disapproving of her behavior they are trying to spare her public humiliation when everyone judges her by that standard. They want to avoid her bringing shame upon herself and her family, and they are attempting to use their better (read: older) judgment to encourage her to make decisions that will affect the public perception of her character that she cannot undo. Whether that cultural standard is misplaced in the current context, or not, is irrelevant. Her parents are operating in Korea using Korean judgment and Korean cultural standards of behavior.
You can keep harping on and on about how “But, but, they can’t tell you what to DO!”, but you are the one who is utterly failing to grasp the nuances of the situation.
Well, this is absolutely true! Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that they might be angry. Also, I’m sure that my parents could come up with some adverse effects of co-habitation without breaking a sweat (they would lose face in the Korean community; my step-grandmother would use this as further ammunition to insult my dad – which she would; if my boyfriend then leaves me and I’m (even more of) an emotional wreck because we were living together, guess who gets to clean up the pieces; etc.).
Also, what ladyfoxfyre said. Thank you.
Also, what Anaamika said, a thousand times. (Though I do draw the line at my parents telling me who to marry!)
You can’t act American and then have a Korean relationship with your parents. There’s really only 3 options:
(1) Be American, do what your want, and tell your parents to deal with it.
(2) Be Korean and defer to your parents wishes.
(3) Be American and lie to your parents to make it look like you are acting Korean.
Acting American and differing to your parents like a Korean isn’t going to work. All it is going to result in is tremendous nagging and disapproval from your parents. Which, obviously, is going to make you feel like shit.
This question is like asking “How can I be gay and be in good standing with the Catholic Church”. The answer is, you can’t. You either need to stop acting gay, cover it up so the Church doesn’t know, convince the Church to change, or decide that your relationship with the Church isn’t as important as acting gay.
So did I (draw the line at letting them tell me whom to marry). Fourteen years now with the man my mom said was a flash-in-the-pan, and whoops, amazingly he’s getting the milk and still keeping the cow. :rolleyes: Wish I’d thought to ask her why I’d want the pig if I was getting the sausage.
Anyway I too wanted to thank ladyfoxfyre. It’s nice to feel understood sometimes.
What? Why not? In many cases the first generation of immigrant children have always had to bridge the gap between their parents culture and the culture to which they have become accustomed. I don’t understand why there is a need to force her to conform to all of one culture at the expense of her birth culture. How insulting.
Fourteen years now with the man my mom said was a flash-in-the-pan, and whoops, amazingly he’s getting the milk and still keeping the cow. :rolleyes: Wish I’d thought to ask her why I’d want the pig if I was getting the sausage. 