Because it is a metaphysical impossibility? How can you both do what you want and do what your parents tell you?
How do you do it? There must be times when you disagree with what your parents say. Do you always do what you want?
One of my cousins sent “I got married” notifications to everybody further away in the family tree than his brothers.
When my mother got it, she called the family’s de-facto matriarch (sister to both Dad and that cousin’s father). Mom’s first question was “is there a baby due?” Aunt laughed and said “that’s more open-minded than what most of the people who’ve called me asked, the usual opening shot is ‘when is the baby due’. There is no due baby but you know Cousin, the only thing he does like normal people is breathe, and I’m not sure about that.”
I have a strong suspicion Korean parents would make a similar assumption.
Threads like this always make me feel like my part of the Western world (Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Latin America…) is actually closer to Japan.
More or less yes. I will make minor concessions such as wearing a tie to a family wedding, or visiting grandma, or whatever. I won’t defer to them in major life choices such as if I am going to move in with my girlfriend. I also won’t tolerate incessant nagging about said major life choices.
No, I consider young women dating young men normal. The Middle Eastern families, however, might not.
This is better said than any of myriad of attempts to say it.
Then you are on one far end of the spectrum, as am I. I also refused any of it…but there’s no doubting I lost a lot in the process.
Some people choose to be in a different place on the spectrum, that’s all. Sometimes they do what their parents want, trusting them to know better.
I think that’s a pretty apt comparison in more ways than that. Many of the comments about the Korean culture and upbringing remind me of the remnants of my own indoctrinated Catholic guilt and shame.
I didn’t think you did, just making sure. 
But, more seriously, do you consider Middle Eastern culture on par with Western culture?
Really? There are laws of metaphysics that say that one culture can’t exist in the same place at the same time as another? Boy, they really have clamped down on definitions of culture lately. Would you tell a girl who comes from a strict Christian upbringing whose parents lived in the UK and didn’t want her to move in with her bf that she had to choose to be a child forever or irreparably damage her relationship with her parents?
There are ways to balance the two that doesn’t require her to pick one set of cultural norms over the other in every instance. That’s essentially what she is trying to do by asking for advice, trying to determine a way to be westernized without alienating herself from her parents. All she’s gotten from a lot of people is “stand up for yourself”, “you won’t be an adult until you tell your parents you’re not listening to them anymore” and “you have to pick a culture, you can’t have two”. She has been given advice to wait to move in, to maintain separate addresses, and to move in but allow her parents plausible deniability about her living situations. That all seems very much like appeasing both to me.
Which is fine. My point is that you can’t (1) do what you want, and (2) do what your parents want. If your choice is (1), you can’t have a deferential relationship with your parents. It is simply not going to work.
I can’t tell the OP what to do, but I can tell her what I did and why. Disclaimer: I’m not Korean, just a black chick from traditional, religious parents.
Several years ago, me and my BF at the time moved in with each other. For a minute I contemplated not telling them because I knew they would be disappointed, but the prospect of lying and hiding greatly outweighed my desire to avoid conflict. My parents lived about 8 hrs from me, so too far for surprise drop-ins but not too far to preclude the possibility of any visits. Just as I feared, they weren’t thrilled, but it wasn’t the end of the world. They got over it (just like they got over him being white).
The OP knows her parents better than anyone in this thread. Just because they’re Koreans doesn’t mean they have to be lied to. She needs to ask herself what comes with the greatest cost to her: maintaining a sitcom-like fiction to keep everyone smiling or being honest for the sake of her own sanity and self-integrity. For me, the cost of lying was greater because 1) I’m not a good liar, 2) I’ve never been that afraid of disappointing my parents, and 3) I’ve built up enough “obedient daughter” capital through the years, that a few disappointments aren’t enough to wreck my relationship with my parents.
It might be unnecessary to lie except by omission, anyway. How often does the OP plan to have her parents visit?
Please show me the nuance of ceding control of the intimate decision of your life to your parents! I just can’t see it. The old saying “blood is thicker than water” has its limits, and that limit, for most independent people, begins at who they chose for a life mate. Familial support is only worth maintaining if it is largely positive, and hijacking personal decisions of your adult children is a sure sign the relationship does not deserve to be maintained.
If her parents are treating her like a child, it’s in her best interest to break away from them. She’s better off in the long run.
You forgot the other predominant advice here… lie to your parents.
I think pretty much everyone here, except possibly you, agree that she cannot follow both American and Korean cultural norms in this situation.
But she can pretend to, by acting as an American and simultaneously creating a pleasant fiction to comfort her far-away parents. If her parents lived on the same continent, probably this option would not be available.
This is probably the more illuminating statement you have made so far on the subject. You seem to view familial relationships as a possession, that you either choose to bestow upon your family if they act the right way towards you, or choose to rescind at a whim. If they cross you, well, then it wasn’t a relationship worth having anyway. This is fundamentally flawed from the perspective of an eastern culture’s view on the value of family. The same way you are valuing independence and autonomy at the expense of all else? That is how her family sees their family relationship. To them, you are nothing without your family. You do not have community, you do not have relationships, you do not have life without your family. Try to see it from their perspective, just a little bit. Because as long as you keep throwing around words like “hijacking personal decisions” and “ceding control”, I will continue to think you are not grasping any nuance at all. She’s not being beaten up by her family to prevent her from moving in with her boyfriend, they are just expressing their extreme disappointment that she would choose to go against their wishes.
I would say that Westerners just can’t get it, but then there’s ladyfoxfyre. Be that as it may, it is so easy to just say “it is better to break away from them”, isn’t it? It’s not good for everyone.
Yeah, the people telling her to lie are women from cultures with the same or very similar norms to the ones she is dealing with. I’d say their advice is pretty apt. I mean, come on, we’ve all had situations where we wanted to pursue something and the outdated cultural mores of our parents generation came into conflict. Sometimes, cutting all communication off from your family is a good idea. Most of the time, it probably isn’t. There is a value in the little white lie which is intended to keep the peace and not cut off her nose to spite her face. Just because her parents come from a different time and place than where she currently lives doesn’t mean she needs to nuke the relationship from outerspace.
I don’t see them as possesions! :rolleyes: I see them as RECIPROCAL relationships. If one side of the relationship breaks their side, the lose the right to the relationship with the person. I also NEVER said there was physical coercion. And I’ll repeat something I’ve said several times in this thread: NOBODY has ever died of disappointment or a broken heart. BTW, why are you holding this American to the standard of a culture he’s never lived in. (unlike the OP who’s lived in both, and decided to stay in this culture)
I wouldn’t call her a child, but my advice would be the same. There’s only two options in these types of situations. Do what you want, or do what your parents want. There is no third option. Doing what you want and lying to your parents is still doing what you want.
Doing what you want and then lying to your parents isn’t deferring to them or being a proper Korean daughter. Please note, that I did include this as one of my options in my example. If you can get away with it, then lying is an attractive option. If you can’t, then you are simply delaying the confrontation, and making it more difficult when it comes.