Divorce is heavily frowned-upon in India. The reason my parents have never mentioned this is it never occured to them that any good Indians would divorce.
Sorry, I can’t see my parents in anyway as being permissive. In the end, everyone’s gotta stand on their own feet, mentally as well as economically. If that means moving away, far away, and cutting off contact for a number of years (which is what I did), then so be it.
Ugh. It amazes me how cruel and idiotic some parents can be.
Campion, probably the best thing you can do, as others have said, is tell her how you feel about her often and emphatically. It may just be one voice above the noise, but it’s bound to have some influence.
You’re right; I think your parents belong to the same club my friend’s parents do.
There’s really no solution (moving away isn’t an option for her because of how it will affect her other relatives), it just frustrates me that she’s treated this way. The good news is that, over the last couple of months, I can see that she’s at least thinking more objectively about the advice/criticism she gets from the parentals.
And I do tell her I thinks she’s awesome. 'Cause she is. If nothing else, I tell her, at least she has good taste in friends. 
I get so mad at parents who belittle their children. My supervisor has an adorable, sweet, funny 9-year-old daughter who lights up the room everytime she walks in. One day my supervisor was looking at a picture she had recently taken of her little girl and the daughter of a coworker. I commented on the cute photo. Her response?
“It’d be cuter if my ugly kid wasn’t in it.” :eek:
Campion, I’m glad your friend has someone to support her. Like you said, it’s ultimately up to her to see herself for who she is, but every kind word will help.
My girlfriend went through this; not only did her parents constantly tell her she was worthless, but when she got married her husband took over the job. She finally had enough and divorced him. When we met after several months of online conversation (during which time she frequently made deprecating remarks about her appearance) I found her attractive, pleasant, and fun to be with. I make a point of telling her this as often as I can. She’s feeling better about herself now, which makes her even more fun to be with. I just hope she never realizes that she’s too good for someone like me. 
Gaah, reading your description of those parents just makes me sick!
Has she met your mother, Campion? Maybe that’s why you’re in her life, so that she can see a family of acceptance and love, rather than cruelty and criticism. It might open her eyes.
I have a dear friend whose parents behaved similarly (“T. is so lazy and slow!”) the one time I met them, many years ago, and it was shocking. And a complete mischaracterization. I’ve been telling her ever since that her parents don’t deserve her, that they’re crazy and rude and I think they’re jerks. Sometimes it seems to help, but I don’t know if she’ll ever manage to drown out their message. Living hundreds of miles away from them and succeeding in her own way (she’s a published author & fairly wealthy) has made the biggest difference.
I have a friend with a mother like that. She went through a period of self-harming and anorexia. Nobody could quite work out why such a nice, pretty, smart girl would do that, until they met her mother.
This is a woman who told her blue, shivering, skeletal, anorexic daughter (in my hearing) that she shouldn’t eat pizza because she was fat enough already.
Other lovely sentiments expressed by this hateful woman:
That my friend was too fat to wear the outfit she had chosen. That would have been difficult, becaused she weighed about 90lbs.
That there was no point applying to her chosen university, because she wouldn’t get in, and anyway, they weren’t going to financially support her unless she did accountancy.
That they weren’t going to pay for her ticket to our Formal (prom) unless she had a guy to go with.
But that no man would ever ask her, because she was fat and ugly and stupid.
When she did get a date, he wasn’t rich enough, smart enough or pretty enough to make them happy.
Thank goodness my friend came out, got a girlfriend, put on weight and doesn’t see either of her parents any more. She’s surprisingly well-adjusted, all things considered.
If your friend can’t physically cut her mother out of her life, she needs to get to a point where nothing that her mother says gets through. It’ll take a lot of work.
Yes, but it’s never that simple. On an intellectual level, she knows her mom is a nutter. But on an emotional or instinctual level, it still gets through. Seeing my family helps her know intellectually that there are good families out there, but it doesn’t help her turn her ears off to her mom. When you’re 30 years old, some habits are ingrained.
If it were that easy, all those people who’ve been hurt in love would see a happy couple and know it was for them; all those who grew up in cruddy families would see a happy family and know it was for them. It’s never simple.
(Digression: it’s not like my family’s perfect, either; my dad is also a nutter, but it mostly manifests in benign ways, and when we point them out to him, he laughs. But continues his nutty ways. And, fortunately, my sibs are great.)
But I keep telling her that she’s not what her mom says, and that you’re not destined to be what your family says. After all, my dad came from nothing – a horrifically abusive family, kicked out of the house as a teenager, no real connections to anyone – to become a man with a wife of nearly 40 years, some great kids ( ) who tolerate his nuttiness, and a huge extended family (my mom’s kin). I think I’m making headway with my friend, though. Last night, she told me that she’s started tuning her mom out.