I’m not Korean, but I have stereotypical Asian parents. However, I long ago trained them not to get pissed at me over me breaking any kind of traditional values they have. I tell them fuck off and threaten them and then ignore them. If they insist on talking, I yell in their face.
Not everyone can stand up to their parents, but I wish more of my fellow American-raised 2nd generation Asian friends did. I felt so good after telling both my mom and my aunt to fuck off because they refused to support gay marriage during the Prop 8 election.
Eh, mediocre, unfortunately, though better than most foreigners who live here. He can hold very basic conversations, but I doubt he’ll be able to express his thoughts on marriage in Korean.
Fortunately for him, my parents speak English a whole lot better than he speaks Korean. My mom is more or less fluent. So he won’t have to flail his arms and legs in a desperate attempt to be understood, or resort to hiring a translator. Like he said, we have it better than a lot of mixed-race couples over here.
Marrying into a family is definitely a Korean thing as well. My Western-ized self thinks our feelings are the deciding factor in our marriage, but my dad is having none of it. (My mom is more willing to listen to what we want, even though in the end she does want us to set some sort of timetable.)
I do argue with my parents if the occasion arises, but in the case of my dad, there really is no point. He very rarely concedes anything, and when he feels like he’s wrong he gets even angrier. We all have our faults, and I don’t want to make him out to be a monster because he isn’t. He’s just pig-headed about certain things, and me yelling at him won’t change his mind.
Also I don’t want my relationship to be something that is a source of strife (any more than it has to). I want my parents to be happy and to be happy for us, and telling them to fuck off isn’t really going to help matters.
This is all just so weird, hough I guess it goes to show every culture’s got its weirdness. He’s going to propose… sometime. But he doesn’t want to ruin the surprise. Even though you know he’s going to propose. And that it’s stressing you out to not know when or where it’s going to happen – in a week, a year? He’s serious about it, apparently, to the point where he’ll tell your dad he’s proposing to propose.
Maybe he can just get it over with and surprise you with the honeymoon locale? Or you can propose to him in front of your dad and shame everyone’s outdated ways all at the same time?
My real source of stress is my parents. If they stopped harassing me about it, I’d be content to wait and be surprised whenever he feels is the right time to do so.
So really it’s my parents stressing out over not knowing when it’s happening. I’m stressed out because they keep making a big deal out of the whole thing.
Sorry to hear about your trouble HNC. I (white-guy) married into a Korean family myself. I’m pretty laid back, so I see the fun side of it more than not, but it is certainly an experience. I have a whole set of responsibilities now, as the eldest male in the family (apart from father-in-law) that I’d never have dreamed of.
Lots of interesting stories to tell though. The first time I went to meet the father and announce my intentions to marry his (favorite) daughter, was nerve wracking. He flat out refused to meet with me for years and years and eventually I got fed up (manned-up?), brought a 200 dollar bottle of whiskey and went a knocking on his door. And when I first mentioned “marriage”…
Father: “Holy crap! She’s pregnant?”
Sister: “We don’t have any money!”
Brother: “Is the world really ending?”
It’s amazing there are so many white guy/Korean girl couples around here, considering what the guys have to go through with the girls’ families. Sometimes I wish my boyfriend had some crazy folks that made life difficult for me, just so I wouldn’t feel so bad.
I think he just wants to make it clear to them that he is going to ask me to marry him and when this is going to happen. Really, that’s all they want to know. They have no objections to him per se (although when my dad was drunk he made sure I knew that it was very generous of him to accept a white man as a potential son-in-law. :dubious: )
Cool. Sounds good. Sounds like you’re handling it really well. If my dad ever got drunk and called me something nasty like a worthless loser…not sure what I would do.
I think this shows a lot of maturity and grace. Hopefully, that will get through to your father and he’ll see that you have grown up with some amazing values and qualities after all.
How often does your dad make these comments? At some point, I’d seriously reconsider if a little strife is worth standing up to him
My mom and aunt didn’t concede their viewpoints either, but I’m happier than I’ve been in a while because I can completely snub my aunt and she doesn’t dare say anything to me. My mom also doesn’t bring up the subject either. They probably won’t ever concede like your dad, but by showing you’re willing to defend your views, it may make him back off. Plus, there’s nothing more cathartic than knowing you can, not necessary exercising the ability, mouth off to your parents about their stupid bullshit if they decide to make it an issue
Wow. I’m not sure I believe you that you have stereotypical Asian parents, because if I did this with my parents it would escalate until they totally cut off contact with me (well, it’s possible they would call from time to time to leave yelling messages on the answering machine about what a terrible daughter I was). Which maybe you wouldn’t mind, but I actually do love my parents and think they’re awesome 90% of the time.
And seriously, you felt good after telling your mom and aunt to fuck off? Well, perhaps your mom hasn’t done all the nice things for you that mine has for me. (On the other hand, I do have one aunt that, now that you mention it, has never done anything nice for me, and whom it would be kind of fun to snub.)
I’m a little late to the thread, but I just want to extend my empathy to the OP: my mother called me a slut when I was 22, because I told her I’d be spending Saturday night with the guy I was dating (I was living in her house at the time, having just graduated from college). She was completely sober, she was simply being a repressed, judgmental bitch. She apologized to me out of the blue about four years later, but only because she was having an affair with a married man and that’s what made her realize she’d been a repressed, judgmental bitch.
Anyway, my response was to start to withdraw from her emotionally. I think I was too stunned at the time to say anything, I just left the house and went to my bf’s. The way of things in that house was to sweep any serious issues under the rug, so when I got back I never said anything to her about it. (It wouldn’t have helped, anyway, because she has a serious “I’m never wrong” complex.) But that was the beginning of my disillusionment with my mother.
And, you know, 17 years later it still stings a little. (Yes, I need therapy…lots and lots of therapy.)
That’s a “I promise if we buy a house together before getting married that I will always pay my share of the mortgage even if we break up and I won’t ruin your credit score or make you sell the place early at a loss and I won’t be mean about it and if I am you’re allowed to beat me with a baseball bat and I won’t call the cops or sue” ring. Right?
I know this is slightly tangential to the thread, but if you’re thinking of buying a house together (you said “saving” for a house, so it’s unclear what the order of events is), you should probably insist on the marriage ceremony first. Had a buddy that bought before marriage and then she got cold feet before the wedding… it was messy and expensive.
They used to be much worse until my teenage rebellion years. No TV, homework and study every night. My mom would randomly come into my room and yell at me to read, even though she never told me to read anything specific, just the mere act of reading. They took away my video games, forbid me to keep my door closed, and couldn’t have friends over.
Once I realized that I was bigger than my dad, their threats became meaningless. I broke into the locket cabinet where they hid my TV, failed a couple of classes on purpose, jammed chairs under the doorknob to my room, and went out with my friends without telling them where I was going and coming back and 3am. Whenever I was given a book to read I didn’t want to, I threw it away. I stopped eating dinner with them and took food into my room, stopped talking to them for days at a time, played games loudly at night, and left sexually explicit magazines lying around in full view.
It was a war and in the end, I won. They accepted that I wasn’t going to be like a stereotypical bullied Asian kid and left me alone. My grades came back up, I came home on time, and occasionally talked with them. They learned they couldn’t bully me into being their model child and I had some fun doing it. My relationship with them is ok, not great, but not terrible either.
And yes, telling my mom that did feel good. After a week or so she started talking to me again, and we avoided the subject. Its not like I totally shut her out of my life, but she learned that I considered her old, traditionalist ideas abhorrent. She stopped trying to convinced me and I stopped thinking about paying a gay guy to kiss me in front of her
Sometimes, kids have to stand up to their parents if they’re wrong, or are being severely overbearing
I’m sure she didn’t LITERALLY mean that virginity is REQUIRED so much as “strongly, strongly encouraged”. In the Philippines it is strongly STRONGLY encouraged to stay chaste or at least keep up the appearance of being a virgin for fear of social reprucussion (being “that girl” instead of the marryable type). I would be surprised if amongst asian countries the PI was unique in this regard.
My fiance is filipina, I have spent time on multiple occasions in the Philippines, and image of chastity is VERY VERY important to daughters because of how it reflects on the parents. When talking trash about one of his brothers, my Fiance’s father said “AT LEAST MY DAUGHTERS ARE VIRGINS!” this was funny because of how ridiculous and old fashioned it was, plus he must be deluding himself if he thinks that his daughter/my fiance and I have never…
And BTW, this is from a relatively LIBERAL filipino household with mom and dad both being college graduates from good schools. They have never had a problem with me being non-filipino (my love for the culture and attempts at learning the language surely have helped), but the virginity of daughters is very important.
The boys are encouraged to sleep around, of course.
Like he said, we have it better than a lot of mixed-race couples over here.
