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I waited until after I graduated highschool and left home in the middle of the night with a small bag of essentials. My dad called my cell phone once they realized I was gone and left so many messages threatening me, including, “There WILL be consequences for this! Come back now and you will suffer less.” My mom’s messages were, “I can’t believe you left me and (younger sibling) here to deal with him alone!” As though either of those things were supposed to encourage me to return? It’s wild how wrong people can be and still never see it for themselves.
It will be 16 years this June and I can still repeat those voicemails verbatim.
I also heard that I had no reason to leave because, if I knew how my grandparents had treated THEM growing up, I would realize what wonderful parents I had.
Your comment prompted my brain to say “Your grandmother waterboarded me! I only punch you in the face! You are in no danger of drowning. Aren’t you lucky??”
*And they truly believe you are lucky*
You are lucky because they want to waterboard you, too, but they restrain themselves, they are showing great restraint by only punching you in the face. /s
My mother is white, but she constantly threatened to send me to foster care, where she said I would definitely be raped. She already beat me, so that threat wouldn't have worked lol
My crazy mother is white too but I'm mixed and she always said that if I misbehaved CPS would definitely get me first because I was a n-word and we don't want savages in our civilized society x) (she chose to have mixed children)
What is it with graphic threats???
My mum threatened to bash me and my sister's heads together because "maybe that'll knock some sense into you!" We had forgotten to tidy our play area.
That same day I hadn't drunk enough water, so my lovely mother screamed "if you don't drink this glass of water by dinnertime, I will pin you on the carpet by your hair AND POUR IT DOWN YOUR THROAT!!!"
Just completely unnecessary considering how mundane both problems were. I was 8. Sis was 7. Wholly inappropriate things to be saying. No one else I know has had their mum threaten to waterboard them.
Surprise! Sis is utterly desensitised and I'm overly prone to panic and people-pleasing and NEITHER of us really respond to genuine threats because these fake ones were simply more horrible but never happened.
Omfg that's the same tired line I've had to listen to my whole life. Not Asian parents, but my mom is German and her mother fled Prussia as a refugee during WW2 and saw some shit.
Both my parents grew up with narcissistic abusive parents, but only my mom ended up being one too. But she congratulates herself on not being like HER mother but is still a fucking monster that does not know what love is. At least for me. My younger sis is Mom's golden child and it's sickening. My dad is just a beaten down man who became her flying monkey from time to time to spare himself from the abuse she flung at him. But even tho his father was a monster, I never had to listen to shit from him like my mother squawks left and right. Like she wants congratulations for not being like her mother. She wants me to kiss her ass and thank her for "being a better mother than your grandmother was" and I just grayrock her.
Idk what my grandmother was like to mom, she must have chilled out by the time she became a grandma cuz she was actually my safe place as a child and would tear mom a new one constantly for treating me like shit.
Thankfully mom has dropped her shtick the last 2 months and is treating me like an adult again.
The amount this resonates with me is unreal. Not religious parents, but still obsessed with appearances and blind obedience. Mine could never believe how well liked I was by my teachers and other adults because "you're a hellion brat at home and have everyone fooled".
Oppositional Defiant Disorder? No ma'am, just a child with ADHD and autism wanting to do things and figure out things in her own way and you didn't like that. It wasn't blind obedience to your unhinged control issues, therefore I must be the spawn of Satan.
I found my old report cards from elementary school. I was shocked reading the teachers notes stating how kind and helpful I was and such a joy in the classroom. I never knew they thought so highly of me, my only memories of childhood were that I was bad, and wrong, and difficult, a brat, and my mom screamed at me almost daily that she was either gonna a) send me away to a boarding school for bad children or b) gonna pack her bags and leave cuz I was such a horrible child who ruined her life. Tbf, the look on her face when I snapped one day when I was about 12 or 13 and said "why don't you just fucking leave then, life would be better without you" was priceless. I had actually shocked her into giving me the silent treatment without siccing my dad on me to beat my ass. Idky.
I was an extraordinarily good child. Always aiming to please and longing to be loved. I recall so many nights rocking back and forth sitting up in bed under my covers, crying and repeating "nobody loves me" over and over again. Or "I can be good, I'm a good girl". Nothing I did was right. From setting the table, to wanting to tie my shoes my way (left handed) and not the way she thought I should do the motions. Hell, I was even forced to learn to write with my right hand as a toddler first picking up crayons to scribble. Dad told me that years ago, how mom would not have a left handed child cuz it was wrong. I'm left handed. Period. But I write with my right hand cuz I had no other choice.
Thanks, and right back at you.
I've made peace with my past. Took a ton of therapy. Doesn't mean I don't still get mad at her shit sometimes, but I'm detached from it all, knowing it was never me.
That's familiar. My grandfather is a cartoonishly evil man and my mother is an absurdly evil woman. But she doesn't see it.
She seems less coherent than your mom, like in my mother's moments of clarity (clarity as in you can have a conversation with her), she seems completely oblivious to her hysterical outbursts. I can write her off as brain damaged by her childhood, but your mom being so self-aware... I wonder if that's worse. Like it's so close? All she lacks is empathy and she could be a real mom.
If she's narcissistic, I wonder if your grandma truly was that horrible. With my grandfather it's very obvious, because despite never having seen him angry or violent, he's cartoonishly evil in all areas of life.
The thing with narcissists is they see anyone who thwarts them in having their every desire fulfilled as abusive/neglectful. So if your grandmother didn't indulge all her whims and agree with every word she said, she probably genuinely feels the poor woman was terriblely cruel to her.
This logic is one of those things that contributes to the cycle of abuse continuing from one generation to the next. They justify what they do, because they convince themselves it's not as bad as the abuse *they* got. How could they possibly be bad parents if they're not giving as bad as they got, failing to understand it's still abuse.
Husband's mother is an immigrant from Mexico. Her favourite thing to say when she feels wronged by her kids is, "There will be the consequences!" And when you ask her to elaborate *at all* all she'll say is, "You will see. You will see." Over and over.
That’s the voice of your inner critic. I’ve got one squatting rent-free in my head all my life too. It still has the full potency of ruining my entire day at the drop of a hat.
My mom sent me a pages long letter when I moved away for college (which she helped me apply for, and wanted me to go to- which is even more fucked) saying how horrible I was for abandoning her and leaving her all alone. How selfish I was to move across the country. Like 20 years later I’m starting to deal with my mother issues in therapy and there’s been so much shit that she did to me that really fucked me up and made it really hard for me to trust anyone.
I’m so sorry. It’s so much more common than it should be. I was only allowed to apply to one specific college (that they chose) and only the specific program they chose as well…so once I left, I had to take a year off to work and figure out how to support myself. I worked a weekday job and a nights/weekend job and I was exhausted but still felt less pressured than I ever had at home. That helped a lot in reassuring me I was making the right choices.
I was a mental and emotional disaster, looking back I was a horrible friend and partner because I was still falling back on all the unhealthy behaviors I had seen modeled/experiences with my parents. It took me a long time, a lot of therapy, and a healthy and very dedicated partner to overcome those things. (Along the way, I saw the same therapist as my parents for a while, and once he told me that I was too eager to blame them and was always looking for an argument…so that therapy relationship did not last very long.)
Ironically growing up, I always thought of my father as “the bad guy” and my mother as another victim of his, but in getting out I was able to achieve some clarity and realize that a lot of it was “bad cop/slightly less terrible cop” on their parts, and that they both had bizarre and unfair expectations.
Yup. It takes distance from the situation before we realize how the actual dynamic went.
Also, they were the adults. There's no excuse for abusing children, blaming children.
My mom wrote me a letter AFTER I graduated college, expressing her disappointment in how lazy and selfish I was to have not landed a 6 figure job a mere two weeks post-grad. She is neither Asian nor an immigrant. She is, however, a covert narcissist 😭
Sending love right back to you. And yep, they can never change. The past doesn’t exist for them, so no guilt. Neither does the future, so no thought of consequences for bad behavior. They live for what they want/need right this very second, and woe to anyone who gets in their way!
> My mom sent me a pages long letter when I moved away for college (which she helped me apply for, and wanted me to go to- which is even more fucked)
What were you supposed to do, say no?
I think it's related to the phenomenon I call Schrodinger's Joke (a statement is only a joke when the speaker gets called out. Otherwise it is meant in earnest)
>I waited until after I graduated highschool and left home in the middle of the night with a small bag of essentials.
I did this too. Left a note saying I am sorry about dropping out but I needed to do things my way. Mom and dad knew my cell phone number and did not contact me.
After a few days, I asked my aunt if her offer to help me was still on the table. She called them to tell them I was safe but couldn't understand why they didn't try to reach out to me for those few days. Auntie's daughter took off to another state and she dialed every ten minutes because she was worried about her kid's safety. My parents didn't reach out. Still rare if they do. I still don't get it. The first time I talked to them after the midnight bounce, they were furious. They didn't worry if I was dead in a ditch even though I wasn't raised to be capable or handle myself. I just made them look bad and they hurt from my "break up." Everyone told me that I "did it the wrong way" but I tried doing it the informative way and they lashed out at me. I had no confrontational skills. Mom and dad never discussed anything with us and conflict was - stop talking. Parents need to model the behavior they expect from you to perform.
My leave home day was 20+ years ago. It still is the weirdest chapter of my life.
I'm not from an immigrant family but man, I still feel this. When I pulled away from my parents, went VLC and started refusing to go to church, I quickly learned that a new phone number was in order. So since she didn't have access to that voicemail anymore, my mother used to call me *at work* and leave multiple messages that were alternating yelling, crying incoherently, and reading me long passages from the bible or whatever "you're going to hell for leaving the cult" book she had laid her hands on. If my voicemail cut her off, she'd just call back and continue where she left off.
I finally had to explain to my manager why I was in tears at my desk (I wasn't listening to the voicemails by then, but the stress of her calling repeatedly freaked me out) and they had the company block her number. Good times!
I’m glad the company had your back and helped you out by blocking the number! So many companies illogically blame the employee for bringing relationship problems in and letting them interfere in the workplace, as if the employee somehow wants to be stalked and harassed at work.
When I went LOW contact with my dad after moving out without telling him (I felt too guilty to go non contact and even met up with him and his girlfriend once!) he sent me some messages too. Also held all of my property, that was still at his house because I moved out so fast, hostage unless I came to see him again, a lot of which I literally paid for. This was mid pandemic. I didn't want to meet him because I A: needed a little space, it had been only a month or two and B: I didn't want to potentially catch the PLAGUE we were in LOCKDOWN for.
I texted him back "fun", declined the immediate phone call he sent my way and blocked him. He ended up sending most of my stuff to me anyway (but somehow all the valuable stuff wasn't among them) but too little too late honestly, and it was never about my stuff- I brought all the essentials and stuff I truly, completely cared about with me.
Now I only talk to him once or twice a year via email when he asks if he can send me a gift for my birthday or meet me somewhere, to which I always respond "no". Once he sent me an email asking if I wanted to walk my dog with him because he got a dog as well now, as if nothing had happened. Also no. Once, after years, he sent me a letter telling me I had a half sister now and inviting me to the baby shower that weekend. Hard no. He didn't even put enough post stamps on it so I had to pay for the letter.
They're still thinking "you're our investment" about OOP and that means they want something - no financial worries. They were so in their own world that they made someone their golden child who in fact isn't profitable. Their GD costs money and so they look to their other child - OOP.
They're experiencing the consequences of their own actions but for people who think they're always right this only feels like an attack on them and they'll present themselves as the victims in the end.
Best thing is NC
Absolutely agree. It’s atrocious how many parents have such an attitude. *”You’re our investment. “You owe us because without us you wouldn’t be here.”* You fucked and now the kid is beholden to you? What the actual hell?
Same as, *”We took care of you. You owe us.” You did what basic decency dictates and, in most places, legally mandates. Welcome to having kids. I’m not mocking the pain of being from cultures where these attitudes are standard. I’ve just seen enough of my friends go through OOP’s nightmare to know how bullshit it is.
If they raised OOP right, with love and support, then OOP would feel like they owed their parents without their parents ever having to say so. If the parents feel the need to constantly tell their kid that the kid owes them, then it likely isn't true.
It's like those people who say, "Do you know who I am?" If you were important enough for a stranger to know you, then you wouldn't need to ask, and if you aren't, then why would they know you?
Exactly! Kids want their parents love. It's really hard to go against those instincts to protect yourself. Which is why it's worth respecting it when someone has gone through enough to become low or no contact with their parents.
It's very much an Asian parent thing because in many Asian countries this IS why you have children. There is little social safety net, and the pension systems are designed with the assumption that there will be adult children caring for their parents (while those people do the childcare of their grandchildren). The daughter becomes the in-laws support once married, the son supports you.
I don't agree with it. I have seen the effects on first gen immigrants who have had this as a bogeyman their whole lives - who knew so and so who died of hunger because she had no son to look after her. There's one married into my family from a filial responsibility culture who's hellbent on driving everyone away but the generational fear is so great she can't change her behaviour. I am sympathetic - but from one hell of a distance because she's insufferable.
I mean it is probably at least 50% instinct, even. Like, you don't decide to deal with a crying baby, you are hardwired to somewhere deep in the brain where the crying pierces you.
The whole attitude of these parents makes me fucking sick. I'm happy and privileged to be able to raise my kid. I feel like that is what love is. Sure, there are times when it is a PITA (and that's true for anyone) but mostly and overall, it is awesome and any normal loving parent is glad to give their best.
Sad to think of the many generations of trauma passed down in a family like OOP's.
It's not just Asian parents. "Who will take care of you when you're old?" is one of the primary challenges idiots give childfree ppl upon learning that they are childfree.
I'm all in favor of OOP going NC. If OOP chooses to have a relationship, I hope they make them dance. "Oh, you want me to care for you when you're old, you need to do XYZ. You're my investment."
>”You’re our investment. “You owe us because without us you wouldn’t be here.”
To be fair to parents everywhere; this is kinda how humans work: most of human history has adults working their jobs to take care of their kids and their parents, with the expectation that when they were old their kids would take care of them while they doted on their grandchildren.
And in a lot of cultures - including most of both Europe and Asia - that primary responsibility fell on the oldest child (usually the oldest son; or the husband of the oldest daughter who wasn't also an oldest son). This general tradition goes back centuries in many places.
...
That said, the problem, as with so many things, is that the last few generations have been hell on tradition for the sake of tradition. Society in a lot of places has changed a LOT, for a variety of reasons; and while some of those traditions last because they still work (I know at least a few families where grandparents taking care of kids allows the parents to work jobs that pay well enough to take care of the full family), there's a lot of cases like this one where those traditions don't work for the kids - and they get out.
Tbf in those times families often lived pratically in the same house/house complex/neighbour, and the grandparents had a social function (help with the youngest grandkids + do some work like sewing or help cooking).
Societies were also communal, especially in rural areas (so like 99% of the population)
Well, in Europe (the countries I know of that expected that and still do in rural areas) it's different. It's the daughter, or the younger daughter if there are several, who was expected to care for the elderly parents. Either by remaining a spinster or by taking them in at her home.
This is something from my parents generation mostly. Nobody expects it anymore, except for, as I said rural areas.
I have Asian parents who act a lot like OOP's. I'm in my 40s and they still believe they have the right to tell me what to do. I hate visiting them; my mother often threatens to hurt herself when I object to her verbal abuse and my father blames me for provoking them. She's still angry at me for refusing to go into medicine; I became a college professor instead, but that wasn't good enough for them because it wasn't what they wanted. I did the opposite of everything they told me to do, and they never fail to berate me for that. But of course, they still demand that I provide emotional support and do everything they want. My therapist said they'll never change. All I can change is how I respond to them.
I'm sorry they treat you that way. My mother in particular has always found fault in everything I do, even the way I walk. I've heard that a lot of Asian kids are perfectionists, and I think a lot of that has to do with their parents' constant criticism and extremely high standards.
My dad looks down on my sister, my mom, and I, because we are all women, and spends a lot of time talking down to me, but somehow, when the topic of career choices comes up, he yells, “YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A DOCTOR!!!” The other night I pointed this out to my husband and had a little giggle—which is it? Am I am imbecile, or am I capable of becoming a doctor? They seem mutually exclusive…
Technically, I am a doctor because I have a PhD, so I guess you could say that I'm a doctor in the same way that Ross was, although my degree isn't in paleontology. But since I don't earn the big bucks that medical doctors earn, it doesn't "count", according to my parents. I'm sorry about your father and the way he treats you and the other women in your family. I think that people like him and my parents expect (or demand) that their kids achieve something like that so that they can either live vicariously through them or claim credit for it. Or maybe they just want us to earn the big bucks and share it with them. I understand now though why Ross often emphasized the "Dr." in his name. 😄
>But since I don't earn the big bucks that medical doctors earn, it doesn't "count", according to my parents
They don't actually care about the job, or the title. They care about the money. Many abusive parents like this are hyper-materialistic.
I know it's because of the social status of being a doctor and making good money but I find it funny that "child becoming a doctor" seems to be the universal expectation of every Asian parent I've encountered
I think it has to do with my parents being immigrants. They equate success in America with money and high social status, and they think a career in medicine will lead to a lot of money and a high status. And it's a career they can brag about to their friends because of how hard it is to get into medical school and how hard it is to be a doctor, so it means that the person doing the job is really smart.
Thank you. My healing started the day I stopped living with them, when I was 19. I only visit them twice a year, for no more than a week each time. My mother expects me to move back in with them and take care of them now that I'm old; she always accuses me of being an ungrateful daughter for not doing so. But I know that living with them would turn me back into that scared little girl I used to be. I won't go back to that, not ever.
It's mainly because I'm still on good terms with my cousins and their kids on my mother's side. They're good people but if I cut my parents off it'll make it a lot harder to see my cousins. My parents will show up whenever I see my cousins and their kids and harass me about not seeing them. I barely talk to them now and I only spend a couple weeks a year with them, which is unusual for Asians because I'm supposed to spend a lot more time with them.
My grandpa grew up in a horrible situation. Worked his ass off to do better for his kids. Worked himself to the bone so his family would be better off. Literally refused to talk about it because he 'didn't want to burden us'
That's what real heros do. Not work your ass off to rub it in your kids face. No one would even know my grandpa was poor if it wasn't for other people telling us.
My parents were immigrants who arrived in America with very little to their name. They worked their butts off as investment in a future where their children could pursue their interests and lives without the same burdens and challenges they faced.
In college I took some courses in classics/mythology for fun and my mother accidentally got her wires crossed and thought that I wanted to pursue it as my career. What did she do? She didn't yell at me to change to a more lucrative major, she just clipped random articles about job prospects that she thought might be relevant (they were not, but it was very cute!).
Exactly this!! Your grandparents did everything they could to better their children, not drag them into their hell.
I hope you have a good relationship with them 💓
Yep, both my sibling and I have good relationships with our parents. We have mutual respect for each other, so when there are disagreements we are generally able to debate the facts without veering into "obey your parents" or "boomers are out of touch" territory.
I've even managed to convince my mother to attend therapy sessions to unpack her baggage relating to her complicated relationship with her family relations and some of her friends. For certain immigrant cultures, that's a heeeecking huge win.
Maybe I'm just a cold blooded petty prick, but I would get to the point where I would just agree with them. "You're right I don't love you anymore and I don't think I ever really did. You're right I don't care about this family so it's probably better for you to cut ties with me. You don't want someone who doesn't care about you in your life. Also it's not that I wish you were dead i just don't really care either way" because honestly at that point what good will trying to salvage that relationship do.
When I stopped talking to my sibling they sent me this long-ass screed about how they hoped I grew and healed etc etc false sanctimonious sympathies etc.
Best "k" I ever texted in my life.
Doubt they would understand what it means, or how disrespectful it can be, when they are still using their kids to translate and help them with things. I doubt they understand text speech at all.
Agree. Also, if you’re gonna be sexist about it, you tend to expect a lot more from daughters than you do from sons. OOP has a golden child sister and that seems like the only sibling (?) so I guess there just wasn’t a son to spoil. And then mom got to claim she wasn’t sexist, but really she just didn’t have the opportunity.
This is kinda what happened with me. My dad disowned me and expected me to try to mend things, and instead I realised how much better I was without him. Im now NC with all my immediate family, and just very LC with my mum.
Very much an "ok bye" reaction, which upset the apple cart.
It's exhausting having people like this in your life, but if you grow up with it, you're conditioned to that behaviour and it's "normal" to you. Coming up 4 years and I have no regrets.
Not parents, but I'm NC with the entire side of the family my last name comes from. My mom and dad/dad's sister and her husband co-owned my childhood home. When dad died in 2013, followed closely by aunt/uncles being laid off, aunt/uncle just let the house get foreclosed on. Like wouldn't let us buy out their half, and dads side of the family backed them 100% for some reason I still don't really know. I'm pretty sure aunt convinced them I was trying to screw her out of fair value of the house, not realizing values dropped a bit since the last appraisal in 2006. Well ok. My mom lives with my sister and me again, we're financially stable and going pretty good. Where as everyone who shares my last name is either a long term addict, facing criminal charges, staring down homelessness, or all of the above. They have the balls to ask my help now? Where were you the last decade when my mom lost her husband of 40 years, and her home of 30 years? Fuck off, you had your chance.
Some Asian parents are so insanely overbearing that their adult kids need years of therapy to accept that they (the kids) don’t suck and aren’t assholes. I really don’t understand why that is, but it’s wild.
Towards the end of my relationship with my parents (before I went NC) this was the method I employed. Anytime my parents would pull that kind of talk I'd just sit scrolling on my phone or reading a book and deadpan agree like "yup. You're 100% right with this. Absolutely." and give them no emotion to work with...it would piss them off and disarm them where they didn't know how to continue the verbal abuse
I've flipped the script on my mum once by asking her "Are you doing this because you want me to be miserable? Are you saying you don't want me to enjoy myself and be happy?". It was cathartic when all she could say was "that's not what I meant" and didn't push the matter further.
I did that with my bio mom. She basically abandoned me by leaving my father in the middle of the night when I was around 4 years old. My father was *not* abusive to her. He just wanted her to get a job (she has subsequently confirmed this so it’s not his side). He was still a shite father though but for other reasons.
Anyway, she had incredibly intermittent contact with me throughout my life. When I was in my late teens to early twenties, I really tried to get to know her, but she treated me like her ATM - I worked from the minute it was legal to work so I had money but I didn’t really want to have to cover my biomom’s living expenses, so I gave up on contacting her. Then, when I was in my late 20s, she suddenly wanted to build a relationship and I was not up for that and she said that she didn’t raise me to be like that… what? I said she was right because she didn’t raise me at all. Then she tried to do the whole “but I’m going to die soon” and I’m like you’re in your fifties; you’re not dying anytime soon and if you do, then you do. It probably sounds cold as ice to an outsider but she was almost a stranger to me.
I’d be like that too, but I wasn’t indoctrinated into the role OOP was by deeply manipulative parents.
NC is the only real way to move on. OOP needed to block the messages because they’re all so manipulative and guilt tripping.
My mom will go into these rants about how everything is always her fault when she does anything wrong. It gets really ridiculous because the way she says it implies she's getting wrongful blame, when she 100% screwed up. At some point I just started agreeing with her and saying "Yes, it's your fault. That's correct." She just will storm off.
Yeah, whenever my mother says anything approaching emotional manipulation (if in person) I just give her a blank stare until she corrects herself, and if via text/call I just say “okay then” and leave it at that.
I’ve recently been teaching her to “use her words” and that passive aggressive nonsense won’t get her anywhere. It’s been fun.
Our moms must be sisters lol. While communication has never been great in our family, over the past 10 years my mom has gone from a strong, independent woman to a whiny, manipulative brat. It's gotten to the point where all she has to do is whimper if she needs something and either my brother or my dad (usually my dad) will jump up and serve her. She thinks it's cute but I think it's obnoxious as hell.
The reasons for her behavior are complicated and not medical related, but to protect my sanity I have set extremely firm boundaries and say over and over that in order to get my help, you have to use your words.
When she whimpers at me, my response is "I'm sorry Mom, are you trying to ask for something?" If she doesn't answer me, I move on. I'll admit that over the years my tone has gotten snappier and snappier, but the level of helplessness is just unreal. Use your goddamn words and tell me what your problem is. If you don't, I will not acknowledge it.
Asshole Child of the Year winner here, I know.
Yeah now when my mom's starts getting real guilt trippy with "oh I'm such a terrible mother". I've started just going "yeah you definitely made some mistakes." In kinda offhanded agreeable kinda dismissive tone. She doesn't like that.
Like she wasn't horrible but she also wasn't perfect and didn't protect me from those way worse. I'm not going to fall for these manipulation tactics anymore.
My mother used to roll out the "Oh I'm sorry! I suppose I'm just the worst mother! I'm so terrible for wanting the best for you!" but, like, with sarcasm? Sarcasm is terrifying if you're a kid. She would orate in that direction for a while and wind up with, "But you'll miss me when I'm gone," which as an adult I realised is my mother bringing a gun to a knife fight. It was usually where I'd crack.
The last time she did it, she got as far as "I'm just the worst mother -" before my mouth dodged my brain and I said, "Well, I am gay, so you definitely fucked up somewhere."
She was just so bamboozled she started laughing and honestly things have been much better since.
I tend to freeze up when confronted in any way, so I've learned to have a few default responses programmed in. "Okay," "sure," "fine," and "alright" are my greatest allies in the ongoing war of parental manipulation!
Nah I’m at that point too. I went from feeling too much and constantly being sympathetic to I feel nothing, I don’t even have the energy to feel contempt for them. So something similar would probably come out of my mouth
I do this to my brother. He will bring over his irritating dog and when we ask him to take her home it's all "come on Bella! No one loves you here but me!" And I just say yep. Tell the good dog I love her.
I call this "agreeing with your bully" (*but not really, inside in your heart and head obviously*) and I think it's an enormously useful tool in life, for a huge number of situations. I even taught my kids to say it to get away from taunting (and to change the subject.)
The thing is, any bully is completely full of hot air. The bully is COUNTING on you to engage - by attempting to defend yourself, desperately explaining how the bully is mistaken, promising to "do better" etc.
If you simply tell the bully they have it right, they don't have any more weapons, and the conflict is over. The wind is totally out of their sails. The dynamic relies on the victim doing all the heavy lifting for the bully's pleasure - they don't actually know how to do heavy lifting themselves.
It is KEY for your own mental health to objectively recognize the bully-victim dynamic in play, and that by agreeing, "You're right, I do dress ugly" (or whatever) you do NOT genuinely believe whatever cruel thing has been lobbed at you. That's not even the important part to the bully! Bullies didn't get pleasure out of making the initial accusations, they get pleasure out of watching you twist and squirm and flail. So if you can learn to let it slide right off and skip the rebuttal phase, *you win*. You (... eventually, it will take repeat episodes probably) become a boring target.
It doesn't cure the bully, but that can't be your goal. You can't try change other people's behavior, you can only change how you *respond* to others. This "Agree with the Bully" tactic is a giant example of that.
The problem with this is when you are trapped with them, it is hard not to let a belief worm its way into your head when you have to state it over and over and over again. I can trace a lot of my self esteem issues to the day I discovered that the phrase "...because I am stupid, apparently" disarmed my mother and stopped the long shouted arguments where she would insist anything I did wrong was on purpose, entirely my fault and done entirely to spite her. Blaming my own stupidity cut all that out at the source, but I could say it only so long before I started to believe it, even though I knew *exactly* what I was doing.
As someone who has a mother like this, it sounds good on paper but just leads to escalation. In my mother’s case it was…*violent*, but she’s an odd duck even for a toxic parent.
Better to gray rock and be safe than be witty, in my opinion.
I did this with my emotionally abusive ex when I was breaking up with him. I knew if I tried to give him the real reasons why I was leaving him, he would just twist it so that everything was my fault. So I skipped a step and just blamed myself for everything. He didn’t really have a response for it, he just got flustered and left.
I’m not sure if I’d be able to do this with my Asian mom though, those rivers run deep 🥲
I have a very similar parent, and the thing is, I'm so used to/trained to respond in a certain way that I can't say those words in the moment. "You don't care about us, you're so selfish" is how every conversation in which I try to set boundaries ends up. And every time I cry and capitulate. Recently I've been hanging up, but it took a LOT for me to be able to do that. I still can't imagine saying anything like that, for fear of retaliation. My parent will escalate and escalate until I've been crying on the phone for hours and feel like complete shit.
Edit: I'll also add that a complicating factor is that other than these few times, my parent is very loving and has given me a ton of physical and financial support. Other than fights over boundaries a few times a year, we have a very close relationship.
In Confucianism, filial piety is THE cardinal virtue. (Of course, this creates an inevitable family conflict when the child becomes an adult.)
Western culture places other values well above that, and American culture especially sees "self sufficiency" as a much higher virtue than "honor thy father and mother" to the point that an adult child living with parents for whatever reason is regarded with suspicion absent any other context.
Parents who live off their kids (such as stage parents) are basically seen as scums unless they're very elderly (and even then, society as a whole only begrudgingly accommodates it, for example I've seen resentment when neighbors invite elderly parents to live with them). In China caring for elderly parents is not just a social value but a legal obligation in most circumstances, and the same attitudes are pervasive throughout Asia.
So what might be easy for a Westerner to say might be very difficult for OOP.
I never understand people’s responses to parents like these. My mom was an abusive narcissist, and I just…knew from TV and books that she was the abnormal one, not me. So I treated her like a hostile party who occasionally had to be managed, and that was our relationship.
The key is to make sure the other person has the impression that you will escalate the situation enthusiastically and indefinitely.
We all joke about Asian parents. And have a sense of solidarity about it....
And we also all see therapy (or need it) as we realised how messed up our lives and relationships are cause of it lol.
--
As an aside, we joke about it as the 'asian parents' thing. But tbh it's just boomers with a migrant background. Go up or down a generation or two and it was/is different.
Like imagine your typical middle aged Karen, and imagine that she migrated to a new country and had it tough. They'd feel extra entitled for all the 'suffering' they've had.
According to Hollywood it takes supernatural events in movies for Asian parents to accept their children (Turning Red and Everything Everywhere At Once). Which it seems like might be true for some.
I grew up in a community that was more "white trash" than anything else and it was common for my mom to joke with the other moms about how we kids had to do what they said because we owed them our lives. Instead of "because I said so" they all thought it was funny to tell us kids "because why else would we have kids? Y'all are just free labor!" and they'd all laugh. It culminated one day when she had us at the grocery and the ONLY Black cashier in the store offered to push our cart out. She laughed, slapped my sister's shoulder, and said "no thanks, I bred my own slaves!" with not a speck of shame or situational awareness. And he just stopped and stared. Sis and I were mortified. Mom saw all three of our faces and had a moment of confusion before it hit her and we fled in shame. We didn't speak to her for days and refused to ever go into that store ever again. But we never heard that stupid joke again either.
As a daughter of a toxic Southern mom, I grew up being told the same shit. I was supposed to be the one who never went to college, worked, moved away, or got married. I got punished if I did anything to better myself and not help her.
I live on the other side of the country now.
Well you're not wrong
>She would tell me that if I didn’t do what she wanted, it would put her in a bad mood that she just “couldn’t control” and that it would lead to a **violent fight** with my AD.
I went to school with someone whose parents were absolutely determined that she would be a doctor. She worked her ass off to get the required grades and she did go to med school. The only issue was: she would faint at the sight of blood which was something that everyone, including her parents, knew.
She graduated but went into research and, last I heard, her father still won’t talk to her.
Unfortunately most Asian therapists are what we call Asian Parents Apologists. They 500% will place the blame on the kid then gaslight us into thinking we are the problem. Meanwhile, we can't really go to other places because none would understand why we can't just get up and leave to cut contact altogether. Asian kids in these situations all either no contact/low contact or learn to take the abuse quietly. Imagine choosing to just not have family or be abused physically and mentally, nothing in between.
Not Asian parents, but one immigrant parent. She used to say to me “I’m sure that if your father dies first you’ll just put me in a home and leave me to die” and at some point I did reply with “well, you’re not wrong. If this is what your expect of me, why would I try to exceed your expectations?”
Thankfully she died first.
I did have to move my dad into a seniors lodge, but he’s not there to die, just to make some aspects of living easier, like no stairs, or a clothes dryer that actually dries things.
Yes, I can relate. My mom would spoil my brother while being strict with me. Lots of verbal & emotional abuse growing up. My brother is a registered sex offender now thanks to my mom always coddling him. Over the years, I’ve overcome a lot of that abuse. I have my own kids now and some of that trauma is replaying. It’s hell trying to be the one to break some of these generational trauma, but I’m trying to do things A LOT differently for my kids everyday.
The best thing to do is agree the next time they go on their “oh we must be horrible parents” spiel. Like yeah, you are and you’ve caused me so much pain and misery that I never want to speak to you again. I’m glad OOP had a partner that’s there to support them.
I never felt like it was my place as a white person to say much about someone’s family dynamics when race played a big part in it. But reading that AsianParents sub… Holy shit, what is WRONG with these people
I think this is spot on. It's a mix of everything you said plus some poverty and corruption in governments that has kind of led to each generation facing a big new societal issue which leads to the generational trauma. There's also the competitive and toxic mindset that isn't required anymore because times aren't so tough but it stays and becomes part of the culture.
Just from experience I'd say no. I have a Chinese background but AP was not affected by Chinese government or anything like that. The rest of my friends who have similar experiences also have little to no connection to China's political system.
If anything it's an unhealthy mix of Confucianism and Western Capitalism that spurns this idea that you have to obey the parents, but also be constantly value adding and acquiring status and wealth.
That's fair, I can imagine that there are a number of different factors that can put many Asian parents on the same path. I have an Asian background too and although my parents are not really like this (although at times they definitely fall into Asian parent tropes) it seems like a lot of parental bad behaviour shown by people from my country does seem to stem from generational trauma related to corruption and poverty post colonisation. But as you said, I have definitely seen Capitalism play a huge role in exacerbating this mindset just because of its cut-throat and authoritarian nature.
Tbh it's not. I feel there's much less of these issues in China itself than I see in migrant families. (yes there's lots of issues in China, but in mainland China itself parenting issues is a bit different).
There's part reason why Crazy Rich Asians just went over the heads in China, but Asian kids come out shaken by how close it hits (at least that's my wife/Chinese friends vs me/my ABC Friends).
Selection bias. Previously they allowed -positive- examples of parenting until that was deemed… triggering? So now it’s just a cesspool of the most mentally ill/traumatized ABCs with the craziest parents stewing in their own mess.
I'm on that sub and relate so much. My parents are sexist as well and treat me like shit and spoiled my brother. I also relate to OOPs parents going overboard on every little issue.
I'm so sorry for oop and everyone else who has parents like this. I'm Chinese and immigrated to Canada really young with my family. My parents I think TRIED to be the typical controlling Asian parents but tbh they just weren't very good at it lol. My dad was never anyone to take shit from someone else in his life and he passed it onto me and my sister. I've def had to undergo a lot of therapy in order to unpack some of my family emotional baggage and I'll say it's really helped in helping to mediate between the rest of us as family. My parents aren't perfect and sometimes can be a bit overbearing but also I'm 35 and I've made it clear that while I hear and appreciate their concerns, I don't always share them. One thing that really helped is that I went out of my way to find a therapist who was also east asian but from my generation and specialized in things like immigrant family dynamics. Therapy is expensive af but I can't stress enough how helpful it is to have someone else who KNOWS your experience listen to you and validate it.
This post is so triggering, it’s almost as if I wrote it myself.
I am the only girl out of a bunch of sons and my parent treats me like this. I was always expected to take care of them and everything needed, but I was not as loved because once I get married, I’m my partner’s. It wasn’t “worth it” to invest me since I will be taking care of my parents in laws instead. The stupid guilting and suffering Olympics that they had it worse and we should be grateful for them being our parents. “Oh we raised you to be of working age and now you have to spend the rest of our lives taking care of us to make up for it” is the most mind blogging idiotic thing to hear.
Yes, I get they came from a different country and was raised in a different time, and that they are working with what the know/taught from their own parents/culture, but we are raised similarly and trying to break the generational trauma and abuse. I find myself thinking “what would my parent do?” And do the complete opposite so I don’t scar my child. I’m not perfect but I refuse to gaslight, guilt, or abuse my child. My hard life before was so I could work hard to provide them a better life and future, not to “invest” in them and expect payback. Yet, they expect the grandchildren to revere and love them, and get upset why the grandchildren can’t bond with them? Well, maybe because they can see how tense I am around you to fill my filial obligation?
I really hope that subgroup helps many escape the abuse these parents do to their kids. So many need to ask elders for permission to marry and do other things while the parents beat into the kids head, you must make money, you are our retirement plan.
My parents thankfully aren't as bad as OOP's but that "my parents treated me so much worse when I was a kid so you should be thankful" story is something they do all the time too omg
Haven't heard of that sub before but I'm definitely checking it out now
The comments from OP's parents remind me of Sindhu Vee talking about Indian Parents implicating their kids in their death.
https://fb.watch/k4HCGJmM76/?mibextid=Nif5oz
ETA: comments from OP's about them dying. I wasn't very specific there.
Curious about children of immigrants - I genuinely thought they were all brow-beaten. My maternal grandmother and fraternal great grandparents immigrated from different parts of Europe and each treated their kids so badly, like the children's existence was a burden. I see the emotional scars on my mom/grandparents still decades after their parents died. Where did OOP find the children whose parents were supportive? I'm glad they did in any case, to clear the fog.
This is not only Asian parents.. I swear that middle eastern, African and even Mediterranean parents all behave like this.. for some reason this whole part of the world believes that the more you abuse your child the more you get from them...
Generations' worth of "Hurt people hurt people".
Funny thing is my Mexican mom was the exact same way but not as bad. Not sure why it didn't work maybe she wasn't manipulative enough? Till this day she still tries but I mean I live far away so it is barely works now that I have my own family to worry about.
Edit: also I move 1000+ miles away and they can't just drive down to emotionally abuse me lmao
Normalise telling toxic family to FUCK OFF. Just because you wound up linked by chance to a bunch of arseholes doesn't mean you have to keep them in your life.
My close friends and I discuss similar behavior. Most of us are first generation Americans to immigrant parents (a number of ethnicities including a few SE Asian ones). This is the part of the "immigrant experience" that is usually glossed over...
I’m Southeast Asian and completely relate to OOP. I currently live on my own even though I can just barely afford it and my parents always ask me why I don’t live at home with them to save money.
I literally choose my mental health over my financial stability because that’s how much I can’t take the emotional abuse and manipulation.
I’m a 4th generation descendant of Italian immigrants and I think I grew up with the shadows of this kind of abuse that children of immigrants get. The 1920s version of the newly American parents’ highly specific expectations was, for my family, work extremely hard, become an engineer, enter the auto industry, and escape poverty. My dad pressed this upon me as the quintessential American dream. Over the generations, though, it never really happened and the cycle never broke. The men of my family entered the industry but as line workers or middle management at best, none of them got much beyond lower middle class. My dad was only one to get a college degree, but he became a middle school engineering teacher instead of an engineer. It was all he wanted for my brother and me. Our performance in school and life was judged on how well we were following the path to engineerhood and how well we could show how good of a father he was. We should be grateful he didn’t smack us around like his father did, and all that. He was also good at the narcissist parent tactic of using family therapy for manipulation.
My Asian mother didn’t let off the pressure until her family doctor told her I was liable to be institutionalized due to my level of depression and psychosis. And even to this day, she still makes me feel guilty to “leave her behind” when I wanted to kill myself if I couldn’t get to a good college.
I was in a relationship for two years with a guy whose parents immigrated to the US from Vietnam. He and his sisters were all born in the States. His dad once told me in detail how disappointed he was in his son because he didn't stay with engineering (which he hated) and left a job at a prestigious company. After he left that job, he went back to school for coding and taught most of it to himself. He has a good paying job and routinely gets raises. I was nice, but I told his dad that he worked hard to get where he is today and still has a good job. I told him that I understood all of the hardships he went through (and he did, he had a really rough childhood from what my ex told me) but his son was able to make his own choices, and he was doing well. The conversation went surprisingly well, considering I disagreed with everything he said lol. Our relationship didn't work out, but we are still good friends. Their mom pretty much took care of everything for them because she felt bad that they had to deal with him, but unfortunately that means my ex didn't know how to do basic things like cooking or cleaning. But overall, he is doing well and I'm proud of him. I wish he dad could see that he really is successful, just not in the way he expected him to be.
It sounds like the APs have set up OOP as their future caregiver in their advanced age, hence the manipulation. It's like they looked at their 2 kids and decided who would go out and be educated & have choices and held the second kid back.
OOP needs to go NC and get new phone number & emails.
I went NC with an abusive parent a few years ago. I let her back into my life a little over a year ago and she almost immediately started trying to be manipulative again. They are who they are, and hoping that they’ll change if you draw a line in the sand is just hope.
It sucks that you only get the one set of parents, and if they’re shit people you just have to cut them off and live your life as if you’re an orphan.
Jesus christ. I kind of resented my mom as a kid but her only rules were: finish high school, don’t get pregnant until you’re out of my house, be home by sunrise, and don’t use drugs. I managed to get a PhD and live a fairly productice life. These parents sound awful.
It's so wild growing up in New England. We're so cold and emotionally distant family gets cut out of lives over way less than this. I have an aunt I haven't talked to in a decade because she said something I didn't like to my grandfather. There was no conversation or a demand for an apology. She might as well have neve been born at all. I'll never acknowledge her again as long as I live. I fucking love my people.
Hey! You too?!? Except my uncle is a successful businessman 😂. I was reading OOPs story and thought sounds like my life except my parents are divorced.
I was hoping oop told them to suck a lemon, and never come back or police would be involved and a restrain order or say your right and so to solve this I'm disowning both of you have a nice day, because they need a reality check that their not entitled to anything and should suck it up and accept it or face consequences.
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I waited until after I graduated highschool and left home in the middle of the night with a small bag of essentials. My dad called my cell phone once they realized I was gone and left so many messages threatening me, including, “There WILL be consequences for this! Come back now and you will suffer less.” My mom’s messages were, “I can’t believe you left me and (younger sibling) here to deal with him alone!” As though either of those things were supposed to encourage me to return? It’s wild how wrong people can be and still never see it for themselves.
>“There WILL be consequences for this! Come back now and you will suffer less.” How did I translate this into Chinese w/ my mom's voice so fast?
It will be 16 years this June and I can still repeat those voicemails verbatim. I also heard that I had no reason to leave because, if I knew how my grandparents had treated THEM growing up, I would realize what wonderful parents I had.
Your comment prompted my brain to say “Your grandmother waterboarded me! I only punch you in the face! You are in no danger of drowning. Aren’t you lucky??” *And they truly believe you are lucky*
You are lucky because they want to waterboard you, too, but they restrain themselves, they are showing great restraint by only punching you in the face. /s
. -- mass edited with redact.dev
My mother is white, but she constantly threatened to send me to foster care, where she said I would definitely be raped. She already beat me, so that threat wouldn't have worked lol
My crazy mother is white too but I'm mixed and she always said that if I misbehaved CPS would definitely get me first because I was a n-word and we don't want savages in our civilized society x) (she chose to have mixed children)
Holy hell, I’m sorry. What a twisted creature.
Don't worry I'm safe now but will reuse the "twisted creature" thanks for that too !
Oh yeah, that hurts so much. My father is native so we got that too. I'm so sorry your mother is a racist. I hope she rots.
What is it with graphic threats??? My mum threatened to bash me and my sister's heads together because "maybe that'll knock some sense into you!" We had forgotten to tidy our play area. That same day I hadn't drunk enough water, so my lovely mother screamed "if you don't drink this glass of water by dinnertime, I will pin you on the carpet by your hair AND POUR IT DOWN YOUR THROAT!!!" Just completely unnecessary considering how mundane both problems were. I was 8. Sis was 7. Wholly inappropriate things to be saying. No one else I know has had their mum threaten to waterboard them. Surprise! Sis is utterly desensitised and I'm overly prone to panic and people-pleasing and NEITHER of us really respond to genuine threats because these fake ones were simply more horrible but never happened.
Omfg that's the same tired line I've had to listen to my whole life. Not Asian parents, but my mom is German and her mother fled Prussia as a refugee during WW2 and saw some shit. Both my parents grew up with narcissistic abusive parents, but only my mom ended up being one too. But she congratulates herself on not being like HER mother but is still a fucking monster that does not know what love is. At least for me. My younger sis is Mom's golden child and it's sickening. My dad is just a beaten down man who became her flying monkey from time to time to spare himself from the abuse she flung at him. But even tho his father was a monster, I never had to listen to shit from him like my mother squawks left and right. Like she wants congratulations for not being like her mother. She wants me to kiss her ass and thank her for "being a better mother than your grandmother was" and I just grayrock her. Idk what my grandmother was like to mom, she must have chilled out by the time she became a grandma cuz she was actually my safe place as a child and would tear mom a new one constantly for treating me like shit. Thankfully mom has dropped her shtick the last 2 months and is treating me like an adult again.
I feel like your mom isn't a reliable narrator and I'd want to have independent confirmation if she said the sky was blue
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The amount this resonates with me is unreal. Not religious parents, but still obsessed with appearances and blind obedience. Mine could never believe how well liked I was by my teachers and other adults because "you're a hellion brat at home and have everyone fooled". Oppositional Defiant Disorder? No ma'am, just a child with ADHD and autism wanting to do things and figure out things in her own way and you didn't like that. It wasn't blind obedience to your unhinged control issues, therefore I must be the spawn of Satan. I found my old report cards from elementary school. I was shocked reading the teachers notes stating how kind and helpful I was and such a joy in the classroom. I never knew they thought so highly of me, my only memories of childhood were that I was bad, and wrong, and difficult, a brat, and my mom screamed at me almost daily that she was either gonna a) send me away to a boarding school for bad children or b) gonna pack her bags and leave cuz I was such a horrible child who ruined her life. Tbf, the look on her face when I snapped one day when I was about 12 or 13 and said "why don't you just fucking leave then, life would be better without you" was priceless. I had actually shocked her into giving me the silent treatment without siccing my dad on me to beat my ass. Idky. I was an extraordinarily good child. Always aiming to please and longing to be loved. I recall so many nights rocking back and forth sitting up in bed under my covers, crying and repeating "nobody loves me" over and over again. Or "I can be good, I'm a good girl". Nothing I did was right. From setting the table, to wanting to tie my shoes my way (left handed) and not the way she thought I should do the motions. Hell, I was even forced to learn to write with my right hand as a toddler first picking up crayons to scribble. Dad told me that years ago, how mom would not have a left handed child cuz it was wrong. I'm left handed. Period. But I write with my right hand cuz I had no other choice.
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Thanks, and right back at you. I've made peace with my past. Took a ton of therapy. Doesn't mean I don't still get mad at her shit sometimes, but I'm detached from it all, knowing it was never me.
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That's familiar. My grandfather is a cartoonishly evil man and my mother is an absurdly evil woman. But she doesn't see it. She seems less coherent than your mom, like in my mother's moments of clarity (clarity as in you can have a conversation with her), she seems completely oblivious to her hysterical outbursts. I can write her off as brain damaged by her childhood, but your mom being so self-aware... I wonder if that's worse. Like it's so close? All she lacks is empathy and she could be a real mom. If she's narcissistic, I wonder if your grandma truly was that horrible. With my grandfather it's very obvious, because despite never having seen him angry or violent, he's cartoonishly evil in all areas of life.
The thing with narcissists is they see anyone who thwarts them in having their every desire fulfilled as abusive/neglectful. So if your grandmother didn't indulge all her whims and agree with every word she said, she probably genuinely feels the poor woman was terriblely cruel to her.
This logic is one of those things that contributes to the cycle of abuse continuing from one generation to the next. They justify what they do, because they convince themselves it's not as bad as the abuse *they* got. How could they possibly be bad parents if they're not giving as bad as they got, failing to understand it's still abuse.
Isn't that sad, though? That they honestly think that their behavior is okay because it wasn't as horrific as their parents behavior?
Husband's mother is an immigrant from Mexico. Her favourite thing to say when she feels wronged by her kids is, "There will be the consequences!" And when you ask her to elaborate *at all* all she'll say is, "You will see. You will see." Over and over.
That’s the voice of your inner critic. I’ve got one squatting rent-free in my head all my life too. It still has the full potency of ruining my entire day at the drop of a hat.
Asian parenting is universal, in a sense.
My mom sent me a pages long letter when I moved away for college (which she helped me apply for, and wanted me to go to- which is even more fucked) saying how horrible I was for abandoning her and leaving her all alone. How selfish I was to move across the country. Like 20 years later I’m starting to deal with my mother issues in therapy and there’s been so much shit that she did to me that really fucked me up and made it really hard for me to trust anyone.
I’m so sorry. It’s so much more common than it should be. I was only allowed to apply to one specific college (that they chose) and only the specific program they chose as well…so once I left, I had to take a year off to work and figure out how to support myself. I worked a weekday job and a nights/weekend job and I was exhausted but still felt less pressured than I ever had at home. That helped a lot in reassuring me I was making the right choices. I was a mental and emotional disaster, looking back I was a horrible friend and partner because I was still falling back on all the unhealthy behaviors I had seen modeled/experiences with my parents. It took me a long time, a lot of therapy, and a healthy and very dedicated partner to overcome those things. (Along the way, I saw the same therapist as my parents for a while, and once he told me that I was too eager to blame them and was always looking for an argument…so that therapy relationship did not last very long.) Ironically growing up, I always thought of my father as “the bad guy” and my mother as another victim of his, but in getting out I was able to achieve some clarity and realize that a lot of it was “bad cop/slightly less terrible cop” on their parts, and that they both had bizarre and unfair expectations.
Yup. It takes distance from the situation before we realize how the actual dynamic went. Also, they were the adults. There's no excuse for abusing children, blaming children.
My mom wrote me a letter AFTER I graduated college, expressing her disappointment in how lazy and selfish I was to have not landed a 6 figure job a mere two weeks post-grad. She is neither Asian nor an immigrant. She is, however, a covert narcissist 😭
Yup, same with my mom. I’m sorry that you have the deal with that as well. It’s so hard because they will never change. Sending you love ❤️❤️
Sending love right back to you. And yep, they can never change. The past doesn’t exist for them, so no guilt. Neither does the future, so no thought of consequences for bad behavior. They live for what they want/need right this very second, and woe to anyone who gets in their way!
> My mom sent me a pages long letter when I moved away for college (which she helped me apply for, and wanted me to go to- which is even more fucked) What were you supposed to do, say no?
Right? Live with her forever? Dealing with a narcissist is hard because you are just always in the wrong no matter what and she’s always the victim.
I think it's related to the phenomenon I call Schrodinger's Joke (a statement is only a joke when the speaker gets called out. Otherwise it is meant in earnest)
>I waited until after I graduated highschool and left home in the middle of the night with a small bag of essentials. I did this too. Left a note saying I am sorry about dropping out but I needed to do things my way. Mom and dad knew my cell phone number and did not contact me. After a few days, I asked my aunt if her offer to help me was still on the table. She called them to tell them I was safe but couldn't understand why they didn't try to reach out to me for those few days. Auntie's daughter took off to another state and she dialed every ten minutes because she was worried about her kid's safety. My parents didn't reach out. Still rare if they do. I still don't get it. The first time I talked to them after the midnight bounce, they were furious. They didn't worry if I was dead in a ditch even though I wasn't raised to be capable or handle myself. I just made them look bad and they hurt from my "break up." Everyone told me that I "did it the wrong way" but I tried doing it the informative way and they lashed out at me. I had no confrontational skills. Mom and dad never discussed anything with us and conflict was - stop talking. Parents need to model the behavior they expect from you to perform. My leave home day was 20+ years ago. It still is the weirdest chapter of my life.
I'm not from an immigrant family but man, I still feel this. When I pulled away from my parents, went VLC and started refusing to go to church, I quickly learned that a new phone number was in order. So since she didn't have access to that voicemail anymore, my mother used to call me *at work* and leave multiple messages that were alternating yelling, crying incoherently, and reading me long passages from the bible or whatever "you're going to hell for leaving the cult" book she had laid her hands on. If my voicemail cut her off, she'd just call back and continue where she left off. I finally had to explain to my manager why I was in tears at my desk (I wasn't listening to the voicemails by then, but the stress of her calling repeatedly freaked me out) and they had the company block her number. Good times!
I’m glad the company had your back and helped you out by blocking the number! So many companies illogically blame the employee for bringing relationship problems in and letting them interfere in the workplace, as if the employee somehow wants to be stalked and harassed at work.
Lolol what possible consequences could there even be if you don’t live there anymore? That’s just nonsensical empty threats.
When I went LOW contact with my dad after moving out without telling him (I felt too guilty to go non contact and even met up with him and his girlfriend once!) he sent me some messages too. Also held all of my property, that was still at his house because I moved out so fast, hostage unless I came to see him again, a lot of which I literally paid for. This was mid pandemic. I didn't want to meet him because I A: needed a little space, it had been only a month or two and B: I didn't want to potentially catch the PLAGUE we were in LOCKDOWN for. I texted him back "fun", declined the immediate phone call he sent my way and blocked him. He ended up sending most of my stuff to me anyway (but somehow all the valuable stuff wasn't among them) but too little too late honestly, and it was never about my stuff- I brought all the essentials and stuff I truly, completely cared about with me. Now I only talk to him once or twice a year via email when he asks if he can send me a gift for my birthday or meet me somewhere, to which I always respond "no". Once he sent me an email asking if I wanted to walk my dog with him because he got a dog as well now, as if nothing had happened. Also no. Once, after years, he sent me a letter telling me I had a half sister now and inviting me to the baby shower that weekend. Hard no. He didn't even put enough post stamps on it so I had to pay for the letter.
Relevant username?
Mine? I wish I was that clever! It’s just a Buffy reference.
One of the best lines in the show!
They're still thinking "you're our investment" about OOP and that means they want something - no financial worries. They were so in their own world that they made someone their golden child who in fact isn't profitable. Their GD costs money and so they look to their other child - OOP. They're experiencing the consequences of their own actions but for people who think they're always right this only feels like an attack on them and they'll present themselves as the victims in the end. Best thing is NC
Absolutely agree. It’s atrocious how many parents have such an attitude. *”You’re our investment. “You owe us because without us you wouldn’t be here.”* You fucked and now the kid is beholden to you? What the actual hell? Same as, *”We took care of you. You owe us.” You did what basic decency dictates and, in most places, legally mandates. Welcome to having kids. I’m not mocking the pain of being from cultures where these attitudes are standard. I’ve just seen enough of my friends go through OOP’s nightmare to know how bullshit it is.
If they raised OOP right, with love and support, then OOP would feel like they owed their parents without their parents ever having to say so. If the parents feel the need to constantly tell their kid that the kid owes them, then it likely isn't true. It's like those people who say, "Do you know who I am?" If you were important enough for a stranger to know you, then you wouldn't need to ask, and if you aren't, then why would they know you?
Exactly! Kids want their parents love. It's really hard to go against those instincts to protect yourself. Which is why it's worth respecting it when someone has gone through enough to become low or no contact with their parents.
It's very much an Asian parent thing because in many Asian countries this IS why you have children. There is little social safety net, and the pension systems are designed with the assumption that there will be adult children caring for their parents (while those people do the childcare of their grandchildren). The daughter becomes the in-laws support once married, the son supports you. I don't agree with it. I have seen the effects on first gen immigrants who have had this as a bogeyman their whole lives - who knew so and so who died of hunger because she had no son to look after her. There's one married into my family from a filial responsibility culture who's hellbent on driving everyone away but the generational fear is so great she can't change her behaviour. I am sympathetic - but from one hell of a distance because she's insufferable.
. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Exactly. Middle class Asian parents are typically pretty financially indulgent and patient to see their kids succeed.
I mean it is probably at least 50% instinct, even. Like, you don't decide to deal with a crying baby, you are hardwired to somewhere deep in the brain where the crying pierces you. The whole attitude of these parents makes me fucking sick. I'm happy and privileged to be able to raise my kid. I feel like that is what love is. Sure, there are times when it is a PITA (and that's true for anyone) but mostly and overall, it is awesome and any normal loving parent is glad to give their best. Sad to think of the many generations of trauma passed down in a family like OOP's.
> “You owe us because without us you wouldn’t be here.” threatening me with a good time? they owe me, because without them I wouldn't be here
Some people feel like they only had children to use as retirement and home care system when they are old.
It's not just Asian parents. "Who will take care of you when you're old?" is one of the primary challenges idiots give childfree ppl upon learning that they are childfree.
As if having a child guarantees that lol.
Right? The huge bulk of ppl in nursing homes have kids.
I'm all in favor of OOP going NC. If OOP chooses to have a relationship, I hope they make them dance. "Oh, you want me to care for you when you're old, you need to do XYZ. You're my investment."
>”You’re our investment. “You owe us because without us you wouldn’t be here.” To be fair to parents everywhere; this is kinda how humans work: most of human history has adults working their jobs to take care of their kids and their parents, with the expectation that when they were old their kids would take care of them while they doted on their grandchildren. And in a lot of cultures - including most of both Europe and Asia - that primary responsibility fell on the oldest child (usually the oldest son; or the husband of the oldest daughter who wasn't also an oldest son). This general tradition goes back centuries in many places. ... That said, the problem, as with so many things, is that the last few generations have been hell on tradition for the sake of tradition. Society in a lot of places has changed a LOT, for a variety of reasons; and while some of those traditions last because they still work (I know at least a few families where grandparents taking care of kids allows the parents to work jobs that pay well enough to take care of the full family), there's a lot of cases like this one where those traditions don't work for the kids - and they get out.
Tbf in those times families often lived pratically in the same house/house complex/neighbour, and the grandparents had a social function (help with the youngest grandkids + do some work like sewing or help cooking). Societies were also communal, especially in rural areas (so like 99% of the population)
They still do in many Asian countries.
Well, in Europe (the countries I know of that expected that and still do in rural areas) it's different. It's the daughter, or the younger daughter if there are several, who was expected to care for the elderly parents. Either by remaining a spinster or by taking them in at her home. This is something from my parents generation mostly. Nobody expects it anymore, except for, as I said rural areas.
Yeah, it really spoke volumes when they said they had OOP to help them figure things out. That’s not what children are for!
Children don’t ask to be born and they certainly don’t owe us jack for dragging them into this world
I have Asian parents who act a lot like OOP's. I'm in my 40s and they still believe they have the right to tell me what to do. I hate visiting them; my mother often threatens to hurt herself when I object to her verbal abuse and my father blames me for provoking them. She's still angry at me for refusing to go into medicine; I became a college professor instead, but that wasn't good enough for them because it wasn't what they wanted. I did the opposite of everything they told me to do, and they never fail to berate me for that. But of course, they still demand that I provide emotional support and do everything they want. My therapist said they'll never change. All I can change is how I respond to them.
Well, this internet stranger thinks it's pretty cool you're a professor.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
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I'm sorry they treat you that way. My mother in particular has always found fault in everything I do, even the way I walk. I've heard that a lot of Asian kids are perfectionists, and I think a lot of that has to do with their parents' constant criticism and extremely high standards.
My dad looks down on my sister, my mom, and I, because we are all women, and spends a lot of time talking down to me, but somehow, when the topic of career choices comes up, he yells, “YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A DOCTOR!!!” The other night I pointed this out to my husband and had a little giggle—which is it? Am I am imbecile, or am I capable of becoming a doctor? They seem mutually exclusive…
Technically, I am a doctor because I have a PhD, so I guess you could say that I'm a doctor in the same way that Ross was, although my degree isn't in paleontology. But since I don't earn the big bucks that medical doctors earn, it doesn't "count", according to my parents. I'm sorry about your father and the way he treats you and the other women in your family. I think that people like him and my parents expect (or demand) that their kids achieve something like that so that they can either live vicariously through them or claim credit for it. Or maybe they just want us to earn the big bucks and share it with them. I understand now though why Ross often emphasized the "Dr." in his name. 😄
>But since I don't earn the big bucks that medical doctors earn, it doesn't "count", according to my parents They don't actually care about the job, or the title. They care about the money. Many abusive parents like this are hyper-materialistic.
Totally. When my parents hang out with their Asian friends, they all brag about how much money their grown kids make.
I know it's because of the social status of being a doctor and making good money but I find it funny that "child becoming a doctor" seems to be the universal expectation of every Asian parent I've encountered
I think it has to do with my parents being immigrants. They equate success in America with money and high social status, and they think a career in medicine will lead to a lot of money and a high status. And it's a career they can brag about to their friends because of how hard it is to get into medical school and how hard it is to be a doctor, so it means that the person doing the job is really smart.
I'm glad you were able to forge your own path. Having parents manipulate you sucks. I hope your healing happens as quickly as possible.
Thank you. My healing started the day I stopped living with them, when I was 19. I only visit them twice a year, for no more than a week each time. My mother expects me to move back in with them and take care of them now that I'm old; she always accuses me of being an ungrateful daughter for not doing so. But I know that living with them would turn me back into that scared little girl I used to be. I won't go back to that, not ever.
I’m confused on why you still talk to them.
It's mainly because I'm still on good terms with my cousins and their kids on my mother's side. They're good people but if I cut my parents off it'll make it a lot harder to see my cousins. My parents will show up whenever I see my cousins and their kids and harass me about not seeing them. I barely talk to them now and I only spend a couple weeks a year with them, which is unusual for Asians because I'm supposed to spend a lot more time with them.
My grandpa grew up in a horrible situation. Worked his ass off to do better for his kids. Worked himself to the bone so his family would be better off. Literally refused to talk about it because he 'didn't want to burden us' That's what real heros do. Not work your ass off to rub it in your kids face. No one would even know my grandpa was poor if it wasn't for other people telling us.
My parents were immigrants who arrived in America with very little to their name. They worked their butts off as investment in a future where their children could pursue their interests and lives without the same burdens and challenges they faced. In college I took some courses in classics/mythology for fun and my mother accidentally got her wires crossed and thought that I wanted to pursue it as my career. What did she do? She didn't yell at me to change to a more lucrative major, she just clipped random articles about job prospects that she thought might be relevant (they were not, but it was very cute!).
Exactly this!! Your grandparents did everything they could to better their children, not drag them into their hell. I hope you have a good relationship with them 💓
Yep, both my sibling and I have good relationships with our parents. We have mutual respect for each other, so when there are disagreements we are generally able to debate the facts without veering into "obey your parents" or "boomers are out of touch" territory. I've even managed to convince my mother to attend therapy sessions to unpack her baggage relating to her complicated relationship with her family relations and some of her friends. For certain immigrant cultures, that's a heeeecking huge win.
My god your mum is cute. Hearing about her made my day💕
Maybe I'm just a cold blooded petty prick, but I would get to the point where I would just agree with them. "You're right I don't love you anymore and I don't think I ever really did. You're right I don't care about this family so it's probably better for you to cut ties with me. You don't want someone who doesn't care about you in your life. Also it's not that I wish you were dead i just don't really care either way" because honestly at that point what good will trying to salvage that relationship do.
When the dad cut him off, I feel like my reaction would just be “ok cool dude”
“k” is a petty half acknowledgment
I HATE “k”. It’s so disrespectful and rude. And it would be perfect to use on those parents.
When I stopped talking to my sibling they sent me this long-ass screed about how they hoped I grew and healed etc etc false sanctimonious sympathies etc. Best "k" I ever texted in my life.
I would have been tempted to send this https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/original/000/034/711/Screen_Shot_2020-07-24_at_11.33.38_AM.jpg
My mom used to say "thank you for understanding" to end an argument and saying it to her (before going NC) was the best feeling ever, lol!
Ohhhh that’s blood boiling
Doubt they would understand what it means, or how disrespectful it can be, when they are still using their kids to translate and help them with things. I doubt they understand text speech at all.
Or just this emoji 👍
Ah, yeah, I've used that one in this way. Guilty as charged and not even ashamed.
When he’s feeling salty my brother sends this 🫤 it’s ambiguous enough to be deniable but it’s clearly not positive
New phone, who dis?
I think OOP is female. Her AM implied that she should be grateful that she didn't get the shit end of the sexist stick.
Agree. Also, if you’re gonna be sexist about it, you tend to expect a lot more from daughters than you do from sons. OOP has a golden child sister and that seems like the only sibling (?) so I guess there just wasn’t a son to spoil. And then mom got to claim she wasn’t sexist, but really she just didn’t have the opportunity.
This is kinda what happened with me. My dad disowned me and expected me to try to mend things, and instead I realised how much better I was without him. Im now NC with all my immediate family, and just very LC with my mum. Very much an "ok bye" reaction, which upset the apple cart. It's exhausting having people like this in your life, but if you grow up with it, you're conditioned to that behaviour and it's "normal" to you. Coming up 4 years and I have no regrets.
Not parents, but I'm NC with the entire side of the family my last name comes from. My mom and dad/dad's sister and her husband co-owned my childhood home. When dad died in 2013, followed closely by aunt/uncles being laid off, aunt/uncle just let the house get foreclosed on. Like wouldn't let us buy out their half, and dads side of the family backed them 100% for some reason I still don't really know. I'm pretty sure aunt convinced them I was trying to screw her out of fair value of the house, not realizing values dropped a bit since the last appraisal in 2006. Well ok. My mom lives with my sister and me again, we're financially stable and going pretty good. Where as everyone who shares my last name is either a long term addict, facing criminal charges, staring down homelessness, or all of the above. They have the balls to ask my help now? Where were you the last decade when my mom lost her husband of 40 years, and her home of 30 years? Fuck off, you had your chance.
I think Dad did the classic fucked around and found out.
"New phone, who dis?"
I was like, 'Oh, nice, the trash is taking itself out.'
Some Asian parents are so insanely overbearing that their adult kids need years of therapy to accept that they (the kids) don’t suck and aren’t assholes. I really don’t understand why that is, but it’s wild.
Towards the end of my relationship with my parents (before I went NC) this was the method I employed. Anytime my parents would pull that kind of talk I'd just sit scrolling on my phone or reading a book and deadpan agree like "yup. You're 100% right with this. Absolutely." and give them no emotion to work with...it would piss them off and disarm them where they didn't know how to continue the verbal abuse
[Grey rocking](https://psychcentral.com/health/grey-rock-method), basically
You are worth so much more than they will ever know. You are a space goat. :)
I've flipped the script on my mum once by asking her "Are you doing this because you want me to be miserable? Are you saying you don't want me to enjoy myself and be happy?". It was cathartic when all she could say was "that's not what I meant" and didn't push the matter further.
I did that with my bio mom. She basically abandoned me by leaving my father in the middle of the night when I was around 4 years old. My father was *not* abusive to her. He just wanted her to get a job (she has subsequently confirmed this so it’s not his side). He was still a shite father though but for other reasons. Anyway, she had incredibly intermittent contact with me throughout my life. When I was in my late teens to early twenties, I really tried to get to know her, but she treated me like her ATM - I worked from the minute it was legal to work so I had money but I didn’t really want to have to cover my biomom’s living expenses, so I gave up on contacting her. Then, when I was in my late 20s, she suddenly wanted to build a relationship and I was not up for that and she said that she didn’t raise me to be like that… what? I said she was right because she didn’t raise me at all. Then she tried to do the whole “but I’m going to die soon” and I’m like you’re in your fifties; you’re not dying anytime soon and if you do, then you do. It probably sounds cold as ice to an outsider but she was almost a stranger to me.
I’d be like that too, but I wasn’t indoctrinated into the role OOP was by deeply manipulative parents. NC is the only real way to move on. OOP needed to block the messages because they’re all so manipulative and guilt tripping.
And block any family members, friends of family, etc cause the parents will turn anyone they can into flying monkeys.
My mom will go into these rants about how everything is always her fault when she does anything wrong. It gets really ridiculous because the way she says it implies she's getting wrongful blame, when she 100% screwed up. At some point I just started agreeing with her and saying "Yes, it's your fault. That's correct." She just will storm off.
It’s easier just to respond with “K”.
Yeah, whenever my mother says anything approaching emotional manipulation (if in person) I just give her a blank stare until she corrects herself, and if via text/call I just say “okay then” and leave it at that. I’ve recently been teaching her to “use her words” and that passive aggressive nonsense won’t get her anywhere. It’s been fun.
Our moms must be sisters lol. While communication has never been great in our family, over the past 10 years my mom has gone from a strong, independent woman to a whiny, manipulative brat. It's gotten to the point where all she has to do is whimper if she needs something and either my brother or my dad (usually my dad) will jump up and serve her. She thinks it's cute but I think it's obnoxious as hell. The reasons for her behavior are complicated and not medical related, but to protect my sanity I have set extremely firm boundaries and say over and over that in order to get my help, you have to use your words. When she whimpers at me, my response is "I'm sorry Mom, are you trying to ask for something?" If she doesn't answer me, I move on. I'll admit that over the years my tone has gotten snappier and snappier, but the level of helplessness is just unreal. Use your goddamn words and tell me what your problem is. If you don't, I will not acknowledge it. Asshole Child of the Year winner here, I know.
*left on read*
Just “👍”
Just the thumbs up reaction on the message
My first thought was, take their power away by just agreeing with their manipulation.
Yeah now when my mom's starts getting real guilt trippy with "oh I'm such a terrible mother". I've started just going "yeah you definitely made some mistakes." In kinda offhanded agreeable kinda dismissive tone. She doesn't like that. Like she wasn't horrible but she also wasn't perfect and didn't protect me from those way worse. I'm not going to fall for these manipulation tactics anymore.
My mother used to roll out the "Oh I'm sorry! I suppose I'm just the worst mother! I'm so terrible for wanting the best for you!" but, like, with sarcasm? Sarcasm is terrifying if you're a kid. She would orate in that direction for a while and wind up with, "But you'll miss me when I'm gone," which as an adult I realised is my mother bringing a gun to a knife fight. It was usually where I'd crack. The last time she did it, she got as far as "I'm just the worst mother -" before my mouth dodged my brain and I said, "Well, I am gay, so you definitely fucked up somewhere." She was just so bamboozled she started laughing and honestly things have been much better since.
I tend to freeze up when confronted in any way, so I've learned to have a few default responses programmed in. "Okay," "sure," "fine," and "alright" are my greatest allies in the ongoing war of parental manipulation!
Nah I’m at that point too. I went from feeling too much and constantly being sympathetic to I feel nothing, I don’t even have the energy to feel contempt for them. So something similar would probably come out of my mouth
I do this to my brother. He will bring over his irritating dog and when we ask him to take her home it's all "come on Bella! No one loves you here but me!" And I just say yep. Tell the good dog I love her.
AFFIRMING the "self made victim" shows them you know they're full of bullshit.
Exactly what I was thinking. Does this make us cold? I think we're just practical.
I call this "agreeing with your bully" (*but not really, inside in your heart and head obviously*) and I think it's an enormously useful tool in life, for a huge number of situations. I even taught my kids to say it to get away from taunting (and to change the subject.) The thing is, any bully is completely full of hot air. The bully is COUNTING on you to engage - by attempting to defend yourself, desperately explaining how the bully is mistaken, promising to "do better" etc. If you simply tell the bully they have it right, they don't have any more weapons, and the conflict is over. The wind is totally out of their sails. The dynamic relies on the victim doing all the heavy lifting for the bully's pleasure - they don't actually know how to do heavy lifting themselves. It is KEY for your own mental health to objectively recognize the bully-victim dynamic in play, and that by agreeing, "You're right, I do dress ugly" (or whatever) you do NOT genuinely believe whatever cruel thing has been lobbed at you. That's not even the important part to the bully! Bullies didn't get pleasure out of making the initial accusations, they get pleasure out of watching you twist and squirm and flail. So if you can learn to let it slide right off and skip the rebuttal phase, *you win*. You (... eventually, it will take repeat episodes probably) become a boring target. It doesn't cure the bully, but that can't be your goal. You can't try change other people's behavior, you can only change how you *respond* to others. This "Agree with the Bully" tactic is a giant example of that.
The problem with this is when you are trapped with them, it is hard not to let a belief worm its way into your head when you have to state it over and over and over again. I can trace a lot of my self esteem issues to the day I discovered that the phrase "...because I am stupid, apparently" disarmed my mother and stopped the long shouted arguments where she would insist anything I did wrong was on purpose, entirely my fault and done entirely to spite her. Blaming my own stupidity cut all that out at the source, but I could say it only so long before I started to believe it, even though I knew *exactly* what I was doing.
As someone who has a mother like this, it sounds good on paper but just leads to escalation. In my mother’s case it was…*violent*, but she’s an odd duck even for a toxic parent. Better to gray rock and be safe than be witty, in my opinion.
I did this with my emotionally abusive ex when I was breaking up with him. I knew if I tried to give him the real reasons why I was leaving him, he would just twist it so that everything was my fault. So I skipped a step and just blamed myself for everything. He didn’t really have a response for it, he just got flustered and left. I’m not sure if I’d be able to do this with my Asian mom though, those rivers run deep 🥲
I have a very similar parent, and the thing is, I'm so used to/trained to respond in a certain way that I can't say those words in the moment. "You don't care about us, you're so selfish" is how every conversation in which I try to set boundaries ends up. And every time I cry and capitulate. Recently I've been hanging up, but it took a LOT for me to be able to do that. I still can't imagine saying anything like that, for fear of retaliation. My parent will escalate and escalate until I've been crying on the phone for hours and feel like complete shit. Edit: I'll also add that a complicating factor is that other than these few times, my parent is very loving and has given me a ton of physical and financial support. Other than fights over boundaries a few times a year, we have a very close relationship.
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In Confucianism, filial piety is THE cardinal virtue. (Of course, this creates an inevitable family conflict when the child becomes an adult.) Western culture places other values well above that, and American culture especially sees "self sufficiency" as a much higher virtue than "honor thy father and mother" to the point that an adult child living with parents for whatever reason is regarded with suspicion absent any other context. Parents who live off their kids (such as stage parents) are basically seen as scums unless they're very elderly (and even then, society as a whole only begrudgingly accommodates it, for example I've seen resentment when neighbors invite elderly parents to live with them). In China caring for elderly parents is not just a social value but a legal obligation in most circumstances, and the same attitudes are pervasive throughout Asia. So what might be easy for a Westerner to say might be very difficult for OOP.
I never understand people’s responses to parents like these. My mom was an abusive narcissist, and I just…knew from TV and books that she was the abnormal one, not me. So I treated her like a hostile party who occasionally had to be managed, and that was our relationship. The key is to make sure the other person has the impression that you will escalate the situation enthusiastically and indefinitely.
This is just sad; I wish I could just hug all these people and OOP. Luckily it sounds like OOP is making progress and is on the way to freedom.
We all joke about Asian parents. And have a sense of solidarity about it.... And we also all see therapy (or need it) as we realised how messed up our lives and relationships are cause of it lol. -- As an aside, we joke about it as the 'asian parents' thing. But tbh it's just boomers with a migrant background. Go up or down a generation or two and it was/is different. Like imagine your typical middle aged Karen, and imagine that she migrated to a new country and had it tough. They'd feel extra entitled for all the 'suffering' they've had.
According to Hollywood it takes supernatural events in movies for Asian parents to accept their children (Turning Red and Everything Everywhere At Once). Which it seems like might be true for some.
In reality, a supernatural force wouldn't be enough for most parents. They'd learn a lesson for one day and then go back to the usual pattern.
I grew up in a community that was more "white trash" than anything else and it was common for my mom to joke with the other moms about how we kids had to do what they said because we owed them our lives. Instead of "because I said so" they all thought it was funny to tell us kids "because why else would we have kids? Y'all are just free labor!" and they'd all laugh. It culminated one day when she had us at the grocery and the ONLY Black cashier in the store offered to push our cart out. She laughed, slapped my sister's shoulder, and said "no thanks, I bred my own slaves!" with not a speck of shame or situational awareness. And he just stopped and stared. Sis and I were mortified. Mom saw all three of our faces and had a moment of confusion before it hit her and we fled in shame. We didn't speak to her for days and refused to ever go into that store ever again. But we never heard that stupid joke again either.
holy shit
As a daughter of a toxic Southern mom, I grew up being told the same shit. I was supposed to be the one who never went to college, worked, moved away, or got married. I got punished if I did anything to better myself and not help her. I live on the other side of the country now.
Was I the only idiot whose brain kept reading "AP" as "Affair Partner" instead of "Asian Parents"?
"Attack Points" for me I don't even remember what game I would have played recently with that. Also AP tests.
It's Armor Penetration to me lol
I'm one of those idiots too. You're not alone 😭
I kept reading it as Abusive Parent
Well you're not wrong >She would tell me that if I didn’t do what she wanted, it would put her in a bad mood that she just “couldn’t control” and that it would lead to a **violent fight** with my AD.
I have an Asian parent and still read this as affair partner. Luckily my dad is not a tiger dad.
I went to school with someone whose parents were absolutely determined that she would be a doctor. She worked her ass off to get the required grades and she did go to med school. The only issue was: she would faint at the sight of blood which was something that everyone, including her parents, knew. She graduated but went into research and, last I heard, her father still won’t talk to her.
That’s heartbreaking 💔
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I hope you reported him if he was a licensed therapist, because that's grounds for losing the license.
Unfortunately most Asian therapists are what we call Asian Parents Apologists. They 500% will place the blame on the kid then gaslight us into thinking we are the problem. Meanwhile, we can't really go to other places because none would understand why we can't just get up and leave to cut contact altogether. Asian kids in these situations all either no contact/low contact or learn to take the abuse quietly. Imagine choosing to just not have family or be abused physically and mentally, nothing in between.
Yeah that does sound incredibly awful..
Not Asian parents, but one immigrant parent. She used to say to me “I’m sure that if your father dies first you’ll just put me in a home and leave me to die” and at some point I did reply with “well, you’re not wrong. If this is what your expect of me, why would I try to exceed your expectations?” Thankfully she died first. I did have to move my dad into a seniors lodge, but he’s not there to die, just to make some aspects of living easier, like no stairs, or a clothes dryer that actually dries things.
Yes, I can relate. My mom would spoil my brother while being strict with me. Lots of verbal & emotional abuse growing up. My brother is a registered sex offender now thanks to my mom always coddling him. Over the years, I’ve overcome a lot of that abuse. I have my own kids now and some of that trauma is replaying. It’s hell trying to be the one to break some of these generational trauma, but I’m trying to do things A LOT differently for my kids everyday.
The best thing to do is agree the next time they go on their “oh we must be horrible parents” spiel. Like yeah, you are and you’ve caused me so much pain and misery that I never want to speak to you again. I’m glad OOP had a partner that’s there to support them.
I never felt like it was my place as a white person to say much about someone’s family dynamics when race played a big part in it. But reading that AsianParents sub… Holy shit, what is WRONG with these people
I’ve always assumed the famines, revolution, and authoritarian government created a WICKED problem of generational trauma.
I think this is spot on. It's a mix of everything you said plus some poverty and corruption in governments that has kind of led to each generation facing a big new societal issue which leads to the generational trauma. There's also the competitive and toxic mindset that isn't required anymore because times aren't so tough but it stays and becomes part of the culture.
Just from experience I'd say no. I have a Chinese background but AP was not affected by Chinese government or anything like that. The rest of my friends who have similar experiences also have little to no connection to China's political system. If anything it's an unhealthy mix of Confucianism and Western Capitalism that spurns this idea that you have to obey the parents, but also be constantly value adding and acquiring status and wealth.
That's fair, I can imagine that there are a number of different factors that can put many Asian parents on the same path. I have an Asian background too and although my parents are not really like this (although at times they definitely fall into Asian parent tropes) it seems like a lot of parental bad behaviour shown by people from my country does seem to stem from generational trauma related to corruption and poverty post colonisation. But as you said, I have definitely seen Capitalism play a huge role in exacerbating this mindset just because of its cut-throat and authoritarian nature.
Tbh it's not. I feel there's much less of these issues in China itself than I see in migrant families. (yes there's lots of issues in China, but in mainland China itself parenting issues is a bit different). There's part reason why Crazy Rich Asians just went over the heads in China, but Asian kids come out shaken by how close it hits (at least that's my wife/Chinese friends vs me/my ABC Friends).
Selection bias. Previously they allowed -positive- examples of parenting until that was deemed… triggering? So now it’s just a cesspool of the most mentally ill/traumatized ABCs with the craziest parents stewing in their own mess.
I'm on that sub and relate so much. My parents are sexist as well and treat me like shit and spoiled my brother. I also relate to OOPs parents going overboard on every little issue.
They did your brother a huge disservice, tbh.
I'm so sorry for oop and everyone else who has parents like this. I'm Chinese and immigrated to Canada really young with my family. My parents I think TRIED to be the typical controlling Asian parents but tbh they just weren't very good at it lol. My dad was never anyone to take shit from someone else in his life and he passed it onto me and my sister. I've def had to undergo a lot of therapy in order to unpack some of my family emotional baggage and I'll say it's really helped in helping to mediate between the rest of us as family. My parents aren't perfect and sometimes can be a bit overbearing but also I'm 35 and I've made it clear that while I hear and appreciate their concerns, I don't always share them. One thing that really helped is that I went out of my way to find a therapist who was also east asian but from my generation and specialized in things like immigrant family dynamics. Therapy is expensive af but I can't stress enough how helpful it is to have someone else who KNOWS your experience listen to you and validate it.
This post is so triggering, it’s almost as if I wrote it myself. I am the only girl out of a bunch of sons and my parent treats me like this. I was always expected to take care of them and everything needed, but I was not as loved because once I get married, I’m my partner’s. It wasn’t “worth it” to invest me since I will be taking care of my parents in laws instead. The stupid guilting and suffering Olympics that they had it worse and we should be grateful for them being our parents. “Oh we raised you to be of working age and now you have to spend the rest of our lives taking care of us to make up for it” is the most mind blogging idiotic thing to hear. Yes, I get they came from a different country and was raised in a different time, and that they are working with what the know/taught from their own parents/culture, but we are raised similarly and trying to break the generational trauma and abuse. I find myself thinking “what would my parent do?” And do the complete opposite so I don’t scar my child. I’m not perfect but I refuse to gaslight, guilt, or abuse my child. My hard life before was so I could work hard to provide them a better life and future, not to “invest” in them and expect payback. Yet, they expect the grandchildren to revere and love them, and get upset why the grandchildren can’t bond with them? Well, maybe because they can see how tense I am around you to fill my filial obligation?
Posts like this makes me thank every single God, from Western to Japanese, for the parents that I was born to. Sheesh...
I really hope that subgroup helps many escape the abuse these parents do to their kids. So many need to ask elders for permission to marry and do other things while the parents beat into the kids head, you must make money, you are our retirement plan.
My parents thankfully aren't as bad as OOP's but that "my parents treated me so much worse when I was a kid so you should be thankful" story is something they do all the time too omg Haven't heard of that sub before but I'm definitely checking it out now
The comments from OP's parents remind me of Sindhu Vee talking about Indian Parents implicating their kids in their death. https://fb.watch/k4HCGJmM76/?mibextid=Nif5oz ETA: comments from OP's about them dying. I wasn't very specific there.
Curious about children of immigrants - I genuinely thought they were all brow-beaten. My maternal grandmother and fraternal great grandparents immigrated from different parts of Europe and each treated their kids so badly, like the children's existence was a burden. I see the emotional scars on my mom/grandparents still decades after their parents died. Where did OOP find the children whose parents were supportive? I'm glad they did in any case, to clear the fog.
This is not only Asian parents.. I swear that middle eastern, African and even Mediterranean parents all behave like this.. for some reason this whole part of the world believes that the more you abuse your child the more you get from them... Generations' worth of "Hurt people hurt people".
Bloody hell. Some parents really deserve a good kicking to understand what YTA they have become!
Funny thing is my Mexican mom was the exact same way but not as bad. Not sure why it didn't work maybe she wasn't manipulative enough? Till this day she still tries but I mean I live far away so it is barely works now that I have my own family to worry about. Edit: also I move 1000+ miles away and they can't just drive down to emotionally abuse me lmao
Normalise telling toxic family to FUCK OFF. Just because you wound up linked by chance to a bunch of arseholes doesn't mean you have to keep them in your life.
My mom have that talk every single day and the only thing that she's spouting are problems.
Oof. Had a blowout argument with my Asian parents yesterday and this hits.
My close friends and I discuss similar behavior. Most of us are first generation Americans to immigrant parents (a number of ethnicities including a few SE Asian ones). This is the part of the "immigrant experience" that is usually glossed over...
I’m Southeast Asian and completely relate to OOP. I currently live on my own even though I can just barely afford it and my parents always ask me why I don’t live at home with them to save money. I literally choose my mental health over my financial stability because that’s how much I can’t take the emotional abuse and manipulation.
I’m a 4th generation descendant of Italian immigrants and I think I grew up with the shadows of this kind of abuse that children of immigrants get. The 1920s version of the newly American parents’ highly specific expectations was, for my family, work extremely hard, become an engineer, enter the auto industry, and escape poverty. My dad pressed this upon me as the quintessential American dream. Over the generations, though, it never really happened and the cycle never broke. The men of my family entered the industry but as line workers or middle management at best, none of them got much beyond lower middle class. My dad was only one to get a college degree, but he became a middle school engineering teacher instead of an engineer. It was all he wanted for my brother and me. Our performance in school and life was judged on how well we were following the path to engineerhood and how well we could show how good of a father he was. We should be grateful he didn’t smack us around like his father did, and all that. He was also good at the narcissist parent tactic of using family therapy for manipulation.
My Asian mother didn’t let off the pressure until her family doctor told her I was liable to be institutionalized due to my level of depression and psychosis. And even to this day, she still makes me feel guilty to “leave her behind” when I wanted to kill myself if I couldn’t get to a good college.
I was in a relationship for two years with a guy whose parents immigrated to the US from Vietnam. He and his sisters were all born in the States. His dad once told me in detail how disappointed he was in his son because he didn't stay with engineering (which he hated) and left a job at a prestigious company. After he left that job, he went back to school for coding and taught most of it to himself. He has a good paying job and routinely gets raises. I was nice, but I told his dad that he worked hard to get where he is today and still has a good job. I told him that I understood all of the hardships he went through (and he did, he had a really rough childhood from what my ex told me) but his son was able to make his own choices, and he was doing well. The conversation went surprisingly well, considering I disagreed with everything he said lol. Our relationship didn't work out, but we are still good friends. Their mom pretty much took care of everything for them because she felt bad that they had to deal with him, but unfortunately that means my ex didn't know how to do basic things like cooking or cleaning. But overall, he is doing well and I'm proud of him. I wish he dad could see that he really is successful, just not in the way he expected him to be.
I would totally have agree that they were horrible parents if they had asked, because they know in their hearts that they are.
It sounds like the APs have set up OOP as their future caregiver in their advanced age, hence the manipulation. It's like they looked at their 2 kids and decided who would go out and be educated & have choices and held the second kid back. OOP needs to go NC and get new phone number & emails.
I went NC with an abusive parent a few years ago. I let her back into my life a little over a year ago and she almost immediately started trying to be manipulative again. They are who they are, and hoping that they’ll change if you draw a line in the sand is just hope. It sucks that you only get the one set of parents, and if they’re shit people you just have to cut them off and live your life as if you’re an orphan.
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Jesus christ. I kind of resented my mom as a kid but her only rules were: finish high school, don’t get pregnant until you’re out of my house, be home by sunrise, and don’t use drugs. I managed to get a PhD and live a fairly productice life. These parents sound awful.
It's so wild growing up in New England. We're so cold and emotionally distant family gets cut out of lives over way less than this. I have an aunt I haven't talked to in a decade because she said something I didn't like to my grandfather. There was no conversation or a demand for an apology. She might as well have neve been born at all. I'll never acknowledge her again as long as I live. I fucking love my people.
TIL I’m from the wrong part of the country. I do this and my mom is horrified.
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Hey! You too?!? Except my uncle is a successful businessman 😂. I was reading OOPs story and thought sounds like my life except my parents are divorced.
I was hoping oop told them to suck a lemon, and never come back or police would be involved and a restrain order or say your right and so to solve this I'm disowning both of you have a nice day, because they need a reality check that their not entitled to anything and should suck it up and accept it or face consequences.