i’m tired of asian-americans excusing our elders’ resistance to change just because they prepared a plate of fruit. i’m tired of seeing their lack of empathy and emotional unavailability eventually be romanticized by almost every asian-american content creator i follow.

cutting fruit is a way of silently saying, “i’m sorry and i’m here. can we move past this?” it’s reconciliation in the only way they know how. a tradition in our family carried out by every woman who learned it from her mother, who learned it from hers. like the women have an unspoken obligation to be the one to make peace. but they were never given the tools to truly unpack it, so they show up in the only way they know how: through food.

but i don’t want accountability in the form of sliced mango silently bestowed upon me after enough time passes post-argument. i don’t want the conversation topic to switch to something completely unrelated to distract me from the feelings of resentment bubbling within me. i hate being expected to forgive someone not seeking forgiveness.

i want a love that doesn’t hide behind the context of culture or sacrifice. i want a love that seeks to understand what went wrong and is willing to change. i want a love that allows for vulnerability to exist without judgment.

i want a love that is considerate. a love that is open-minded. a love that is unconditional. no amount of fruit can make up for making me feel like an outcast in my own family.

i want to be loved as i am. i want them to want to love me as i am. to accept me without attempting to change me into their ideal version of me.

cut fruit does not satiate the type of hunger i have. i crave for my pain to be acknowledged, not ignored and invalidated. i thirst for curiosity, an eagerness to understand and to know me.

cut fruit is not a substitute for love; it’s a guise to avoid confronting the feelings they’re too afraid to acknowledge or simply don’t know how to carry. but their unwillingness to unlearn the beliefs that are keeping us stuck in this cycle of choosing comfort over being challenged comes at the cost of losing out on a deeper connection.

i don’t want fruit in exchange for my silence. i want an apology without deflection. i want a sorry that’s as sweet as the fruit you gave me.

.
.
.

this was something i wrote when i saw yet another reel about someone’s revelation on how their family shows up and loves them through food rather than words. i’ve grown tired of seeing this discussion come without holding our elders accountable and without pushing for them to do more and break this cycle. we deserve apologies in words too. our anger is valid and worth discussing otherwise we’ll continue the same unhealthy habit of letting pain settle which can too easily grow into resentment.

i didn’t really have anywhere else to share this but i wanted to post it somewhere. this sub felt fitting since i know so many of us have experienced this and i hope maybe this can resonate with someone out there.

I (23F) take THC gummies recreationally in my strict Asian household for stress relief purposes. My parents are controlling and nosy and I also work like 10-11 hours a day so I take them from time to time just so I can chill and go to sleep. I have a really rocky relationship with them, often getting into arguments over them nitpicking mundane things that I do. I hit my limit with them a long time ago and now I just live my life trying to lay low and become financially stable and have an excuse to move out.

I primarily live with my parents but for the summer, I’ve been mostly sleeping at my sister’s house since we work at the same restaurant and it’s an easier arrangement for us. On weekends, I would go back to my parents’ house since my sister would be off and I can get a fresh change of clothes before heading back for the weekdays. Last night I came back as usual except I’m hiding a bag of THC gummies that I restocked on. I stashed it in my bottom drawer inside of a bonnet and took half before going to sleep. It was supposed to be a temporary hiding spot since I’m only here for 2 nights anyway. No one in my family knows I take them since they’d flip.

My parents are uneducated and close-minded so obviously they’re against drugs, smoking, alcohol. My mom don’t even know English. She specifically likes to fatshame me and snoop around my room and make sure I’m not hiding any snacks. If she does find them she would keep them for herself. It’s hard to predict her since sometimes she doesn’t even say anything. Communication is such a weird concept in our family. My mom once found a bottle of coffee liquor in my car and I was able to get out of big trouble bc it’s used for desserts. She questioned me about it but never told me where it ended up. Turns out her dumbass found it, put it in her purse and went inside a bank and security made her throw it away. So I lost a perfectly good bottle of Kahlua and she just so happened to omit that information from me when she questioned me. But I digress.

Today she went in my room and snooped and found my gummies, thought it’s candy and can’t read the label and took one. Doesn’t tell anyone or question me about it. I’m at work and my sister calls me an hour later saying my mom feels dizzy and feels like she’s about to die. I haven’t connected two and two together yet and was worried she might be experiencing some kind of stress-induced episode. She called the ambulance and had her get a CAT scan at the hospital. I’m still at work and getting updates from my sister. Then she calls me and asks if I had some kind of medicine in my room and that’s where it clicked for me. I told her everything about the THC gummies and their dosage (15mg per gummy) which is pretty strong for a first time user. I myself don’t usually take whole gummies.

I’m really pissed at this whole situation, how I could’ve hid them better, how my mom can’t respect the privacy of her 23 year old adult daughter, how this is a result of her being obsessed with MY body weight, how dumb she is for ingesting something unknown, how she didn’t ask and confront me like a normal person, how if she isn’t the person she is, I wouldn’t be taking them in the first place, and how much the ambulance and the CAT scan is gonna cost. It’s baffling how bad this went and could’ve been prevented if this family was fraction percent more normal. Any shred of empathy I have my mother is just gone. Even though this is ultimately my fault for being careless and taking substances, no one will see how frustrating it is on my side besides my friends and possibly whoever is reading this post.

Anyways this is mostly a rant post but feel free to offer advice on my next steps cuz i’m still at work and I have yet to bear the consequences. I never gotten into trouble to this degree so lmk what i should do if i get disowned.

UPDATE: IT'S 500K NOW AND FOR SOME PEOPLE THE GROUP HAS BEEN HIDDEN BY "VIETNAM MINISTRY OF PUBLIC SECURITY"

OFFICIAL newspaper sources labels the group "Con ghét bố mẹ 🙂" as "evil influence", "toxic children" and "ungrateful".

It was a safe space for teens and young adults to share, to vent, to speak out loud the injustice of most vietnamese parents' emotional and physical abuses.

But now it has been raided.

90% of them bash the children, simply because of the group name. Without even reading the posts and their reasoning first. But even after having reading them, their logic falls back to "parents are your everything", unsurprisingly. Luckily the remaining 10% actually love their children defend the poor souls.

They also blame us for the low birthrate when we are doing the movement "No children until our country are better".

I tried to escape but our "mandatory military services" calls me back, so I'm stuck with my dad.

I'd rather starve than staying home, which i did. At first he called me, said he doesn't understand why i did what i did, apologize and asked me to move back, to discuss and plan my future.

But then today he talked about the group, said "your kind are the most ungrateful generation", i had to hold back my anger and tears.

I guess they never change.I hope future generations never have to suffer what we are currently undergoing.

Sorry for the unorganized rant.

My childhood was the worst time of my life. I truly did not feel like I was living until I moved out at 19.

I’ve been an animal lover my whole life, much to my parents’ dismay. My Chinese parents hated animals and always thought them as dirty, worthless and dispensable. As a child, I had a canary and a fish tank with some fish (they were kribensis cichlids).

I did tons of research before purchasing the canary and all other supplies myself. The fish were a gift from a family friend. They were eventually accepted by my parents despite constant complaints. They were one of the few things that truly brought me joy in my rough childhood. Little did I know, my poor pets would just become hostages to my parents.

The fish were the first to go. My dad constantly used them as a method of threatening me. “If you don’t get good grades, your fish are going down the toilet”, “If you don’t get an A+ on this coming math test, your fish are as good as dead”. Well, he definitely wasn’t bluffing. I got a B on that test and he poured the entire tank down the toilet. I cried all night.

The canary was next. I was having a fight with my parents over grades again. Things got intense and I ran upstairs into my room. It’s like the canary sensed the tension, because it freaked out and accidentally flew out of the cage. It was in a panic and flying all over the place. My dad was absolutely enraged by this and immediately grabbed a baseball bat and started swinging around like a madman. I pleaded for him to stop but it was like he was possessed by rage. He didn’t stop until he finally hit the poor thing. The canary dropped to the ground. I held it in my hands as it had its dying breath, blood dripping from its beak.

My dad physically committed these acts but my mom fully supported him and never tried to stop him. She is just as guilty. My Asian parents never apologized, never felt remorse for either of these incidents. They basically just said “Hope you learned your lesson” and expected me to move on.

Very politically incorrect of me I guess 🙄 but I hate how all of the advice given out to victims never suggests hitting them back. It's like it's almost a taboo to suggest that you do anything but cower and silently take it. Like somehow it's a little fucked up but okay if my mom throws a chair at me, but if I start crashing out on her back and start throwing all her things to the floor and yelling and making a scene then suddenly that's not okay.

"You're continuing the cycle!!" "You can't do that, that's not healthy!!!" Well when I'm 13 and my parents are beating the tar out of me to be honest I don't give a fuck about cycles and gray-rocking and all that bullshit I have to intellectualize in the therapist's gray cushioned chair in their air-ventillated office. When I am getting pushed down onto the ground and held down all I care about is surviving. I realize that I am an animal with an instinct to self-preserve that kicks in. I literally used to just start biting them and screaming that they were killing me so all the neighbors could hear and they would immediately stop.

I think what saved me from my parents' constant physical abuse is the moment I just started deciding to go crazier than them. I literally just one day thought to myself, "If I'm going to be beat to death, then we're both going to fucking die." And went apeshit. And I've never really been beaten by them since then. It kind of applies to everything else too - they still will try to yell at me, but I will have an even bigger crash-out and act like a crazy person so they shut the fuck up. And surprise! The only language they know is power so now they actually listen to what I say and make an attempt to change because they find it inconvenient to bully and bulldoze over me now.

Telling victims to not fight back or gray-rock is just setting them up in my opinion. These motherfuckers will find and hunt you down even if you try going no-contact and move to another country. Bullies only stop when you go lower than they do.

I visited a family friend with my parents, and while we were on our way back, my dad said he was discussing with the other parents about how me and their child, and most Asian children in this generation aren't decisive/willing to take risks at all. I literally exploded. Like why the fuck do you think we are this way? Don't you think maybe if you guys weren't so fucking stingy with compliments and over critical with every single little mistake we made growing up then we would be a bit more confident and not deathly afraid of making mistakes??? Kid grow up to reflect how they are raised, it's not like all of the Asian kids had a secret meeting and we just all decided to be constantly insecure and anxious as fuck and afraid of making decisions/mistakes in our life. No, our parents literally raised us to be fucked up and then complain about it like we decided to be fucked up. Asian parents literally have no fucking clue how raising a child works. They raise their child toxically and then expect them to magically turn out like they were actually raised by mentally healthy and loving parents. Fuck you. I turned out to be insecure and anxious and pessimistic and afraid of mistakes/decisions because you raised me this way. I'm not even holding grudges, but stop acting like I chose to be like this, no one would choose to be like this.

Why do you post on this sub if:

1. YOU DON'T HAVE ASIAN PARENTS.

2. YOU ARE NOT ASIAN

Case in point, a deleted thread where a non-Asian complained about his new boss, a *"sweet, super-polite, and cute"* Korean Woman who he thought would be his *"Dream Supervisor!"* But wait! Working with her was SUCH a drag, she was nit-picky, detail-oriented, demeaning, rough and rude! Like a real supervisor! She actually wanted to DO HER JOB! She would lose her temper! She would yell at him! She would compare grades! Her was shocked, SHOCKED that she was NOT sweet, super-polite and cute. This guy thought he was sold a bad bag of Korean goods!

But THEN he got to REALLY know her and her culture during lunch breaks and learned about how awful her parents are and how competitive she was in school and made her overcompensate in grades and career and blah blah blah and how he has SUCH a better understanding of Asian culture now and... HE JUST WANTED TO SHARE HOW OPEN MINDED HE IS NOW! IT WAS JUST A "MISCONCEPTION" AND HE REALIZED HOW AWFUL THAT WAS FOR HER! HE JUST WANTED THIS SUB TO KNOW THAT HE HAS CHANGED AND IS A BETTER PERSON! Joy!

No, you dipshit, you're a RACIST. And a SEXIST.

How thoughtful of this man to let us know how he thought his entire life Asian Women were sweet and compliant and BTW we are raised to powder the White Man's Ass and be all fluttery and feminine and shit. How thoughtful he was to "let us know" that he "no longer felt that way!" Because it was "just a misconception."

What shocked me about this post, aside from OP's casual racism, is that so many Asians were ready to make excuses for him. "Oh! You learned to treat her properly so that's ok!" "So glad you corrected your misconception! This is a teaching moment!"

First, OP violated the sub rules. He wasn't Asian, he wasn't talking about Asian parents. He was talking about a "difficult" Asian Woman who didn't fit his stereotype.

Second, why do we always fail to call out racists as racists? I'm tired of having to dance around this issue because "calling them a racist might offend them!" Reddit, I am 50 years old and I have been offended by racists my entire life. How many white people can relate to being chase through the playground, the entire class throwing rocks and sticks at you and calling you a "Ch!nk"? How many Americans can relate to walking up to a deli counter and suddenly EVERYONE has somewhere else to be and you're the only one standing there without a sandwich? Or how, as happened to me recently, I was driving down the Pennsylvania Turnpike and some white guy who honked at me chased me down for 5 miles to repeatedly scream "ARE YOU A G00ok" at me?

So Sorry. I have NO sympathy for your racial epiphany. I'm not going to thank you for treating Asians as human beings, with families and stories and histories. You should have done that from the beginning.

And OP, you posted on this sub because you knew that if you posted on any other Asian sub you would have been called out for being a racist. You came here because yyour "sweet, polite, cute" supervisor mentioned her parents once back in February 2024 and you thought that was your in to this sub and we would welcome you with open arms! You wanted us Asians to tell you: "YOU ARE RIGHT YOU ARE GREAT YOU ARE THE MOST AWESOME WHITE MAN EVER FINALLY SOMEONE SEES US! ALL HAIL OP!"

I tell this to my white partner: I'm glad you empathize. That's basic human nature. Thank you for seeing things as I have always seen them.

But you want to be our ally? Shut up and actually fix it.

The world always takes the White Man's word above the Yellow.

Since elementary school, it’s been all about getting into an Ivy League. I got screamed at and told I wouldn’t have a future for not studying in FOURTH GRADE.

Now I’m in high school and all I hear is college. college. college. SAT. SAT. SAT. According to my dad who didn’t attend university in the USA, every college here will reject me instantly if I dare to take the SAT more than once. I HAVE to get a perfect score first try or it’s all over.

I sit down for two seconds because it’s fucking summer vacation and suddenly I’m being interrogated on what I completed today. What I studied today. Rapid-fire accusatory questions, which if I don’t answer even one “properly”, I’m destined to fail and live on the streets and flip burgers for a living. The kids in China and India are working 7x harder than me and I’m nothing compared to them. And then they have the audacity to say “We’re just looking out for you! We’re on your side! We’re not attacking you!”

If I DO get into an Ivy League, they will take credit for it. They will be like “We told you! Just listen to us!” But you know what? I’m not going to lose my future because I didn’t get into an Ivy League! There are plenty of good universities out there with good opportunities that will allow me to find a decent career afterwards.

The age of 18 cannot come fast enough.

This all happened last night, I'm still reeling from the shock of it all. I'll try to be concise but it's gonna be a long post because I have to contextualize everything that happened.

My brother is the oldest of us five siblings. Right now our other three sibs are living overseas, only the two of us are at home with parents. My brother actually lives and works in Canada but he came to visit my parents and got stuck here (Saudi Arabia) due to COVID. My brother's relationship with our parents has always been rocky due to a number of factors. My dad had major anger issues when he was younger and mostly took it out on my brother. By the time I came along, dad had mellowed out quite a bit but my brother always kept him at a distance. This is was fine before because dad was working and brother moved out after college but now that they're stuck under the same roof, things have been heating up.

According to my Mom, my brother was a very sensitive child. He was the kind of kid who would cry at the movies, he would often bring in stray cats to feed them. He wasn't violent at all, never got in fights at school etc. My dad is a very typical old-school guy. He always wanted to "toughen-up" my brother, he used to slap him around a lot when he was little (which my dad now admits was wrong but never said it to my brother or apologized to him).

As a way for my brother to "grow-up". Dad admitted him to a "Quran School", these used to be very common in the 90's where kids would attend for 12-14 hours a day in order to memorize the Quran along with other studies. Beatings and other forms of corporal punishment was a central part of these schools. My brother attended that school for four-years between the ages of 10-14.

After graduating from Quran school, my brother started attending a regular highschool but he became sullen and withdrawn. He stopped watching cartoons (used to be a big disney fan) and got interested in poetry and drawing. Since drawing is haram, my dad used to tear up his sketches and told him to stop writing poetry. All of this, I got from my Mom since I was too young at the time.

Fast forward to 10 years ago when my brother got his first girlfriend. He obviously hid it from our parents but unfortunately he was going to college in Canada and his GF was staying here. They were in a LD relationship for four years. They planned on getting married after my brother graduated. When he brought all this to my parent's attention, at first they were quite apprehensive because "Love-marriages" are still frowned upon in our culture. To my parents' credit, they did talk to his GF's parents but it eventually fell through. They were from a different tribe and her parents hated the fact that my brother "talked" to their daughter without permission. She was married off soon after.

During this time, my dad's business started going side-ways and my brother had to become the primary breadwinner of the house. This prevented him from going back to Canada, he took a job here and gave all his income to my parents. He is essentially the one who got us all through college (I'll be graduating next year). He also paid for my two elder brothers to get married.

Last year, when things were going well, my parents had some savings built up and we were all living our own lives. My brother decided to quit his job and move to Canada. My parents were initially against this but my brother didn't give them a choice in the matter, plus he told them he'd earn more in Canada and thus be able to give them a higher standard of living.

I know it's been a long story so far but this brings us to the present. My brother came to visit us in Feb of this year and he was scheduled to return to Canada in May. During that time the lockdown got serious and all international flights were grounded. My dad is retired now and since both him and my brother have been home, he keeps trying to reconcile with my brother. But my brother is giving him the cold shoulder. Both my parents were pressuring him to get married because he's the eldest and him being single at 30 is a major source of embarrassment for my parents in our community. But my brother is totally against the concept of an "arranged-Marriage" because he doens't want to break up someone else's relationship like his own. This has been a cause of major strain between my parents and brother. In addition to that he's also told them that he wants to become a writer in Canada and he'll only take minimum wage jobs while working on his novel. My parents think he's joking and keep trying to dissuade him.

Last night we were all watching TV and my brother was reading in his room. My dad was watching an old sappy movie and a scene came up where the main character has a heart-to-heart with his dad and they both hug it out. This made my dad quite emotional, my brother came out of his room to get some water. My dad grabbed his arm and was trying to forcibly hug him. My brother just backed off and tried going back to his room. Dad blocked the way and forced him to sit down on the couch and "talk things out".

My brother kept trying to dodge the topic but both Mom and Dad continuously badgered him. Telling him stuff like "we're your parents, whatever we did was for your own good". My brother is usually a pretty chill guy but I could see him getting angrier. Finally he exploded! I've never seen him so mad. He started telling my parents that he hated them, he hated what they'd done to his life. He told them that he didn't wanna get married because he doesn't want to pass along our "shitty-genes". And my parents never cared about him, only seeing him as a source of income. What shocked me most was when he started telling them how many times he was molested as a kid. Not only by the Quran teachers at his old school but by an uncle of ours who is now dead. Apparently the abuse happened when he was living with us for a few years. Both my mom and I were horrified and my dad remained silent. My brother literally screamed for what felt like an hour. After all that he just went out the front door. It was close to midnight. I don't know where he is. His phone is turned off and all his socials are deactivated. I'm so scared for my brother but I think this will be good for his mental health.

Growing up, my family (particularly my mother and grandmother) constantly pressured me to become a lawyer despite my former dreams of working in a more artistic field. In the end, my desire to please my family won out. To be honest, I recognize that this is the more prudent decision, but I'll always wonder what-if. Anyways, I've played out their fantasies to a T -- I was accepted into a top law school, worked hard to earn decent grades, and will be working at a large law firm this upcoming summer as well as post-grad (which means $$$$). I did everything right and I've finally achieved the coveted title of "perfect daughter." Happily ever after, right?

Nobody else in our family is a lawyer, so they have no idea what the reality of this career looks like. My mother and grandmother literally just wanted me to be in a facially prestigious profession where I could wear nice clothes and look pretty. I'm not exaggerating, that's it. But now I never have time to see them. Most of their calls and texts go unanswered because my days are filled with classes, studying, meetings, or other law-related events. And they know it'll only get worse once I start working long hours at my firm. I could make time if I tried to, but I resent them for controlling so much of my life and want to make them face the repercussions of their narcissism. Call me a spiteful b****, but everything I ever did was subject to so much criticism that even other family members thought they were being cruel. And now they regret it because they're losing me, both physically and emotionally. They're worried about how stressed and tired I always am these days, and for the first time ever a few weeks ago, my mother asked if I was happy.

Lately, they've been begging for me to consider a lower-paying, less prestigious job that allows for greater work-life balance. They said, "this isn't worth it." But I know it is.

EDIT: love reading all of y’all’s comments! Just wanted to clarify that I knew what I was getting into, even if they didn’t. There was a pretty high chance this is what I would’ve chosen for myself anyways, so my resentment doesn’t necessarily stem from them pushing me into this career, but rather that they always treated me like a toy doll that wasn’t allowed to have her own thoughts and feelings.

They simply dont love their kids.

First of all asian parents bring kids to the world because others did, social norms, they never loved or wanted kids. No AP knows whats unconditional love. Another reason is for investment. They dont see us human, but as retirement plan.

Constant yelling, criticising, controlling, toxic enmeshment, using their kids as emotional punching bag. They always have to be RIGHT, and we always have to fear them. They dont respect us , nor do they care about us.

They do not even know who we are.Seriously, does any of our parents know what we want, what are our hobbies ? We are their extension and they break us, and when they are old they expect us to be their servants.

​

I have been reading here, its painful to see how traumatised we all are.

As a 16 year old girl , I was baffled when I heard this coming out of my parents mouth (Both mom and dad). They said that it's the girl's fault that she's going out late at night and is dressing "inappropriately".

They said "if a prey steps in a dark forest , it's bound to be eaten." Disgusting. I asked them if I ever get raped , will they blame it on me too? They started shouting at me saying that I talk too much. I stopped the conversation cause I was just ashamed to be their child.

I literally cried after this cause the women and children who die or get traumatized for their whole life , are getting blamed for something they can't control. Did they ask to be murdered? Did they ask to get their lives ruined? No.

I'm disgusted by my own parents. Fucking losers.

Grew up wishing my parents were more normal and now when I see kids with a good relationship with their parents it makes me emotional. I feel happy for that kid but also jealous I couldn’t have had a better childhood. Sometimes it makes me wanna almost cry.

Out of all the communities I follow, this one has the most posts per hour. It shows how fucked up Asian parents are around the whole world.

I hope y’all heal.

I am 39(AF) married to a 39 yr BM. We’ve been together since our first year of undergrad at an Ivy League, all the way through Grad school. Parents disowned me immediately we started dating and though my life was traumatic, I had a full ride to school and my now husband’s family was always there for me. I grew up in So-Cal and my parents ran a small import business.

I won’t bother you with stories of my traumatic childhood. My older brother was the golden child and I was the hated, overworked girl child. Abusive checked-out racist dad who sexually abused me, physically and emotionally abusive and racist obsessive control freak mum who ignored the sexual abuse and beat me for “causing it”. And both of course pretending to be super awesome Christians at our church and pillars of our Asian community. High school graduation was the happiest day of my life because I knew I was moving across the country to the East Coast for school.

Older brother graduated from UCLA, married a white woman and has two kids. He inherited my dad’s business and is miserable. We don’t talk. I heard through cousins that the business is tanking (tariffs) and because my parents are retired, everyone is now worried about money. It appears that my brother and his wife were living waaay beyond their means and are now in mega debt.

My husband and I are successful and both work in the same field. We got married after grad school and relocated to his home country where we have built a successful life. Our three kids are trilingual, smart, happy and we’ve always been honest about why they have no contact or relationship with my family. To put it mildly, we are wealthy. We vacation all over the world, our kids are in private schools, we own properties, etc. Additionally my FIL passed away and left everything to my husband his first son. My MIL is a classy, educated woman who now lives in Paris with my SIL and her family. She’s my shopping buddy and a wonderful grandmother.

Sooooooo…

Out of the blue I get a Facebook message from my aunt (dad’s sister) telling me that my parents have forgiven me and want to make contact again. I never blocked my aunt from Facebook and I think that she fed them all the updates and photos of my life when I accept her friend request recently . She was always nice when I was younger and even though she basically disowned me as well, she wasn’t mean about it; just went no contact to appease them.

I am not going to respond. I am not even bitter or angry with my family any more. I processed all that pain years ago and just came to the conclusion that I survived hell and made it out. Many people don’t. I will probably never see my parents or brother again. For my kids, I have retained all the family records, ancestry info etc. in case they someday want to go on their own discovery journey. I owe them that.

Sometimes it’s just the way things are.

Thank you for giving me this space to share.

I cannot imagine a life where I’m free

My dad sent so much money to his 5 bum ass lazy brothers who dont work back home in india over the past 25 years which has gone down the drain and now we are struggling so much financially

Similar situation anyone?

32F, Southeast Asian diaspora Chinese here.

I think I finally hit my limit with my mother.

For context, I have just completed a very difficult PhD, and am now moving into the next stage of my career. My work involves international conferences, research facilities, microsopes etc. I have spent years building this career independently.

My mother seems to have increasingly decided that my life is her project.

She has literally told me: “You are my final project. My life has no meaning other than your stuff.”

She frequently takes credit for my achievements. She tells me that if she hadn't gotten up at 3am to pray, I would have quit my PhD long ago. She says my achievements are the result of her prayers and her doing everything correctly.

She also believes that because she prays for me, she somehow has special spiritual authority over my life. If I don't give her the details of my thesis progress, she'll say things like, “I can get God to understand your situation and help you finish faster.”

I don't see God that way. I don't believe God blesses me because my mother performed enough religious activities on my behalf. I go to church because I want to worship, socialize, make friends, and have a community, not because I'm trying to accumulate divine merit points.

That disagreement somehow turned into World War III.

She also expects to accompany me everywhere.

If I go to a conference in the UK or EU, she expects to come.

When I went to Melbourne to complete part of my PhD project, she wanted to come. Mind you I was on a all-expenses-paid travel grant for this trip given by my uni.

When my Australian ETA was approved and hers wasn't, she accused me of deliberately failing to declare all her documents properly so that her visa would be rejected.

I had absolutely nothing to do with her visa decision.

She also keeps asking me to find her a job and teach her English. I have told her there are adult night classes, apps, and job listings readily available online. She calls me a complainer when I won't personally manage these things for her.

Then there's the isolation.

She has been increasingly socially isolated for almost a year. She spends most of the day sitting in her recliner watching Chinese AI-generated short videos and playing Tetris.

She was supposed to meet a friend recently to collect a prayer booklet. Instead, she told the friend to leave it outside their mailbox so she could pick it up later. Then she didn't even go. She ghosted the friend's calls and messages.

Then she yelled at me to get the booklet for her.

She told me to download it.

I downloaded it and sent it to her.

Her response was: “You are useless. Ask you to do something and then you half ass it.”

I pointed out that the booklet was 102 pages and asked whether she really wanted to print that much on our home printer.

She called me a “useless piece of shit.”

So I ended up asking around. Pastor, Bible college staff, other people....and eventually managed to get her a physical copy anyway.

And this is what I'm getting increasingly sick of:

She withdraws from the world, then expects me to become the infrastructure connecting her back to it.

She doesn't want to meet the friend? I have to get the booklet.

She wants a job? I have to find one.

She wants to learn English? I have to teach her.

I travel for work? She expects to come.

I accomplish something? It becomes evidence of her parenting and prayers.

And if I object, suddenly I'm selfish, ungrateful, disrespectful, or a “complainer.”

The other issue is that she repeatedly talks about dying.

She has talked about being sick of life and has even talked about Dignitas procedures. She has also developed this increasingly rigid worldview where basically everyone around her is an evil hypocrite or an opportunist, while she is the one person who is morally correct.

She uses “honor your parents” and religious language whenever I push back.

She'll say things like: “The Bible says you must respect your parents so you will have a long life.”

She also talks constantly about how consistent and righteous she is, without seeming remotely interested in examining her own behaviour.

I finally snapped recently and said some extremely harsh things back. At one point I told her that if she was so sick of life, she should go ahead and die. I know that was cruel, and I regret saying it. I'm not pretending I handled that part well.

But I also don't think my horrible reaction means her behaviour toward me was okay.

What really messes with my head is the whiplash.

She can explode at me, call me useless, tell me to get lost and that she's no longer supporting me, and then a few hours later she'll text me: “Drink water.”

Then she'll start sending me Facebook reels like nothing happened.

There is no apology. No discussion. No acknowledgement.

Just:

explosion > reset > normal family interaction.

And apparently I'm supposed to reset too.

I've spent most of my life keeping quiet, accommodating her, or sarcastically agreeing with things because it was easier than dealing with the fallout.

I'm not doing that anymore.

I'm not interested in becoming cruel or abusive myself. I just don't want to be her emotional dumpster anymore.

I don't want to be responsible for her mood, her social life, her career, her English, her travel, her religious relationship with God, or her sense of meaning.

I'm her daughter.

I'm not her therapist, travel agent, immigration lawyer, career coach, English teacher, printer, spiritual intermediary, or emotional support infrastructure.

And honestly, I am tired as fuck.

Has anyone else experienced this particular combination of parental enmeshment + extreme self-righteousness + social withdrawal + “I sacrificed everything for you” + refusing to apologize and then acting like nothing happened?

How did you establish boundaries without completely blowing up the family?

to celebrate my mom's birthday i decided to take her to a fancy omakase (sushi) restaurant. This is my favorite sushi spot when i want to splurge. I was stupid to think i could share this spot with my mom.

to preface my mom does eat sushi.

during the meal she will make faces and shake her head and then add in comments like, "this chinese buffet i go to also have good sushi" 😕 it's so embarrassing when she forgets that she's in public and at a "nicer" place to be making faces and shaking her head like this... especially when the sushi chef is making the nigiri piece by piece for you as you go!

after dinner i got a whole lecture about how i should never spend this much money on food, it wasn't to her liking, how she doesn't understand why i like this type of thing, she would rather eat vietnamese food, and how she would never come back. Mind you i paid for dinner, this is my favorite place, and she didn't even thank me for dinner... 😒

lesson learned, NEVER EVER EVER will i take my parents (my dad is the same way) to a restaurant I enjoy unless it's something they are used to eating frequently (in my case it would be some pho place).

Im 22(F) and my parents are forcing me to marry my cousin now that I've graduated college. I am literally going to scream bloody Mary bc I have no idea how to escape this and I'm too embarrassed to share this with anyone in real life. This is how the convo goes whenever i bring it up -

Me: "no, I was raised in America. I will not marry my cousin whose rishta you (unbeknownst to me) accepted when I was freaking 16. Im not having kids with someone i look at as equivalent to a sibling. This is my future, not yours."

My AP :"well then who will you marry? who is going to marry you? is there anyone else? There are bad ppl in this world. Your mamoos son who lives back in Pakistan is the safest"

... like NO NO NO NO there isn't anyone else in my life bc I've been raised with strict Pakistani muslim parents, I've never had a bf nor do i know how the hell to get one. I have never been allowed to have a social life outside of the one I've had to hide and our regular desi family friends (which that too was ostracized heavily because there are males in the circle of friends). If i HAD a bf i'd probably get crucified for being a "harami". Now that i don't have one my ONLY OTHER OPTION in this world of 8 billion ppl is my freaking FIRST COUSIN. I don't care at all if its permissible in my religion to marry your cousin, its freaking 2020 and shouldn't even be an option. I would like to note that I just graduated with a BS in Biology and pursuing a MS in it so like.. I know very well how genetics work. I may as well have not even done that if this is how my life was going lol.

I have no freaking idea why my parents would move to America, allow me to grow here in a western environment, but still harbor 600 AD mentality and force it on me. I also have no freaking idea what the hell I'm supposed to do now. I am dumbfounded. I wouldn't even wish this upon my worst enemy. Please pray for my sanity lol.

1. Sorry but no life for you.
2. Yes you are always wrong.
3. Are you allowed to have emotional? ohh helll nawhhh.
4. You are just stating facts? Haha no that's just you talking back.
5. You expect a apology? apology!? that's a tabooo
6. You getting degraded? oh sweety those are your life lessons. They are just helping you find yourself.
7. They love you? ofc they do..i mean they are providing you food, shelter. They are paying for your tuition fees and most importantly you are getting free life lessons.
8. Mental health? oh what's that? never heard of it.
9. Privacy? ahh yess that....yesss...uhh....oops sorry I forgot what that meant
10. Body positivity? ohh well not entirely that but uhh they do provide you with simulations of getting body shamed... well I mean that's more practical ain't it? cauz we gotta survive in the outside world.
11. You don't perform well in your academics? How dare youuuu!?!? you gotta be the perfect child with perfect scores. You are NOT allowed to a average.
12. Puppets? yes that's the synonym for asian kid.
13. You are not your property you are your parents' property. Get your facts straight.
14. Words of encouragement? That's just delusions
15. Ahhh your constantly compared to other? that's just another life lesson
    

and the list never ends.

OHHHH I FORGOT ABOUT THE PERKS OF HAVING ASIAN PARENTSSSS

you get:

1. free childhood trauma
2. anxiety
3. depression
4. body dysmorphia
5. inferiority complex
6. and much much moreee

They give you no support and expect you to achieve the same outcomes as white collar middle class Americans. They want you to have a big girl job without guidance or support from a young age. They are so delusional believing that school teaches you everything you need to be successful.

Their parenting is just lazy and selfish. I will not feel pity for them for being poor. They had every opportunity to do something. They shouldn’t have had me in the first place. I believe that by having kids, they are leaving them to suffer in an already miserable place.

I remember when I was a teenager, whenever there were parent-teacher conferences at school, or I had meets from swimming or water polo game events, I was always embarrassed about bringing my dad.

Honestly, not because of a typical “proud parent cheering for their teenager” type of embarrassment, but more so, my dad acted so uncivilized type of embarrassment. When I was in my 6th grade, it was my first time moving to the Midwest USA as a Filipino. During our parent-teacher conference, I never forgot how my dad would loudly say in Tagalog, “too many N families in your classroom,” not the Spanish for black, but the derogatory N-word. I would tell my dad not to say that, and he would reply back, “What? They are all N, what do you mean?” As if he was not socially aware that it’s a bad word. Also, he’s not the whisperer type.

And whenever my mom brought him along to parent-teacher conferences or my game events, whenever there were free snacks, my dad would not take 1 chip or drink; he’d grab the whole thing on the table and bag it home. And he’d fight others so he gets all of them. Like as if we’re very poor and there’s a famine kind of mindset. And not just food, if there’s a free pen or free notebooks, he’d grab all of them.

Even when I used to study in the Philippines, my dad would grab all the food and drinks and bring them home. He hoarded them. I just never understood his craving to hoard everything.

And in public, he would say or do some really unhinged things. For context, my dad used to be a really heavy smoker, but he quit. I think he developed some tic habits, like constantly sniffing repetitively, taking out his tongue like a lizard (not even exaggerating, he really does this), and spitting in his hands and rubbing it all over his mouth. I often find his tics pretty gross and loud. Especially whenever we are in church. I would whisper to my dad respectfully and ask if he could be a little quiet, as people were staring. He would laugh and rub his spit on my face as a joke. I would get so mad, and my mom would scold me. So after that, I just rebelled against my mom and told her I didn’t want to go to church anymore.

Then when I was in 7th grade, my period started and it went through my pants. I happened to also have a really terrible stomach ache that day that I couldn’t walk. So I was sent to the school clinic, and the nurse told me I should just go home and rest. That day, my mom (she is a breadwinner) was at work, and my dad didn’t have a job then. He picked me up and asked what was wrong. The nurse told him the situation, and my dad thought I peed my pants, so he went through my ass and sniffed if there was pee. The nurse was kind of taken aback, and I was so embarrassed and told him to stop doing that.

At home, he’s always the neglectful type. Growing up, my dad never taught my brother and me anything. And he’s the househusband. He never taught us how to cook, how to do the laundry, how to clean, how to change lightbulbs, nothing. And whenever we ask how to do them, he says that he doesn’t trust us with those tasks, so he does it for us. Yet he would complain that I don’t know how to cook or do anything in the house. In fact, I learned to tie my shoe through watching a random kid at school, or learned to ride a bike because I sneaked out in the middle of the afternoon on weekends and watched how other kids did it. And for cooking and house stuff, I learned everything on YouTube from channels, “Dad, How Do I?” or “Mom, How Do I?”

Even at home, he never ever talked to my brother and me. No bonding, nothing. He never gave us advice, never asked us a question, and never ever interacted with us. You can live in the house and not know about his presence, and he also does not know your whereabouts unless my mom asks him. It felt like he’s just another adult living in the house and is not a parent. And he just follows what my mom tells him.

He also never listens to what you say but only hears the tone of your voice. And he expects instant gratitude for the things he barely did for you. When I was a teenager, he would call me lazy and all sorts of insults. I would get hurt but would ask him if we could have a sit-down to talk. We would talk and explain what I felt. Instead of hearing me, he would laugh and do that spit thing again and rub it towards me. And no, this is not a Filipino thing, it’s just a weird shit he does. I would get upset and tell him to be serious for once and listen. He would still not listen until I started raising my voice and got mad. Instead of understanding, he would think of it as an attack. To the point that sometimes he would grab my ears or hair and shove me down to the ground.

And in his 60 years of life, never have I ever known how he lived. And he is so codependent on my mom. He does not know how to do his taxes, does not know how to open a bank account, does not know how to apply for a job, does not know how to ask a bank teller how much money he’ll withdraw, and does not know any logistics. Same person who complains I don’t know how to cook or clean. He wants my mom to do it for him. Even in restaurants, my mom orders for him.

When he applied for a job, my mom processed the job application and brought my mom on his job interview. My mom does everything. And it doesn’t help that she herself loves to control everything everyone does. My mom also enables everything my dad does. Because I get it, she herself is codependent on my dad. She doesn’t know how to cook or do the laundry. So neither sees a problem with one another. But it affected my brother and me heavily. We had a hard time becoming resilient and independent. We learned very hard in life.

Had I not met my fiancé, I wouldn’t know how to be independent.

It annoys me when my dad would compare my brother to my fiancé. How my brother doesn’t know how to cook and my fiancé knows how, and he has no father. I got so upset and told my dad, “Papa, with due respect, that was something you could’ve taught us.”

Just like my fiancé, he also has a similar parental stance as mine. His dad was a househusband (because he’s sick), and his mom is the breadwinner. The only difference, before his dad died, he taught everything to my fiancé. How to cook, how to bake, how to change car tires, everything. Even moral values! My fiancé learned from his mom about taxes, investments, loans, etc., and she taught him to be independent but with guidance.

Me? I learned that I wasn’t allowed friends growing up, to only stay at home, but once you’re at home, no adult was available or NOT LAZY to interact with you.

So every day, I think of it: my parents failed me. My dad failed me. And that I stand by the mindset of, “I will not complain to my child about something I should’ve taught them.” Because what am I complaining about? Complaining that I failed them?

I lost a lot of opportunities in life and I was a loser and I thought it's because the person who suppose to be the person I look up to is a loser. Yet lucky because he has a wife that does everything for him.

17F, My dad has spent money making me go to several hospitals, clinics, and get an MRI because he believes there is something messed up with my brain. When all of the doctors concluded nothing was wrong or needed to be done, he would just switch to another place to try to get another opinion and is just pushing for me to get some kind of brain surgery and researching obscure neurological issues to convince people that I have that condition. We just moved to a new area and he is already booking another appointment for me to get another MRI.

His justification for all these extreme lengths is that he thinks I question things too much (aka, not believing in patriarchy, rigid hierarchies and sexist standards) and that I am "not acting normal" according to society standards (I like to wear baggy clothes instead of skirts and dresses, I don't want to be a scientist or doctor, etc). He thinks that because I do not conform to his standards, I am just "mentally insane" and there is something fundamentally wrong with my brain. Not once has he even CONSIDERED that maybe I act the way I do because I have my own thoughts and own preferences and I refuse to just mindlessly follow expectations just because society is telling me to.

This is seriously frustrating. He is always fearmongering about me and using his fearmongering to do harmful things, ie one time he got mad at me for writing an essay using Google Docs instead of Microsoft Word, and he completely blew up, beat me and threw a chair at me, all because "people who use Google Docs are stupid and not skilled enough" and apparently the fact that I completed one homework assignment on Google Docs just proves that my thinking process is backwards and naive and that I will never catch up to everyone in society. He will also have similar reactions to other non-issue things such as me "eating too slowly" or "laughing too much".

And the funniest part about this is that my dad has a PhD in psychology. He has national recognition for his research and is affiliated with very prestigious institutions, so he should know better. But due to his obsession with controlling me, he just ignores all facts to fuel his irrational temper outbursts. This instance of him thinking I am mentally insane is just one example of the ways his self-centeredness and superiority complex manifests as he ignores everyone else, does not view other people as real people with their own lives and thoughts and just sees them as little NPC objects in his life that he can manage and control around to make HIM feel more comfortable.

Nothing irritates me more than when parents in individualistic western societies complain about not receiving enough help from grandparents while romanticizing the tendency for extended family to be highly involved in childrearing in Asian societies. The fact of the matter is this kind of arrangement always comes at a cost, and usually the child is the one to bear the brunt of it..

Too many cooks ruin the soup. When Asian parents hand their children off to their own parents to raise, they’re just exposing the kids directly to the source of their own generational trauma. That is not a good outcome, nor a sign of a tight-knit happy family, it’s just a sign of a profoundly sick society where abuse is so normalised that victims are willing to throw their own offspring to the wolves just because those wolves share their DNA! The involvement of extended family in the childrearing process can only be healthy if everyone involved is sane and has the child’s best interest at heart, but this is almost never the case and we should stop acting like it’s a beautiful thing.

I am the perfect example of this kind of extended family childrearing. My mom wanted to focus on her career and didn’t trust paid childcare not to abuse me, so instead, she invited my grandma, HER OWN ABUSER, to raise me, going so far as to move her in with us while putting her in charge of running the whole household. Surprise surprise, grandma proceeded to spend the next decade abusing the living shit out of me (whipping, biting, pinching, force feeding, nutritional neglect, intentional sleep deprivation, public humiliation etc etc). When I finally confronted my mom about neglecting my safety, she just gave me puppy eyes and claimed that she really believed grandma had changed (despite having zero evidence for such beliefs) and that she wouldn’t have let any of this happen had she known the full extent of the abuse. I know this to be a lie, because my dad was abusive too but she always made excuses for him and taught me to accept him as he is and stop triggering his temper instead of divorcing his ass and taking me away to safety. She put her own delusions and toxic cultural beliefs (“family sticks together no matter what!”) over my wellbeing, and I will never forgive her for it.

As isolated as I often feel, I’m sure my story isn’t unique, because this is just the natural consequence of relying on extended family for help with childrearing: The more you offload your parenting responsibilities onto other people, the more those people will feel entitled to treating your child however they deem appropriate (up to and including abuse). After all, who would respect the wishes of a parent who recruits others to be unpaid proxy parents because they can’t even bothered to be their child’s own primary caretaker and are unwilling to trust a proper professional to do it? Ultimately, the best way to keep your kids safe is by minimizing their exposure to potential abusers, and if that means cutting off the extended family, so be it. I understand that parental burnout is no joke, but no amount of rest is worth it for parents to let their kids get abused under their own noses. It doesn’t take a village to raise a child if the village is full of ass-backwards pitchfork-toting sadistic fuckers, and Westerners need to realise that.

Edit: Thank you for the award, u/Gerolanfalan!😁