agonyaunt | (no subject)

(no subject)

Dear Care and Feeding,

Kelly, Susan, Stacy, and I have been friends since we shared a suite in college. I’m Nigerian and Kelly is Japanese; Susan and Stacy are white. Lately, this has led to a big disconnect in how they believe Kelly and I should resolve problems with our families. They are very comfortable with just cutting family members off and/or issuing boundaries and then cutting people off, which is basically anathema to the closely knit immigrant communities and family-based cultures Kelly and I grew up in, but they don’t understand why we won’t just “hold our parents accountable” for our childhood trauma, even though we’ve explained that it really wouldn’t make sense to them.

For example, my mother remarried less than a year after my father died, and Susan’s father also remarried shortly after her parents got divorced. But I know my mother felt pressured to do so by her relatives, and she was alone with a child just two years after immigrating to a new country, so I can understand why she believed it was the safest choice for us (even though I was very angry about it at the time). Susan thinks I should have reduced contact with my mother, the way she did with her dad and stepmother when she turned 18, and she and Stacy have similarly urged Kelly to set boundaries with her parents whenever she’s vented about them. Kelly and I have both explained that we understand where they’re coming from, but that this logic would make no sense to our parents, who grew up in multi-generational, impoverished households. We both feel confident that we won’t replicate our parents’ behavior with our future children, but that doesn’t mean we want them out of our lives, or that we won’t provide for them after seeing how many sacrifices they’ve made for us. It’s gotten to the point where we can’t even bring up family issues without hearing speeches about how we need to break free of our oppressive cultures and parents. How can we get it through to our friends that their methods of dealing with white upper middle-class family members don’t translate to our African and Asian immigrant families? It’s getting seriously frustrating.

—Aggrieved by Advice in Anaheim

Dear Aggrieved,

If your friends make no effort to understand you, then they’re not really your friends. If they expect you to live your lives exactly as they do—they’re not really your friends. And if they think they can lecture, shame, and bully you into doing things their way, which they’re sure is the only way—well, I needn’t even say it. I’m sorry they are failing you and Kelly.

But I also wonder why you’d want to talk to them about your frustrations with your families when you know in advance how they’re going to respond, and how you’ll respond to their response! Disrupt the pattern and disengage from it. Don’t talk to them about your parents. And if avoiding this subject leaves you with little to talk to them about, or makes you feel you can’t be yourself around them—or leaves you wondering why you even have friends you can’t talk to about what’s on your mind—then we’re back where we started from. Maybe they’re not your friends at all. (Maybe they once were! But growing out of certain friendships is a part of life. A sad part, to be sure. But change, even when it’s sad, is inevitable.)

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LW is deeply confused on the subject of boundaries and estrangement. It's like a break-up. You don't stop dating somebody because you're deeply concerned that they'll understand the logic of why you've decided not to go out with them anymore, you do it because you don't want to date them. And so it is with non-romantic relationships as well. LW's friends didn't limit contact with their more toxic family members to teach them things, they did it in order to protect themselves.

And I wish the columnist had actually explained this, because I think LW really does need to assert some boundaries, and this explanation would have helped them come up with the language to explain this to their boundary-smashing friends. Not that the friends *need* to understand why "My relationship with my family is off-limits and I will not discuss it with you" is the new rule, but since LW is worrying over this they might appreciate being able to say "This is my boundary, just like your boundaries with your awful aunt Agnes. You don't need to understand it, but you do need to respect it if we're going to stay friends."

It doesn't sound like the LW or her friend WANT to cut off their family members -- in the absence of abuse, people get to decide for themselves where their boundaries lie, and whether estrangement or going low-contact is the choice they want to make.

It's not just cultural, it's individual, and the two white friends need to be more respectful of their friends' personal choices.

Oh criminy this one hits me where I live. More later, maybe.

Unless boundaries and estrangement are happening simultaneously (as in some cases), in my experience setting boundaries *can* be about teaching and having the other person/people understand (in this case, you want them to learn and respect the appropriate way to interact with you). If they don’t care or don’t listen, then progressing to estrangement is an option for many folks.

In my experience with setting boundaries, they’ve been about giving the other person/people a chance to do better (and get to stay in my life if they do). From that perspective, I think LW does have a decent understanding of what boundaries are, why boundary-setting would not work with their families, and why they don’t want to bother trying it, especially since estrangement is not an option for them.

The thing about boundaries.... I am never sure if boundaries between family members are not conceptualized as a formal subset of interactions in Jamaican diaspora culture, or simply don't exist. My parents clearly allow each other boundaries though I don't think they'd ever speak about them in those terms. They never allowed me any till I could enforce them with adult power, and still don't understand mine. It's difficult to enforce boundaries when the other person has no understanding of the concept, whether willfully or not.

The thing about this letter getting me where I live -- I understand both sides, to an extent. I spent a lot of time as a high school and college student thinking about what in my parents' treatment of me was cultural, was personality, vs was abuse. It's not like the lines were clear cut. I recognized that to cut ties with my parents I'd have to leave the entire extended family and community they linked me to. I eventually found it worthwhile but I can completely understand why Kelly and LW don't want to take that step.

Now, maybe one or both of them are actually being abused to the point where they really should. But, assuming that LW would have told us if that were the case, I think S&S need to understand that US culture can be much more individualistic than many other cultures (and that this varies by region, class, religion, etc as well) and that they are not speaking from a neutral point of view but one influenced by their acculturation. They can't, nor should they intend to, "save" their friends from those friends' cultures.

I do think C&F should have given LW a primer on boundaries, but even as I type that -- there are aspects of boundaries that are culturally influenced and aspects that relate to universal human nature, but I definitely could not tease those two sets of aspects apart even for either culture I've lived in, let alone universally. And there's something to be said for wanting the other person to understand one's perspective, not just obey by rote.

I think both LW and Kelly could use to talk to slightly older immigrant kids. I wish I could take them both out for coffee. Maybe they can get insights on how to deal with S&S, with their parents/families, and with their own self-definition.

Edited 2023-08-07 04:20 (UTC)

Yeah, also like, the only example given in that letter of why they should cut contact is that their mom remarried after their dad's death, which is a bizarre reason to cut off contact with a parent.

Unless you're Hamlet, in which case you might want to consider it.

When I was a college student, I wouldn't have recognized any of the nuance here, I only knew my own individualistic culture. Now that I'm older (36), I think the best way S&S can be a good friend is by listening with empathy and compassion.

If we're going for "time to limit contact" or "full human removal" option, I'd go with limiting/removing S&S - they're not bad people, it's just going to take a lot of effort on LW & Kelly's front to assist them in learning & understanding about other cultures and that may not be something LW or Kelly have the time/energy to deal with.

Also:
It’s gotten to the point where we can’t even bring up family issues without hearing speeches about how we need to break free of our oppressive cultures and parents.
Shout out to how Colonization/assimilation continues to work in 2023 😅S&S could really use some time to reflect on "If individualistic culture is so cooperative - why do we feel the need to fanatically convert people to our culture with emotion that is bordering on zealotry?"

"How can we get it through to our friends that their methods of dealing with white upper middle-class family members don’t translate to our African and Asian immigrant families?"

LW should just say this, bluntly but gently. She could go on to say that she did not want Susan and Stacy's input on family matters if "cut them off" is all they can offer---in other words, draw a hard boundary.

I keep thinking about this letter.

I completely agree that both sets of friends are hampered by cultural differences, and that the white friends are further hampered by a lifetime of assuming that their culture is normal and everyone else's culture is a special case.

But I think the LW can solve the problem without solving racism.

First and most obvious, before she brings up family matters, she can say, "I want to vent a little bit, and I'm not looking for advice -- I just need my friends to hear how hurt and frustrated I am, and to let me enjoy the feeling of being supported."

Second, she can think: just how much venting is she doing? Is it possible that her friends are thinking, "She doesn't want to hear my advice, and I'm not sure I'm up to another hour of listening to this same problem over and over"?

This letter touches on things I think about a lot, even before the cultural issues are involved. My family is really toxic. I am not and never expect to be in a place where I can cut them off, for a lot of reasons. Consequently, I tend not to talk about it outside of really specific circumstances, because the healing culture surrounding abusive situations is really strongly certain that that is the only option. I really feel for LW. There are not a lot of great answers in these situations. Just a lot of constant questions. Questions made worse by the fact that most of the people you talk to are going to say to ditch your family when you already decided you won't. And those people will get really passionate about you protecting yourself the way they think you should, even though you are the one who has to deal. IDK. I'm sure the cultural nuances really do also contribute a lot of pain here, but there's more than cultural difference going into this.

I do feel like the cultural differences thing there - while important, and there's definitely some racism there in the "get out from under your oppressive cultures" bit - is a bit of a red herring. "If you have problems with your family, you should set boundaries by cutting them off" isn't a particularly deepset bit of White culture either - it's a part of "spends too much time in internet spaces like this one" culture, tbh. Lots of White people who have to cut off their families for good reason are pushing back against strong cultural and family pressures (there is not a single White parent on "estrangement" forums who didn't leverage tons of cultural pressure about that onto their kids) and lots of people from strongly family-focused cultures decide they have no choice but to leave, too (even ones who grew up surrounded by that culture.) In fact I had a friend from a family-first culture who cut off their family for reasons around remarriage similar to yours who decided to reach back out after spending time around my very White, very family-centered (reasonably dysfunctional) extended family who don't believe in ending family bonds. (Like, in that family you can be the ex in a toxic divorce and you're still invited to Christmas forever because there's no take-backsies on being invited to Christmas).

LW, you need to emphasize that the reason you're not cutting off your family is that you don't want to, and you value keeping them and their community in your life more than you are angry about the things you complain about, and you just want to be able to vent without having to justify why you love your parents and your culture. It sounds like maybe you haven't actually expressed to your friends that you, personally, don't want to cut them off, you've just given them reasons why you don't have a choice about it. (*Do* you, personally, want to cut them off?)

Edited 2023-08-09 16:34 (UTC)

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