I (28F) haven’t talked to my parents in three months after they disrespected me and my partner (33M). How do I move forward from here?

So sorry for the long post, but I think the context might be helpful for this one.

My parents and I have had a somewhat fraught relationship my whole life. My mom is Taiwanese, so she has different cultural ideals than most American parents, and my dad is from the US, although he lived in Taiwan for 8 years and has adopted some of their cultural norms.

I think like the children of a lot of Asian parents, I spent basically my entire childhood being my mom’s emotional crutch/punching bag and fielding nonstop criticism from her about my emotions/appearance/life choices etc. This led to a lot of conflict in my childhood, with most arguments ending with me shutting down completely and retreating in silence while she berated and criticized me.

However, after I moved out, my relationship with my mom improved exponentially, and I’ve managed to cultivate a lot empathy about what she’s gone through as an immigrant who moved here with no family and all the things she’s done for me. I’ve found success in trying to enforce boundaries when there is conflict to keep our relationship on an even keel.

Still, as adults, and despite living close by to them and spending a fair amount of time with them, my parents have never been people that my older brother and I feel comfortable confiding in. Their chief concerns when we talk seemingly seems to be how much money we make and when we’re going to be able to buy a house.

A couple months ago, I was considering a career change from a job I love but that has really put me through the ringer this year (think rampant racism, sexism and pay discrimination in the workplace). I was out to lunch with my parents and trying to explain to them why I was thinking about leaving this industry, and, in a rare occurrence for me, decided to very, VERY briefly open up about some of the frankly quite traumatic workplace harassment I have experienced this last year.

My parents’ response was to immediately criticize me, tell me that I was being “negative” and that no one likes negative people, and also compare me to my cousins who are much younger than me and “so optimistic about life.” I began to get extremely deflated and frustrated about why I even opened up about my experiences in the first place, but like I mentioned, I have dealt with this behavior my whole life and was just trying to muscle through it.

That’s when mom decided to bring up my boyfriend and ask if I think I turned into more of a negative person because he’s always complaining about the “world not being fair.”

I immediately saw red, jumped up from the table we were at, told her I couldn’t believe she would say something so racist and inappropriate and stormed off.

For context, my partner is Black, and we’ve been together for five years. When we first started dating I was extremely anxious about how my mom could respond to that fact, given the rampant anti-Blackness that flourishes in Asian communities. But she was extremely welcoming to him, and he has been extremely invested in our culture and developed a friendly and close relationship with my parents. I even took him to Taiwan to meet my entire family and my mom did a lot to make the trip comfortable and enjoyable for us, to the point that my boyfriend cried when we had to leave.

I was therefore super shocked and disappointed that my mom would speak about him in that way and dismiss his very valid (and frankly, infrequent) commentary about systemic racism and inequality as “negativity” and “complaining.” When I got home, I told my boyfriend what happened, and he was equally sad and hurt.

In the past, when I’ve gotten into arguments with my parents, my mom usually texts me later that day to berate me or further yell at me, where I will then calmly try to establish boundaries, or my dad will eventually try to act as an intermediary between me and my mom. The last time my mom and I were not on speaking terms, we only started speaking again after her father passed away and I went over to her house to comfort her.

But they have not reached out this time. I didn’t hear anything from my parents after I stormed off from our lunch, and reverting back to my childhood way of dealing with conflict with them, I also didn’t say anything.

After a couple months, I did finally text my dad to let him know we would be traveling across the country to see my grandmother, and he was very polite, albeit short, in his communication back with me. After I sent him photos of my grandma and me, he didn’t respond, and I got a text from him a week or so later telling me I needed to “get my weight under control.” (Criticisms of my weight have been constant my whole life from my mom and I have obviously put on some weight during COVID)

At that point I was just so devastated and even more frustrated. This is the kind of thing I expect from them when we’re on speaking terms, but to send that to me when we’re already not speaking felt especially cruel. I did not respond to my dad’s message. That was about a month ago and I haven’t heard from them since, except for a link he sent me to a news article shortly after, which I also didn’t respond to.

These past few months have caused me a lot of grief, because, for as dysfunctional as our relationship was, I would have considered myself fairly close with my parents, saw them frequently, and have tried my whole life to be a loyal, obedient “Chinese daughter.” Ultimately though I made a commitment to stand firm in solidarity with my boyfriend about not reaching out until they tried to apologize or extend some sort of olive branch.

But my boyfriend, who initially said I shouldn’t reach out to them and should wait for them to reach out and apologize, is now also wondering if I should reach out as he didn’t think they would go this long without talking to me. We also found out from my brother that my dad recently moved out of the state for a different job, something he admittedly does somewhat pretty frequently, but which still hurt me regardless that I had to find out from my brother. We also did not talk at all on Thanksgiving for the first time in my entire life.

I know my parents and know that they are proud, stubborn and emotionally stunted and will likely never reach out if I don’t. I also recognize that I likely haven’t done a great job of communicating on my end to them that their actions are hurtful and that I want them to apologize.

At this point, it also feels too late or impersonal for me to send a text articulating those feelings, and to be honest, I just don’t want to. I am tired of being the one who just has to “get over things” if I want to have a relationship with them, knowing that they likely will never apologize or admit that they were in the wrong. But they are also getting older and have health issues/are frontline workers, and that coupled with the pandemic, is making me more and more anxious and conflicted about how long I should give them the silent treatment and not reach out, if god forbid something were to happen to them.

My birthday is also on Saturday and tbh I’m just dreading the depression spiral I’m going to be in if neither one of them reaches out.

So sorry again for the long text. I would appreciate any insight or advice anyone has to offer about how to move forward.

Tl;dr My parents and I haven’t spoken for three months after they told me that me and my partner are being “too negative” after I opened up about our trauma. I’m unsure how to move forward from here

Submitted December 01, 2021 at 05:55PM by greendalelo https://ift.tt/3Dio33Y