Getting pressured by parents

[Mazeman11]

My parents' biggest fear in life is me ending up wtih someone from a different ethnic background.

I'm not looking to get married now and will eventually make up my own mind. However the parents are putting a lot of pressure on me and its getting stressful and frustrating. They are not happy that I'm dating someone from a different background. My parents live far but its still stressful.

Anyone ever faced with a similar dilema?

 

[Fuglydude]

Haha, sorry man, that's funny shiit. It reminded me of this video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4532245984549289375#

I'm east indian, and I'm marrying a white girl. The closest I've ever come to east indian girls is during stagettes! Maybe its because I look more mexican or mulatto than east indian, i really dunno.

Its your life man, you shouldn't have to care about what your parents think about stuff like this. My parents love my fiance, because she's a good girl, and really helped to clean me up. Ultimately you're gonna be the one who's gonna have to live with your choice, so why do you care about what your parents think? In my opinion there's absolutely nothing wrong with dating outside of your race. If anything having a kid with someone of another race helps to dilute crappy alleles that can be concentrated more and more when you have breeding within similar ethnic groups. There's tons of documented medical cases of this. Just look em up.

- CF (cystic fibrosis)
- Tay-Sachs disease
- Sickle cell anemia

There's also emerging studies that show that mixed race people are considered more attractive/successful:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/04/100414092523.htm

I strongly believe that the old school notion of dating within your racial/ethnic/religious group is an antiquated belief without any real scientific basis. It has more to do with wanting to preserve cultural continuity and probably has some underlying ethnocentric vibes. You can have cultural continuity even with inter-racial relationships dating, so this isn't a valid point.

The world is slowly mixing... as Russel Peters said, "200 years from now (if we make it) everyone's gonna be beige.... Its just a matter of time before we're gonna hump you"!

 

[Burroughs]

Parents love to give advice...but sadly that advice many times is out of date.

Trouble is as Fugly said you have to live your own life. When you are saddled to a woman your parents have assigned you (are you Indian; is this an arranged marriage?), you will have many strikes against you. It might have worked 50 years ago. But we live in a world of choice. Sooner or later, most likely sooner, the fact that you married for your parents sake will begin to grate on you. You will resent yourself and the girl...

Make your own choices when it comes to love you will be MUCH happier.

 

[Jitterbug]

I've dated only 3 girls of the same ethnicity and none lasted more than two dates. My parents don't care about that though. They're more worried about me dating older girls, even 2 months older is a cause for concern. Mum was scared when I said I was banging some MILFs / cougars. She said I should be dating girls at least 6 years younger, if I were to get serious.

Parents' concerns wrt this sort of stuff are often ridiculous.

My parents' biggest fear in life is me ending up wtih someone from a different ethnic background.

Well give them a bigger fear to worry about, that shouldn't be too hard.

I strongly believe that the old school notion of dating within your racial/ethnic/religious group is an antiquated belief without any real scientific basis. It has more to do with wanting to preserve cultural continuity and probably has some underlying ethnocentric vibes. You can have cultural continuity even with inter-racial relationships dating, so this isn't a valid point.

My extended family are used to interracial marriages. My uncle's Polish & Catholic wife takes our culture and tradition most seriously and is my grandmother's favourite daughter-in-law. She's more into our family customs and culture than the wives of my other uncles, who are from the same background.

 

[sodbuster]

Different races aren't the problem....different values and expectations will kill your relationship. If you expect to be waited on hand and foot and marry a feminist? You may think your parents were right,but it wasn't the race issue;but, expectations in life

 

[yaynyppys!]

Yea same situation..

Hey Mazeman11,

I'm not going to tell you what to do, but I went through this same situation (South Asian descent). We dated for over 8 years and my parents were in a constant state of apeshyt about it for more than 6 years. It caused a lot of strain between my family and me and eventually the relationship ended, but I'm happy now that I stuck to my guns and have no regrets. It's just another part of life to be experienced by people that are straddling two cultures, I guess.

In the end, you're the one that's going to be satisfied or regretful with your life decisions. That's why I made the decisions I felt were the most congruent with myself, despite all the guilt trips that my parents tried to smother me with, like saying how I was basically betraying them by dating a girl from a different ethnicity.

It sounds ridiculous to me now that someone's greatest fear in life should be that one's son is going to end up with someone from a different ethnic background. It just seems selfish because it puts supreme importance on some arbitrary measure of success only relevant to themselves. I think when I have kids myself, my greatest concern in their life would be that they don't have desire or put in the effort to be the best/happiest people that they can be or that maybe their life would end prematurely. I really can't relate to this 'fear' anymore and now that I'm older and much more independent in my thought, it just seems really stupid.

Well, eventually they accepted the girl and liked her a lot, but we broke up for other reasons. I'm pretty happy with how things went in the end. I felt like someone who could stick by my beliefs - my parents (and her parents) respect me for that. I don't feel like I would deserve any respect if I ditched the girl just because my parents wanted me to.

The only thing I would really not do again is letting all the pressure and guilt trips and mental games from my parents get to me and affect me badly. I'd do my best to take it in stride and realize that South Asian parents are just fvcking crazy sometimes. Oh yea that and being a bit of an AFC with the girl towards the end, but that's another story

 

[yaynyppys!]

Different races aren't the problem....different values and expectations will kill your relationship. If you expect to be waited on hand and foot and marry a feminist? You may think your parents were right,but it wasn't the race issue;but, expectations in life

yea this is absolutely right, as far as I can tell by my experience. I did have very similar values with my ex. If we didn't, it would have failed a lot sooner. She was a bit of a feminist sometimes and that was annoying as all hell, but most of the time she was pretty ok.

Different values and expectations are a problem. Overly crazy feminism is a problem too. Another problem that I became aware of as the relationship got serious enough for us to consider that we might have kids together is that your individual cultures may not pass on to your kids. Or your kids might not learn your language.. or they may learn their mother's language and you either learn it too or be shut out of that interaction. But maybe all this cr*p is way too far out to consider in whatever stage you're in in your relationship.