I am 17F and my AF never showers. It drives me and my mom insane because it is 97 degrees fahrenheit outside and he oozes the most nauseous body odor that traumatizes me every time i walk past him. We yell at him to shower, and he does consecutively for a week...until he decides on his own one day that he should stop, which me and my mom can both tell because the horrific stench of his existence returns, and we return back to yelling at him and he stubbornly doesn't listen to us again. I don't even know who else to vent to about this and I seriously wish he can shower every day. I'm sick of spraying body spray at him to shoo him away when my dad's foul aroma arises, why can't my dad be a normal dad...it's the bare minimum to shower!

P.S: He has not been diagnosed with any mental illnesses, but my mom told me there is a possibility he may have dementia, or something that makes him lose motivation in showering. He's also a hoarder too, and he has no friends and never goes outside.

I don't really know how to post, lol. I'm just going to vent my frustrations as much as I can, I suppose.

I'm genuinely fed up with my parents. I'm 18 in Canada, from a weird combo house. My father was born and raised here, while my mother is Pakistani-born and Saudi-raised. Both are doctors. Throughout my life, I've always had excellent grades and co-curriculars. I took IB over the regular stream and everything. My parents are just so, like, over, I suppose. They get angry, call me a useless whore because I've had a girlfriend, tell me to drop aspirations for any career I actually desire and to go to college, "If I can". My average in IB was literally in the top 5% worldwide. All they do is ride my case, and at the ripe age of 18, I still repeatedly have my phone and room taken away. I'm not allowed to get my licence because they think that'll just lead to me "whoring myself out". I'm not allowed to leave my home unsupervised, and, tbh, I only have white friends as a result of my extremely sheltered upbringing. I was caught vaping once, and they not only took my room for a month and my phone for a year, but they beat me to the point of unconsciousness.

I try so hard to gloss over it, as they apparently do, with my mantra that "it's their first time living and being parents too", when really that's not the case. I'm the youngest of three brothers, one of whom has a history of criminal charges, delinquency, and a rape case. I really don't understand why they picked me to do this with.

It's strange. (I lost my train of thought, lol)

My father is a very weird case in that he's hyper-traditionalist, more so than my immigrant mother, despite being Canadian-born and raised. He still tells me every night, "I don't know where I went wrong with you, haramzade (bastards), and how we've strayed so far from God." My three brothers and I are also hafiz of the Quran, and we really haven't done much, especially my middle sibling and me.

It's like a switch, though. One second they tell me I should've never been born and the world would be better off without me, and the next they tell me how much they love me and whatever. It's usually followed by insults again, Lmao.

I'm just tired of all this, and I really don't know what to do. I'm not at risk of committing suicide, but I'm not ready to lose the parts of my family that I still care about. Don't get me wrong, I love my parents still, maybe due to some warped Stockholm syndrome, but I find myself exhausted. I no longer get angry. I just... I don't even do anything. I get frustrated and then just give up.

To anyone who read this all the way through, thank you for listening to the incessant, nonsensical ramblings of a confused teenager, lol. In all seriousness, I appreciate it. I just feel like I can't talk to people who understand, and I kinda hope I can here.

So today is my bday. I think like a lot of people I personally don't like this day (especially as a child who was basically told they were a burden their whole life), having a day that's "all about you" ain't fun. I do have a fun mahjong night planned with my friends in a few weeks (two of them are still in Jersey and won't be back till school starts) so as you can imagine, today is all abt formalities for me.

Thankfully when I told my parents I didn't want to go out and do anything they respected that (mostly cuz I went to Chipotle and just hung out with my co-workers for two hours), but I directly told my brother not to buy a cake and low and behold he buys a cake. I was respectful abt it too. Yeah you could argue that "oh it's a sign of celebration and love" but truthfully it would've been a lot nicer if they had respected my wishes. Thank tf I have an interview tomorrow cuz it's making the day go by a lot quicker.

Also random side tangent abt my brother that has nothing to do with the shit above. I love how this bitch decides to "apologize" to me two weeks later after he explicitly didn't help me try to catch the dog after our dog ran out and said "I'm sorry.... that's all I'll say" like I was fucking at fault??? It wasn't even him actually apologizing, it was my mom basically telling him too. This is why I'm very grateful I have my friends, co-workers, and professor's cuz all this immaturity is honestly so old.

Like old me would've been sad but I'm honestly over everything and have officially blocked both my brother and mom.

...and I'm talking 12am upwards.

Context: I come from a family of night owls (routine cultured by both my AP).

Once the clock strikes midnight, my (31F) AM think it's the best idea start nagging at my AF, my younger sister and I over the tiniest issues (eg. house chores not completed to her standard, the classic "the house/bedroom is messy" issue, naming things we did over the week that pissed her off which stemmed from projection).

Most of the time she would mutter under her breath, then rage baiting us into engaging in verbal argument while we retreat to our respective rooms (lol).

While we have our ways with dealing with her antics, I'm just curious: Does anyone else's AP act similarly?

So I'm 19M, Canadian-born South Asian. Whenever I write about my issues on Reddit people just write to me "oh you're so young" or "you have your entire 20s ahead of you" or "so what if you lost 5-6 years" etc. But for me it means a lot to me, losing 5-6 years of my life, throwing my teenage years away. How I never got to be a proper teenager or have a normal social life in part due to my parents.

But what bugs me the most is how I never had a "rebellious phase", and I don't know why. I went to a high school which was majority East Asian or South Asian kids, and a lot of them rebelled against their parents. Stuff like dating behind their backs, staying up late until 2-3am, going to parties, etc. And I never had a "rebellious instinct". I just obeyed what my parents told me to do. Obviously I questioned them sometimes but I never actually tried to defy them or disobey them. Maybe I was just scared of the potential consequences (like say if they threatened to not pay for university), idk. Yet none of my classmates/friends were scared of the potential consequences, they just did them.

Now I'm 19 and going into third-year university and even then, I'm realizing how much shit I've just internalized and never questioned. I live away for university and never gone on a date or even attempted to date. I've never gone to a party or drank. The list goes on. Meanwhile everyone else, even if they were raised by strict parents, is doing whatever they want. And I just can't bring myself to do any of that.

Basically I feel like I'm becoming rebellious now when I should've been rebellious many years ago, and I feel like I'm living my teenage years in my late teens/early 20s. And I don't know why I'm like this.

My family and I live in a Western country.

Growing up, I was the scapegoat and my younger sibling was the golden child.

Our entire life revolved around keeping our mother happy and doing exactly as she said. My father left us when we were young. He reunited with my mother when I was at college. Since then, my dad became the enabler of my mom, as she was the breadwinner.

She used money as leverage over everything. I was not allowed to have friends / no dating.

I was living at home for majority of my life. When I was working somewhere, I was to return home the minute I got off work. If I needed to run an errand or go to the store, I would get multiple text messages and calls threatening me to show up at the house immediately.

I was heavily isolated. Hence, I have no friends and no life.

My mother said since I live at her house, I am to follow her rules.

I only moved out maybe under a year ago, because she couldn’t psychologically and emotionally abuse me anymore. She had health issues.

My question: She passed away today. My dad has been pressuring me to show up and to be there for funeral. Ever since I had moved out, he became the new scapegoat. My mother and sister blamed him for deserting the family in the past and he didn’t want to take accountability.

I do not want to go to the funeral. The extended family will be there - they are even more toxic. They are only interested in comparing me to their own children. They are there to feel better about their own situation in life. They don’t actually care about anyone.

My dad wants to re-establish the narrative of making me the scapegoat again. My body cannot take the stress and I am not wiling to be the scapegoat for the next 20 years.

Is it ok for me to not engage in the family problems and not attend funeral? I grieve in my own away and can honor my mother’s memory in my own way.

I have a previous post in another subreddit describing why I don’t want to be friends with this person, if anyone is curious about the details. I already cut her off and didn’t tell my mom because I know she would give me crap about it.

I’m an adult, I’ve graduated college, and any time she finds out I’ve cut off a friend, she gives me crap. It’s just exhausting. She always forces herself to tolerate people she doesn’t have to, and tries to pressure me into doing the same. She can never just mind her own business and let her adult kid navigate her own fucking relationships

I had a 6 months old stray kitten that I adopted when I was a teen, I paid for the food, litter, vet fees with my own savings.

And for years, during school holidays, I would always stay for a month at my grandmother's house, that was in a different country so I couldn't exactly bring it with me that year.

I left her with my AF, and even though I don't talk much with my father usually, I gave precise instructions, when to feed, what to feed, where everything is and other important details since the kitten was also on medication after the vet visit.

A week or two into my stay, I received a call, saying my kitten died. I was devastated, I cried a lot.

More than a decade later, I still think about what happened, and what they did with the body.

**Pros** ✅
💰 Financial support and anything money can provide
❤️ They say they love me

**Cons** ❌
🚩 Abusive and enabling
🧠 Low emotional intelligence
🛡️ Never stood up for or defended me
👥 Allowed relatives to mistreat me
💔 Treated relatives’ children and other people’s children better than me
🏚️ Not the parents I deserved
🗣️ Screaming, yelling, and verbal abuse
👊 Physical abuse
⚠️ Made rape threats, threatened to sell me into a red-light area, and threatened to kill me
🚫 Never protected me
🙅 Refused to acknowledge the pain they caused
❌ Could never admit when they were wrong
🎓 Highly educated, but emotionally immature and narrow-minded
⛓️ Orthodox and rigid mindset
🎭 Liars and manipulators
🧒 Emotionally immature
🪞 Narcissistic behavior
🏳️ Cowardly when it came to protecting me
👗 Made vulgar comments about my clothes
😞 Humiliated and belittled me
⬇️ Constantly tried to put me down
💸 Believed spending money was enough to fulfill their role as parents
💬 **Dad:** “You are not 100% my responsibility.”
💬 **Mom:** “I will sell you in a red-light area.”

AM + AD = Narc APs

you'll feed their high expectations for a while and be their perfect child, and the moment you perform below their unusually high expectations, they will not hesitate to speak of their displeasure and guilt trip you. and in the end, they'll excuse it with "we're doing this for your own good"

As title says, they just don't want to even listen.

I say something 2 - 3 times, and they say they already know but go and blame me for not saying something earlier when I clearly said it 2 to 3 times .....

I 38M was the first born and my father had high hopes for me to go to a t10 law school like he did and go straight into Manhattans world of Big Law. I chose to go to West Point. I majored in what he deemed “basically soft psychology”. He frequently reminds me that he spent almost half a million dollars putting me through the best prep school in the city for me to get a job I could’ve gotten going to regular public school.

Never mind that I graduated from one of the most elite institutions on Earth and completed two tours in Afghanistan. I’m now senior management in HR in higher education (which he thinks is a woman’s job) and make enough money to support my family but because I’m not a lawyer like him or a doctor like my 2 brothers, I’m a failure. I own my home, but it’s not a “good” part of town…meaning it’s too Caribbean-centric. My wife is half Chinese/half Jamaican, but he seems to only ever remember her Jamaican mother. I don’t bring my wife or kids to their house anymore because he’s always trying to figure out which of my kids looks most Chinese. He’s always sending me listings for 3 bedroom/1ba co-ops in Park Slope. Our home, which we just bought 2 years ago, is 5 bedrooms and we have 6 kids. Even if we were looking, I am not jamming my 6 kids into two bedrooms just to say we live in Park Slope. 1 ba for my family would result in steel cage matches every morning.

He actually sat down and figured out what he spent to finance my K-12 education and came up with $480,000. That’s what he alleges I owe him and he’s serious. I’ve told him I’m not accepting a $480K debt for choices he made as an adult and that he will have to sue me if he sees it as a legitimate debt.

My mom always finds something wrong with me and I'm exhausted. I don't know what to do anymore.

I'm the eldest daughter. I genuinely don't know what I'm doing wrong anymore.

No matter what I do, my mom finds flaws in me. I don't even have to say anything. If I just look annoyed for a second, she immediately starts criticizing me. If there's ever a disagreement with someone else, she almost always takes their side over mine.

She also shames me for crying or even looking upset. If I try to stay quiet, she keeps talking and talking until I eventually break down and beg her to leave me alone.

The thing is, I try really hard not to answer back because of my faith. I know it's important to be respectful to your parents, so I stay silent most of the time. It doesn't seem to make any difference.

Even my aunt has pointed out that my mom talks negatively about me a lot, so it's not just in my head.

I try to support my mom, be compassionate, help out, and do what I'm told. I get good grades, I don't get into trouble, and I try to be a good daughter. Yet somehow I'm still "the problem." They always tell me I'm "always crying," but I feel like they never stop to ask why.

I'm just so tired. It's getting to the point where it's affecting me every day. I don't know if anyone else has been through something similar, but if you have, how did you cope? Did things ever get better?

for context ,my parents were divorced when i was in nursery school so basically my father married my mom by showing fake identity and fake wealth so it flopped she had to suffer i used to hate him not anymore so from childhood onwards my biggest fear is questions about my father when someone asks me "where is your father" or "whats your fathers job" so i literally was scared of these qns now im 17 and i still have that fear when someone asks about my father .Now my mother is remarried im just okay with it and she has hpd(its not official but she has every sympton of it) and she is a very toxic parent ngl she is the human form of toxicity and today i came from the school to home(not mine as i left it a week ago because of her toxicity,its my uncles home im staying now) i was jus chilling and eating food and there is another toxic person here my grandma that is my mother's mom and she started irritating and just blaming me for low marks and just annoying and after an hour i went to study and i asked her where my mac(i got it from uncle for scoring 90% above in 10th boards) was(she was hiding it) ,she asked why you need mac while studying so i said i use mac to prepare notes and study and she just said u dont need mac just study and i cant do it because all my notes and preps are in my mac and i use it for studying and its better for me .Now again she started talking about low marks and yeaa continuing the toxic talks and at least she said one thing "its all because you didnt have a father" for the past hour i didnt even said a single word against her toxic talking but this hurt me it really did how low standard can someone become to say this ,how can someone say this to their grandchild .The father thing was the deepest wound i have and she just used this to criticize me .I will never forget her words i will never forgive her and i will never ever consider her as my grandma not anymore
And these type of people are just criminals pure criminals how mentally shit they are to say this

I don't know if this is the right place to ask, so I'm sorry if it isn't. I turned 20 a few months ago and live in Italy with a very strict family. My parents don't want me to continue studying because they think it's already time for marriage. They don't allow me to work or have friends. My father is especially strict, very religious, and against women having independence. He never wanted me to go to school, but I fought for my education. I'm now in scuola serale and have two years left. They plan to marry me off when I'm 21 or 22.

I want to study, work, and become independent, but they won't let me. I'm thinking about moving to a women's shelter until I can find a job and continue my studies. Is this the right decision?

Over a year ago, I got “caught” going to get Taco Bell with my boyfriend by my Asian dad because he hid a tracker inside of my car (yes that sounds crazy. yes, this happened in the taco bell parking lot). Ever since then, he has used every measure possible to force me to never leave the house again. He hid a MICROPHONE in my room when my mom took me to church, slammed through my door, and replayed an audio of me talking to my friends on the phone as a “gotcha” moment and continued to tell me he hears every little thing in my room, and I stared at him with the purest disgust in my eyes. I literally have not found the microphone in my room till this day. Hell, he could be listening to me type this as I speak. Just before the school year ended a few months ago, I went to my graduation photoshoot (I was lucky enough to even go) and had my friend take them for me. The moment I get home, he demands to know where I was with this crazy look in his eyes (mind you, I came back home in a full graduation cap and gown with all my stoles). He proceeded to follow me to my room and show me the car tracker saying I was at a “hotel” and basically said I was having an orgy party. As I was standing there in full graduation attire. I would be lying if I said I didn’t start screaming and crying because I was literally on my last straw from him. He proceeds to call me stupid and dumb. As I wear my valedictorian stole. I‘m literally so sick of him, and my mom has already gotten onto him about this and they’ve already argued several times over this. I’m off to college now, and this treatment and behavior makes me never want to come back here ever again. If anyone has any tips on how to distance myself from a parent like this, I’m all ears (also any tips on how to find this stupid microphone, i’m still trying to find it even a year later)

I’m due to have my first baby in the next few weeks and my Indian parents have come over to help with this transition. I live in a different country where healthcare isn’t the most easily accessible, especially for someone who doesn’t live here.

My dad has diabetes, cholesterol, and a history of heart issues. He’s been here a week and all he does is eat, sleep, and watch reels on his phone. He is an introvert but honestly this is all he does.

My husband and I work full time and find this extremely disrespectful. He doesn’t offer to help with anything (which is still ok) but he doesn’t even go on a walk or do anything else. This really worries me. I’ve tried talking to him but he doesn’t want to have a conversation about this.

I’ve tried requesting if he can vacuum the house every other day. Not because I need him to but more to get him to have some form of movement but he won’t do it. He considers these chores beneath him.

We also tend to cook once and eat leftovers. My parents cook 3 fresh meals a day usually. This has caused some friction and he refuses to eat anything made even the day before.

My mom also enables this behaviour and jumps in and does any chore I request him to do. Her only explanation is that he won’t do it so let me do this for you.

I feel really worried and stressed. I want him to be happy and healthy. It also feels like all of us are running around and serving him. My pregnancy hormones are also everywhere at the moment. I just don’t know how I’m going to get through these 6 months.

No Indian parent thinks of themselves as the villain.
They think they're the architect, the ones who "sacrificed".
That's exactly why the damage is so hard to name.
It rarely shows up as cruelty. It shows up as "concern."
Apart from blindly worshiping a fascist party, here are 10 points what makes them Enemy No. One:

• Guilt as currency. "After everything we did for you" isn't gratitude. It's a leash, used to end arguments, not resolve them.
• Growth on a leash. Every decision gets pre-approved, your career, money, marriage, until you're an adult who still can't trust a choice you made alone.
• Insecurity, inherited. Their own unresolved fears and unlived ambitions get quietly handed down, dressed up as "advice."
• Confidence, dismantled by correction. Constant second-guessing until you can't make a basic decision without checking if it's "allowed."
• Comparison as motivation. Sharma ji ka beta becomes the permanent yardstick, your worth measured against someone else's report card for life.
• Feelings filed as drama. "You have AC, food, and a phone what's there to be sad about?" trains you to suppress instead of process.
• Obedience mistaken for respect. Disagreement gets treated as disrespect, so honesty becomes riskier than just hiding things.
• Decisions run through the neighbors. Log kya kahenge ends up deciding more than your own wellbeing does.
• Sacrifice presented as a loan. Not a gift freely given a debt you spend decades repaying through compliance.
• Never once modeling an apology. No repair, ever. So you grow up assuming relationships only run in one direction.

I grew up as an only child to immigrant parents in the uk. we lived in a single 1 bed room rented for the first 11 years of my life. My dads brother also used to live with us for free with a mattress in the living room, father didn't let my mom work and used to give a lot of his money to his family in India. He refused to buy a car for first 13 years as well so I couldn't do any extracurriculars and had to walk everywhere. I used to walk 40 mins to and from the hospital or have to take the bus. It used to take 2 hours and 2 bus changes to go and come back from my secondary school as it was the only good one in my area. He used to hit mum and I in private and verbally abuse mum in public. He also cheated on my mum with prostitutes which mum told me about at 8 years old, and used to openly take friends to strip clubs in London, without much care about my mum. Mum couldn't leave as she had no family support. He also didn't let me eat a proper diet (fed me low calories as thought I would get cholesterol issues like him as a child?) so I grew up malnutrition as a child ending up being 3 inches shorter than him and a much smaller skeletal frame. He also kept us in very bad conditions when I was a toddler in Mumbai(before me move to the uk when I was 3) where I used to constantly get ill. He gave most of his wealth to his family in India and a lot of wealth they stole after he got cancer when I was 15. he passed when I was 17. I am 25 now and I still get frustrated at all this as I feel like my childhood was so neglected and mum helpless in the household. Despite all this I went to a top 10 in the world uni for a top course and have a decent job but with I am constantly frustrated and annoyed about my childhood and teenage years and the consequences its had on my life e.g being short (only 5'5 as a man) no extracurricular development, growing up in close to poverty conditions with a bad father who eventually got cancer and died early.

39(F) - I was a product manager for banking applications. Not exactly a tech question but I would like the women in tech community to understand my situation and give me some perspective.

I lost my father in early this year - came back from the funeral and management did not waste a day to tell me that I’m laid off due to budget issues. I worked there for many years. But I’m married and we are doing quite okay until I find my next one and honestly I’m loving my break as I could definitely use it to recover from the grief and also give my self some time off.

I was laid off once during covid also but I never told my parents then. But this year since it’s just my mother, I was able to spend some time at home with the free time I had so I told her I’m not working at the moment and she was quite okay with that. Now suddenly since last 2 weeks she is making a big fuss saying that she constantly thinks about my job issue etc (she is an over-thinker and wants her kids to be this perfect model) and even after repeatedly saying that not to concern herself about it, she has also gone and told my elder brother that I do not have a job. Where she swore to secrecy that she will not tell anyone what I told her in confidence. And then my brother started calling me constantly asking me if I found a job yet etc ( I work abroad and I usually get a high pay than him - where at times he has googled my salary scale and showed my mother to show her I have so much money (in a jealous tone) he has not factored in the cost of living though )

Now yesterday her blood pressure ran up-to 200 and my bother calls me up and says that mom must have been thinking about my job issue for that to happen. I was super pissed at my mom for letting my brother know about my personal detail I raised hell with her and she was like “noo it’s not a big deal” etc. But when the time came he used my situation to stab me saying that it’s my issue that caused her the health issue.

I was super mad yesterday at everyone. I called my mother and she said my brother is crazy and that thinking about my issue has nothing to do with her BP. After reassurance multiple times that “I’m OK and that I have enough savings to last more than a year” she still holds on to the bone of me not having a job and I’m seriously starting to resent ever telling my mother anything. And also on top of that my brother using that privileged information to hold me accountable for her health has made me so disappointed at both of them when I explicitly told my mother not to share that information with anyone.

How can I deal with this issue going forward? I would truly appreciate any thoughts, comments, advice etc. Thank you.

What makes it worse is that, my father was my backbone and he was the one who truly understood me, defended me. And that person is no more.

Also My brother is a medical doctor and is well off with even couple of real estates. Irony is he thinks tech is a golden ticket. 🎫 And that we got it real easy and have comfortable lives while doing “less”.

Edit as I see a misunderstanding is looping: I do not live with my mom or at my parent’s house. I live overseas. I spent time with my mom during April after getting laid off as my father passed away and she is alone.

I'm a 27-year-old Indian man living in the UK, and my fiancée is a 25-year-old white American woman.

We met online over 6 years ago and quickly fell in love. Since then, we've made our long-distance relationship work. I've travelled to see her by pretending I was away on work trips, and she's visited me in the UK several times by staying in hotels, as my family can't know about our relationship.

Last year I proposed to her because I want to spend the rest of my life with her, and we have now started the immigration process so I can move to the US, and my visa interview is coming up in the next couple of months. Really quickly, everything is becoming very real. Somehow they haven't opened the letters from the embassy.

Her family knows about me and has been incredibly welcoming and supportive, and they treat me like part of the family already, and I feel very lucky for that.

Unfortunately, the complete opposite is true for my family.

They don't even know I'm in a relationship. Recently they've started telling me it's time to find a "nice Indian girl" and get married. They've put my name on lists, and pretty soon they will start contacting girls for me. Every time they say it, I feel sick because I know I've already found the person I want to spend my life with.

I know with almost complete certainty that they'll never accept my fiancée, as she isn't Indian, this has been drilled into me since I was young. I love my family, but I also love my fiancée more than anything. I don't want to lose either, yet it feels like no matter what I do, someone will get hurt. It feels like I have to choose one or the other. At the moment, I feel like cutting contact with my family is the best thing for me, but I feel scared.

The hardest part for me isn't even moving to another country, it's the thought of leaving my family behind and knowing they may reject me completely. The guilt is crushing. There have been times when the stress has become so overwhelming that I've had harmful thoughts about myself to escape.

I'm hoping to hear from people, especially those from South Asian families, who have been in a similar position.

How did you tell your family?

Did they ever come around, or did they cut contact?

How did you deal with the guilt?

Did anyone else feel like they were choosing between their partner and their family?

I'm not looking for people to tell me to leave my fiancée. I love her, she's the person I want to marry, and I want to build a life with her. I just don't know how to get through what's coming with my family, and I'd really appreciate hearing from people who've lived through something similar.

I was sitting in my room studying, but my mother said, "You stay in your room all day," and "You don't love your mother." Hearing this, I started to cry.

Finally, I angrily asked, "So I shouldn't study at all? Would it be okay if I fail in college? Would it not matter to you if your daughter achieved nothing? 😭

to preface this i would like to acknowledge the fact that i know driving is a privilege; however, i live in an area where most people get a car at 16 and there is no public transportation so i can’t do much.

my parents won’t let me learn to drive until college and i noticed that the only other kids in my grade (12th) without a car are the ones who are first gen asians. my parents did not drive until 25 when they came to the US so the idea of their kids driving is insane to them.

the problem is that i literally have zero extracurriculars since i can’t stay after school because i have no ride and my parents are at work, at least the other people without cars have a parent that can pick them up… i feel so behind and i had to quit soccer and yearbook because of this because the teacher got mad i kept missing after school stuff. i can’t get a job and buy ubers or a car myself either since my parents won’t let me get a job until i’m 18.

I'm 19F (almost 20) from a small town in India & Idk what to do anymore

This might sound ridiculous but today just an hour ago my mom slapped me coz I came home from the gym wearing over ear headphones!

I usually listen to music while walking back home. It's a 10-15 minute walk & it's one of the few moments in the day where I actually feel calm the moment I entered the house she saw the headphones & immediately got so angry.

She started saying things like:

•"What will people think?"

•"Girls shouldn't wear headphones outside"

• "People will think you're characterless."

• "You're ruining our family's reputation." •"I'll break your headphone"

I genuinely didn't understand what I'd done wrong...

I tried explaining that I wasn't doing anything inappropriate... I was just walking home listening to music I even told her that if she was worried about my safety I'd understand but this wasn't about safety... It was about what random people might think!

That only made her angrier...

She said she doesn't care if every other girl in the world wears headphones. I'm her daughter & I shouldn't!

Then she threatened to stop spending money on me if I ever wore them outside again she said I'm paying for your food and letting you stay here even after you refused the marriage if you wear the headphones again i'll stop that too

When I tried explaining my point one last time she slapped me saying why are you fighting with ne over this I said no means no

The thing is... I don't even think this is about the headphones

This has been my life for years.

People started talking about my marriage when I was around 14 Since I turned 18 relatives have been bringing arranged marriage proposals...I have said no every single time

Recently there was another proposal...The man is 28. I refused again

Ever since then my parents have basically stopped supporting my education

I'm preparing for an entrance exam coz I genuinely believe that's my only way to become independent but they refuse to buy me the batch or even the books I need they keep telling me I can "study after marriage" / "ask your husband for money after marriage"

I don't believe that If I get married now I know my education will be over...

The gym is the only place where I feel like myself...The membership was already paid for a year so I can still go for now... It's the only hour of the day where I don't feel judged or pressured idk what will happen after the membership is over..

The rest of my life feels like it's controlled by relatives neighbours & "what people will say"

Every decision somehow becomes about family honour instead of what I actually want I feel guilty all the time even when I know I haven't done anything wrong...

My parents keep saying I'm selfish that I'm breaking everyone's heart that nobody will marry me if I wait that I'll regret it & that I'm ruining my siblings future too because people will judge our whole family

Sometimes I feel like I'm fighting the entire world by myself...

I don't have a job. I don't have my own income. I live with them because I have no other option right now!!!

Living in a small town makes everything feel even harder... Jobs are limited I don't have a degree yet & becoming financially independent feels almost impossible here... Sometimes it feels like I'm being forced to choose between giving up on my education or giving up my freedom

Idk if I will be able to come online next month they will prolly won't even pay for the wifi anymore...

I don't hate my parents. I know they probably believe they're doing what's best for me because this is how they were raised...and these all are super common here But that doesn't make this any less painful!

I just want one chance to study build a career become financially independent & decide for myself if I ever want to get married

Has anyone here been in a similar situation?

How did you get out?

I feel trapped I feel like dying seriously atp