I need help unpacking a personality-related and society-related problem of mine
Posted: Wed Apr 27, 2022 10:20 am
Hello! Thank you.
This is a complicated subject for me that I haven't talked about yet, but bothers me and has been unfolding for at least a year and I need to talk about and today was the development in the situation that actually made me sit down and write this and express my feelings and ask for help.
So my sister and I live in an apartment society, and have a male friend in it (V), and our friendship (the three of us) involves platonic physical contact, walking around with arms around shoulders etc., and this is something we don't do with the other friends in that group, which shouldn't matter, except this is "Indian society", which is the point. The next few paragraphs are all the reasons I'm mad about this situation.
Our parents (and the rest of the apartment, and all other people in this country who are like that) don't like my sister and I having that physical contact with someone who is a boy, and since the three of us have been friends for more than a year, they've not been happy about this for that long.
Our parents have brought it up 2-3 times, but I got sad and angry because I was so uncomfortable with that they were saying, so we never really agreed to stop physical contact, and parents never talked about it for more than one day, so the issue was never really forced. I still don't know what we should have done, but we never consciously changed our relationship with V.
An incident that happened to us that makes me angry and cry-ey, happened a year ago. One of the security guards of our apartment took a photo of my SISTER and V, when they were walking together "like that", arms around shoulders, and then showed ME and said we shouldn't "do these stuff". We told our parents, and they said they had no right to take that picture. But then they also brought up their problem again and said we shouldn't walk like that with V. That was a sad evening.
What happened today was, for the last weeks it's just been me, my sister and V instead of our whole friend group whenever we meet. I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure this, plus the fact that we come home at 7:15 pm, which they probably consider late, is what triggered the whole issue for both my parents again. When we came home from being with V today, our mother gave us some terms: no going anywhere in the society which is not in the open (= adults who can see exactly what the three of us are doing), no physical contact at all, and being downstairs for less than an hour a day.
My parents' attitude is what makes me feel scared, and stops my friendship with V from being the most genuine it can be, and distracts me regularly from other things I could and should be doing. It angers me.
I'm also confused. One of the reasons because there are so many ways I can look at this situation. As a "liberal Indian teen" I think, obviously, there's no problem in having guy friendships like these. Then I think about my parents and how they see it. Then I think about our apartment's adults. Then the security guards. Then I cry about being born where I was. I would love a long piece of advice about this, and a neutral point of view I don't currently have from anybody.
I also really want someone to say I'm not being overdramatic about this, that I'm brave for taking steps to clear up this issue.
Sorry for introducing a different topic, but today after our mother's conversation with us, I felt like crying, like I very often feel. But instead of holding it in like I've been doing for at least 3 years, I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and tried to cry as much as I wanted, for as long as I wanted, about so many things I always quickly stopped myself crying about (I still feel like crying while writing this). My mother actually tried to open my door after a while (boundaries at home problem, again unrelated), but I still hope it helped me.
For right now, I decided while crying in the bathroom to agree with what our parents said today, and tell V that our whole relationship, and the physical boundaries we have in it (is that the right term?) is going to completely change. I'm not happy about it, but that's what I've decided. I also decided to have a big, big conversation with parents about this whole thing, and what they expect from us as "girls" in general. I hate it. I feel so weird and worried and like this isn't my life right now, I have no idea how I'm going to react to even bigger things if this is what's happening to me right now.
Also, I'm not going to have the conversation with V until I have the one with my parents.
But I think the most realistic outcome of today's events is that I'm just going to drop the issue, because it's so very hard for me to deal with, because it's not our fault anyways. Some concrete steps to take to have the parents conversation would be nice, so that I don't give up.
This is a complicated subject for me that I haven't talked about yet, but bothers me and has been unfolding for at least a year and I need to talk about and today was the development in the situation that actually made me sit down and write this and express my feelings and ask for help.
So my sister and I live in an apartment society, and have a male friend in it (V), and our friendship (the three of us) involves platonic physical contact, walking around with arms around shoulders etc., and this is something we don't do with the other friends in that group, which shouldn't matter, except this is "Indian society", which is the point. The next few paragraphs are all the reasons I'm mad about this situation.
Our parents (and the rest of the apartment, and all other people in this country who are like that) don't like my sister and I having that physical contact with someone who is a boy, and since the three of us have been friends for more than a year, they've not been happy about this for that long.
Our parents have brought it up 2-3 times, but I got sad and angry because I was so uncomfortable with that they were saying, so we never really agreed to stop physical contact, and parents never talked about it for more than one day, so the issue was never really forced. I still don't know what we should have done, but we never consciously changed our relationship with V.
An incident that happened to us that makes me angry and cry-ey, happened a year ago. One of the security guards of our apartment took a photo of my SISTER and V, when they were walking together "like that", arms around shoulders, and then showed ME and said we shouldn't "do these stuff". We told our parents, and they said they had no right to take that picture. But then they also brought up their problem again and said we shouldn't walk like that with V. That was a sad evening.
What happened today was, for the last weeks it's just been me, my sister and V instead of our whole friend group whenever we meet. I have no idea, but I'm pretty sure this, plus the fact that we come home at 7:15 pm, which they probably consider late, is what triggered the whole issue for both my parents again. When we came home from being with V today, our mother gave us some terms: no going anywhere in the society which is not in the open (= adults who can see exactly what the three of us are doing), no physical contact at all, and being downstairs for less than an hour a day.
My parents' attitude is what makes me feel scared, and stops my friendship with V from being the most genuine it can be, and distracts me regularly from other things I could and should be doing. It angers me.
I'm also confused. One of the reasons because there are so many ways I can look at this situation. As a "liberal Indian teen" I think, obviously, there's no problem in having guy friendships like these. Then I think about my parents and how they see it. Then I think about our apartment's adults. Then the security guards. Then I cry about being born where I was. I would love a long piece of advice about this, and a neutral point of view I don't currently have from anybody.
I also really want someone to say I'm not being overdramatic about this, that I'm brave for taking steps to clear up this issue.
Sorry for introducing a different topic, but today after our mother's conversation with us, I felt like crying, like I very often feel. But instead of holding it in like I've been doing for at least 3 years, I went to the bathroom, locked the door, and tried to cry as much as I wanted, for as long as I wanted, about so many things I always quickly stopped myself crying about (I still feel like crying while writing this). My mother actually tried to open my door after a while (boundaries at home problem, again unrelated), but I still hope it helped me.
For right now, I decided while crying in the bathroom to agree with what our parents said today, and tell V that our whole relationship, and the physical boundaries we have in it (is that the right term?) is going to completely change. I'm not happy about it, but that's what I've decided. I also decided to have a big, big conversation with parents about this whole thing, and what they expect from us as "girls" in general. I hate it. I feel so weird and worried and like this isn't my life right now, I have no idea how I'm going to react to even bigger things if this is what's happening to me right now.
Also, I'm not going to have the conversation with V until I have the one with my parents.
But I think the most realistic outcome of today's events is that I'm just going to drop the issue, because it's so very hard for me to deal with, because it's not our fault anyways. Some concrete steps to take to have the parents conversation would be nice, so that I don't give up.
(