Dear Amrutha:

Can you imagine, just imagine, being liberated from your parents’ rule?

You don’t have to actually do anything on the matter, only imagine. Imagine that you don’t have to marry your ex boyfriend. Imagine that you don’t have to marry anyone at all, that you can choose who to marry. Imagine you can be with your current boyfriend without hiding, for as long as you and him want to. Maybe for a lifetime.

Imagine you don’t have to fear your parents, that they can’t harm you.

When you submit to your parents, what are you submitting to: fairness, justice? Or are you submitting to injustice?

Injustice under the guise of respect to one’s parents, to one’s culture, is still injustice.

Imagine. And then consider what you value: justice, doing what is right or submitting to unjust power?

anita

Dear Amrutha:

No, it is not selfish for you to choose your freedom. It is selfish of your parents to take away your freedom.

You wrote: “I don’t know how can I make them (your parents) realize they are very important to me at the same time my freedom is”-

I have no doubt that they already know how very important they are to you. They know how intensely you are emotionally attached to them… ever since you were a baby. This is why they feel comfortable forcing you to act against your own well-being. They feel comfortable doing to you what you would never imagine or want to do to them.

You would never think to force them into a miserable situation, would you.

Parents have the power and they know it and misuse it, threatening to leave their children (of any age, even a financially independent adult, like you) if the child displeases them.

anita

Dear Amrutha:

In your last note you asked: “Is it really easy to be that brave?” My answer: no, it is not easy.

But to “wake up with this anxiety and fear every single day since almost a year… lying and being in fear” is not easy either.

And then, marrying a man because of guilt and pressure and fear and living with him for the rest of your life, wondering how it could have been otherwise… that will not be easy either.

I suggest that you focus on what you value: it is love that you value, correct? Love for your parents, love for your boyfriend… you even value the loving part of your ex boyfriend. You value love.

And because you love your parents you want to please them. You fear losing them if you displease them. Let’s think about it a bit more. When you love a person who doesn’t love you back, who is hurting you, should you keep loving them, keep trying to please them?

Your parents have led you to “this anxiety and fear every single day” and are pressuring you to live for the rest of your life in a way that is against your well-being simply because it pleases them.

Is that love?

Will you pressure your parents to do what causes them fear, and keep pressuring them for a lifetime of fear and misery? Would you do that to the people you love?

This is the painful truth that I know from personal experience: as children, young or adult, we cannot imagine our parents do not love us, impossible, we think, not conceivable. We can’t conceive of it because we love them so much.

Often, too often unfortunately, this love is not mutual. And so, we as adult children keep reaching out, keep trying to please, fearing losing the people who.. do not love us, who do not value us, who are hurting us.

Is it easy to be courageous this way, that is, not marrying your ex, not marrying who your parents choose for you, risking their absolute rejection?

No, it is not easy, not at all. But living under their control for the rest of your life, that would be not only difficult, but you will be hurting yourself immensely, and your future children will be hurt growing up with a mother who is anxious, depressed, angry, regretful.

anita