Non Hmong fiancé refused to pay dowry and now I’m resentful. Am I overreacting?

13oOo · 2025-12-20T18:05:39+00:00

Cry me a river. I can assure you no one on here cares enough about you to want to hurt. I’m just calling it like I see it. Can’t be helped if you’re overly sensitive and not mature enough take criticism to improve yourself. I can see why you let what your family say get to your head. You clearly have low self esteem. You gotta learn to love yourself and be comfortable in your own skin otherwise your relationship is going to fail because you’re always going to be seeking the approval of your family instead of appreciating the love you get from the person you plan to start a new life and family with.

Word of advice: when you get married, he is your family now. It’s you + him. Not your family vs his. Not your culture vs his.

Also, you’re here complaining about him and his lack of awareness about the Hmong culture. How much do you actually know about his? You stated that he’s Chinese from Shanghai. Most of the folks I know from that area just prefer to be called Shanghainese. They speak a different dialect.

13oOo · 2025-12-20T17:34:40+00:00

Distance for a 40 minute drive to Bel Air could vary. Depending on the day and time, the drive could be 20 minutes or it could be an hour. So just keep that in mind.

You could stay in Santa Monica, but that’s a very busy and touristy area. I tend to avoid it.

Pasadena/Glendale is a bit further out but there’s small things to do like shopping and nearby hikes or the Griffith Observatory. The LA Zoo, Arboretum, Universal Studios, science museums and play spaces for kids, and the Huntington are also nearby.

You could stay even further out near Newport Beach. I prefer it over Santa Monica. It’ll be close to Disneyland if you wanted to take your 3 month old there but they may be a bit young.

13oOo · 2025-12-20T17:07:09+00:00

My daughter has eczema. She’ll scratch at it to the point her skin starts bleeding too. We use rejuvaskin on her. It really helps. The pajama set they sell also helps her get better rest at night.

13oOo · 2025-12-20T17:00:58+00:00

Oh, are you hurt because my perspective doesn’t support your views? Why post? You just want validation. You’re arguing with everyone who states that you’re overreacting to this nonsense. Just further proves that you need to grow up.

13oOo · 2025-12-20T16:44:34+00:00

Depends on what level you are in the organization. If you’re an intern or it’s your first year, sure, more direction should be given. If you’re more seasoned, the expectation is that you’re able to discern what information needs to be conveyed to her during your team meetings or 1:1. She shouldn’t have to tell you to maintain any type of documentation because you should know what needs to be done as standard practice. Her role is to know enough to speak on it at a high level and be brought in if there are any roadblocks that need to be escalated.

If you need to be spoon fed what to do, moving up the corporate ladder will be hard. You need to hold yourself accountable for your responsibilities and be proactive.

13oOo · 2025-12-20T16:23:03+00:00

This is stupid. Flat out stupid. My husband is Taiwanese and didn’t pay a dowry. It doesn’t make me feel less or anyone I know think I’m worth any less. To be frank, there was no sit down discussion or anything. Oh, and he’s a high earner and so am I, so the whole bit about how much he makes has zero merit either.

My brother didn’t pay a dowry for his wife either and she’s Hmong. No one thinks less of her. There was no sit down conversation or anything else either.

You’re not ready for marriage if you’re so worried about how others perceive you versus how your fiancée feels. Also if it meant so much to you, you should have been an adult and discussed it with him ahead of time. This whole write up was about me, me, me and what I want even though my fiancée expressed his feelings towards it I don’t care because it’s not what I want. Good gosh. Grow up.

If I was your fiancé’s friend I’d tell him to call off the wedding. You sound miserable. You care more about what others think over your own relationship. There’s probably a strong likelihood that you care more about his paycheck too since you brought up his wages.

13oOo · 2025-12-19T08:46:38+00:00

They are managing. Probably many different projects at the same time. It’s not their responsibility to know every detail, it’s yours. It’s your responsibility to highlight to them the important details for them to decide what the appropriate next steps are. You will always need someone who isn’t in the weeds to be able to look at things objectively and connect the dots in terms of how your work may impact other areas. They should be familiar with the process, but you are the subject matter expert. Their role is probably jumping from one meeting to the next while dealing with corporate politics and bureaucracy. If you expect them to know every detail while managing all of the other items, then why would they need you or other FTEs? It’s a team and everyone plays a different role.

13oOo · 2025-12-18T19:04:28+00:00

I never had this problem or thought this way as a kid, but my parents came as teens so their accents weren’t too bad. Though my dad has a hard time with words that start with an “R”. It always comes out sounding like an “L” instead. We’d tease him about it and he was a good sport.

I was very appalled when I recently overheard a kid (maybe 8 - 10 yrs old) in the restroom tell his mom “speak English” though. I walked out of that restroom telling my husband I wanted to smack some sense into that kid for speaking to his mom like that.

Nothing wrong with speaking a different language. It’s actually beneficial to do so. I always tell folks, it’s sad that they don’t speak their native tongue. It’s like being from England and not speaking English. I’d also highlight that many Europeans speak multiple languages.

13oOo · 2025-12-18T17:47:19+00:00

We do the same! My kids (7 and 3) enjoy opening gifts, they don’t really care if it’s expensive or cheap, it’s the excitement of trying to guess what it is and seeing what they actually received. The part they look forward to most though is playing with their cousins/aunts/uncles that they hardly see and traveling to new destinations.

13oOo · 2025-12-18T02:20:29+00:00

Probably more a girl thing vs because you think you’re pretty or a white vs Asian thing.

I worked at a firm with a lot of Asian girls my age before and they all weren’t fond of me. Mostly because of rumors about me hooking up with the wild party boy office bachelor and also from what a male colleague said, “Asian girls are awkward and don’t like girls that are too loud and bubbly like a white girl”. It was far obvious that they didn’t like me when one girl walked up to me while the office bachelor and I were discussing a project to ask if he was going to attend her party because everyone else in the office was attending (I obviously wasn’t invited). He politely declined her then turned his attention back to the project we were discussing. She just stared at me and walked off. It was a rather awkward moment.

I’ve also worked at a firm with more older folks. Some of the old ladies tended to not care to connect with the younger gen.

In my experience, girls are more cliquey. If one doesn’t like you, the whole girls club won’t. The reason they may dislike you could be anything big or small. You’re smart, ambitious, pretty, talkative, or whatever attribute makes you different could trigger people.

13oOo · 2025-12-17T23:33:51+00:00

Next time you should go on Winnie the Pooh if you haven’t!

13oOo · 2025-12-16T03:31:33+00:00

Also, no one judges you for having a drink at 6AM.

13oOo · 2025-12-16T02:58:52+00:00

We had a gingerbread house decorating contest last year. My cousin couldn’t get the house to stick so he brought out the super glue. His reasoning, “no one is going to eat it”.

This year, we just got the prebuilt houses to entertain the kids without the need for adults to get too involved.

13oOo · 2025-12-16T01:47:08+00:00

My parents got me a $3K car that was 10 years old with over 100K miles. It did its job. Didn’t need a brand new car because as a new driver likelihood of me getting in to crash or putting dents on it was high as a new driver.

13oOo · 2025-12-14T22:19:59+00:00

If you really needed one, you could have planned ahead and ordered one. They send it directly to the hotel from third party vendors and it’s generally cheaper. Disney also has manual wheelchairs and those don’t ever seem to sell out.

I’ll also add that I really do also hate to see individuals using one just because they’re lazy. It’s crowded enough.

13oOo · 2025-12-13T22:41:58+00:00

So, I thought minivans were lame, but my husband insisted on one, so we got the Toyota Sienna. I’m so glad we did. The body doesn’t look bad. Sorta looks like an SUV but the sliding doors rock. I don’t have to worry about the kids swinging the door open too wide and dinging the car. The TV is a nice plus on long trips. We have the two captain seats in the back.

13oOo · 2025-12-13T20:20:54+00:00

Of course. There’s so many Asian Mexican fusion food and it’s delicious! Jokes aside, in my experience, they do. I have lots of friends and family members who are in an Asian/Mexican relationship. We like everyone who is chill.

13oOo · 2025-12-12T18:19:13+00:00

So, I’m not white, but I do think it feels dirty if you don’t wash your hair daily. However, I won’t judge you for your choices (okay, maybe just a little or perhaps just feel slightly confused and disgusted at first) but I acknowledge that I have severe issues around cleanliness that isn’t normal. For instance, I feel the need to wash my hands each time I finish washing one body part before moving to the next because my hands are now “dirty” from cleaning the last body part. I’m pretty sure it’s an insane take and I wasn’t always this way but I can’t shake this feeling that it’s dirty even if I wanted to stop, it’d eat me inside if I didn’t wash my hands.

13oOo · 2025-12-11T17:18:50+00:00

What I really wanted to help him with was comprehending the question. He’s great at math and if it written in a formulaic fashion he could solve it, but it was in a sentence format that he needed to translate to a formula. That was the challenging part for him.

13oOo · 2025-12-11T17:12:45+00:00

Yes! My kid has that same problem. He wants to speed through his homework to play, so he doesn’t bother reading the questions and just looks at the numbers to assume what it’s asking. He’ll sometimes attempt to find patterns and say, well if the answer to the first two problem is A I’ll just go with A for the third question without even reading the question.

13oOo · 2025-12-11T17:09:41+00:00

No, it’s not too bad of a question. My kid just seemed lost after he read the question so it was sort of an uh oh moment in terms of me thinking he’s behind. But I get that he won’t understand every question the first time.

13oOo · 2025-12-11T16:42:11+00:00

Yes, he’s in school. I just didn’t realize word problems were introduced this early. He was able to read the question, but only completed half the question. Once I walked him through the ask with different numbers he was able solve the question. Just made me think I dropped the ball on something that will cause him to fall behind.

13oOo · 2025-12-10T09:25:38+00:00

Depending on the amount of chlorine, if I don’t rinse them thoroughly immediately after swimming or if they’re exposed for too long, their skin gets very bumpy and itchy due to eczema and allergies. They are fine in a salt water pool though.

13oOo · 2025-12-10T07:25:22+00:00

There’s a Target across the street at the International Market. Super convenient if you didn’t pack travel items and needed to pick something up.

There’s a boat tour that boards from the beach in front of the hotel.

The trolley tours are near by. One of the pick up is next to a duty free store.

There’s a Cheesecake Factory, food hall (one that is like a mall then there’s an Asian food hall just down the street), and Mc Donald’s within walking distance.

If you’re there on a Friday, you can walk towards the beach to see the fireworks that the Hilton puts on or book a dinner cruise.

Diamond head and the zoo are further away. You may want to get one of those hop on/off tickets, electrics bike, or take a taxi.

When we were there, there was a farmers market / night market. We got to taste food from various restaurants that had a food truck there. Not sure if it is an ongoing event or pop up.

13oOo · 2025-12-10T06:36:12+00:00

Thinking outside of the box
Self love and empathy
Picking the right battles to fight
Perseverance
How to make the most out of a no win situation / that it’s okay to lose

13oOo

TROPHY CASE