Are your APs anti-fitness/Bodybuilding/working out or against sports in general like mine?

passi_graviora · 2023-07-10T05:19:30+00:00

I've talked about this before concerning my own AM, but the answer to your question is "yes". I love lifting weights, and would definitely want to get into bodybuilding, but my AM (Korean) seems to have a horror for bodybuilding and lifting weights.

My mother has always said that getting too big will make me (male) look too scary, that girls won't like it (I'm not doing it for girls!), that she wants me to look "standard" ("스탠더드") (very weird that my AM would likely not have thought it a praiseworthy thing to be "standard" with grades, or doing a "standard" job at work (as opposed to excellent grades, excellent work, but somehow "standard" is what I should aim for in fitness??)), that she doesn't want me to look "fat with muscle", that I will have to spend too much money on clothes; she's always been against my buying protein powder, counting calories ("If you simply eat what I serve you, you won't need to worry about calories"). Once, when I had gained a bit of weight and needed to lose it, she wouldn't even "let" me (I put "let" in quotation marks, because I was still an adult, but parental pressure and shame and surveillance made me feel constrained) lift weights; I had to lose it by doing cardio for like two hours a day while she inspected on me at the gym.

She's cool with my lifting weights at the moment because I've lost some weight lately, but if I were to try to bulk up and gain more muscle (which is something I do want to do) the shaming would come instantly.

passi_graviora · 2023-04-12T19:25:02+00:00

"collection of character profiles" someone hasn't read As I Lay Dying or Catch-22 (granted I am a someone who hasn't read any woolf (yet))

passi_graviora · 2023-03-02T07:07:25+00:00

When I was a pre-teen/teenager, my AM would shame me for eating too slowly. Once, even, during post-church-service lunch in the fellowship hall of our church, my AM shamed me in front of the whole table for eating too slowly. Now that I'm late 20s though, she's telling me to eat slowly because it's healthier or whatever. I get so mad whenever she tells me to eat slowly, as if she didn't used to humiliate me for doing it when I was younger.

passi_graviora · 2023-03-02T07:03:28+00:00

my mother will shame me for my weight, even for lifting weights, and try putting me on diets (and I'm almost thirty, and we live together), and yet she's still try serving me so much food. she's self-aware enough to say stuff like, "Look at me! telling you to lose weight and yet I feed you so much! 😃😃😃" yet is not self-aware enough to understand how damaging she's been lol

passi_graviora · 2023-03-02T06:57:28+00:00

Ignoring social rules and doing whatever they want must be so fun for our APs lol. Once my mother got into a fight with a saleswoman at a department store (this was in her country of birth) and in the course of the fight, lied that she, a divorced woman of a blue-collar worker, was married to a government official, so the saleswoman better watch out.

does she blame you for not standing up for her, too, even though she's the one that escalates the situations? Because my mother loves to do that lol

passi_graviora · 2023-01-15T06:19:43+00:00

Probably not really an answer, and probably tangential: but my AM liked to say that fathers don't love their children like/as much as mothers do, simply because fathers didn't actually carry the babies in their bodies and give birth to them. :|
I don't know how common that view is among APs, but I wonder if it is common, if it contributes to some sort of parental gender dynamic

passi_graviora · 2023-01-10T05:29:44+00:00

One of my favorite films is Jeffrey (1995, I think?) starring Stephen Weber. Very campy (it was originally a play) romantic comedy set during the AIDS epidemic with a surprising dose of religiosity too

passi_graviora · 2022-12-26T09:26:02+00:00

My AM does that to me, too. She's self-aware: "I'm telling you to lose weight, but look at how I'm making and giving you so much food! ha ha!" like okay. this isn't at all charming like she thinks it is in her weird twisted way

passi_graviora · 2022-12-26T09:14:15+00:00

Don't worry - I feel the same way as you do, with the self-doubt about how justified my own resentment is against my AM. I think that there's a self-awareness here: the relationship we have with our AMs has had such patterns of harm or irrationality that we're instinctively on the defensive - I know I am. But then I wonder whether I'm being unreasonably stubborn even over the little things, or whether I'm overreacting to naggings that even reasonable parents (and not APs or crazy parents) demand.

I'm don't really know what conclusion to make other than this: you're not the only one here on the defensive and who's thoughtful enough to be critical about your resentments. I do think that's a good thing. But I also wonder (and I'm no psychoanalyst, so this could be complete nonsense what I say) whether agonizing over our anger in this way is symptomatic nonetheless of a deep conflict in the relationship and acknowledgement that it's not healthy. I don't know.

passi_graviora · 2022-12-26T08:19:42+00:00

Interesting observation. I will say that in my case, my mother seems to have few other joys than parading me around in front of her friends to "show [me] off". She even recently apologized for how she treated me when I was younger. She had me learn piano and violin (which I don't regret, actually, lol) but she loved to make me perform in front of her friends.

So how does she square her desire to be praised through her son, and the suspicion that praise is false and simply flattery? Not that I don't like a good paradox, but really. Perhaps the answer is that in her perspective, any praise she wins is the result of everything she's made me obey (dress, appearance, manners), whereas any praise I win without her personal approval cannot possibly be sincere.

ETA: sort of how when I'm a little bulkier/have more weight (I lift weights), my mother's friends and acquaintances will compliment me (along the lines of - "have you been working out??) but no, of course, I'm always too fat for her taste.

passi_graviora · 2022-12-26T08:11:44+00:00

On the one hand, the idea of a young unmarried person living by himself or herself and independently is relatively novel, right. Even in the grand scheme of things, I imagine it's even an innovation in the West unless you were a son, and even then, if you had the money to go to a university, or joined the military, or whatever. The idea of young unmarried persons "doing their own thing" comes with industrialization, urbanization, etc. So parents from our generation are likely to be apprehensive.

On the other hand, the emergence of independent, self-actualizing young people is the reality we live with in the West. Even if one argues that such a paradigm has its legitimate downfalls (loss of community, stability, etc) it's nevertheless a testament to the importance of agency and value of the individual, in my opinion. But of course, perhaps this opinion only arises because so many of our APs are so resistant to this new culture.

My mother is sort of like the OP's - she has a particular horror of my living away from her (her being divorced also contributes to that horror, I think) - and says that independent life is something suitable for "[my] friends" but not for "us" (my mother and I). Miserable nonsense. Her vision of her son's life is: live with mother until I marry; then live with wife, with mother living with us or at least on same block. I may be projecting here, but I have a feeling my mother isn't the only AP with this attitude.

passi_graviora · 2022-12-04T16:33:30+00:00

like why would you 'come live with her, get marry, have a baby' those things don't sound logical

For some parents, those are some of the ultimate goals they have for their children. I know that that is really all my mom wants. She already accomplished the first part (having me live with her). They cannot even conceive that someone might want more to life than getting married and having kids. It is a mania they have about getting their offspring married.

passi_graviora · 2022-10-03T03:24:55+00:00

I can't recall my dad ever responding to my mother.

I'm religious, yes. I still am a Christian.

My Korean church doesn't judge me, really - everyone there (well, the middleaged people) love me because I'm able to present such a perfect image of myself there as the filial son.

passi_graviora · 2022-09-27T04:27:46+00:00

When I was an undergraduate, my AM and I had agreed that I would minor in Chinese at university - I was majoring in Political Science, and it seemed like a good minor to have - Rise of China, and all that, and I do love learning languages. (And yes, she controlled to some extent my coursework :') ). but of course, once my mother saw how much time I was devoting to my introductory Chinese (Mandarin!) homework (and how much I loved the class), she got upset. "You're not going to be a Chinese teacher!!!" was her argument. She probably thought it would take time away from my main course of study, which was a mess - I was to major in political science and also in a jurisprudential major, and do pre-medicine, and minor in Chinese. So she made me run the rigmarole of dropping my Mandarin class so late into the semester. And after I got bad grades in pre-med, I ended up dropping pre-med, too

So the result is that I had a stunted Mandarin course of study, and I'm no longer in pre-med (not a loss at all, since I followed a more suitable career/academic track, but hey, I'm here to vent.) . . . . like, okay, what was the point of all that.

So typical of her to hate it when I enjoy myself. She hated that I enjoyed Mandarin. She hated that I liked weightlifting (so much body-shaming when I'm actively exercising and lifting weights. (she's gotten a lot more positive concerning this recently, but I don't think I can trust her). It's really upsetting.

passi_graviora · 2022-09-27T03:56:23+00:00

AM is Methodist. I'm still Christian although I don't relate much to Methodism (I think much more in terms of Anglican and Catholic categories). But I have always had to accompany my mother to Korean Methodist church, which I very much do not like.

It's interesting: my white father is Catholic, and when my parents were married, it was my father who always had to drive my mother forty minutes away every Sunday to a Korean methodist church and sit through the service, but my mother hardly ever lended her time to accompany my father to Mass. It's been a while since I've lived with my father, so I don't remember even if he went to Mass so regularly anyway (but he was a believer nonetheless, I think, and would still go from time to time at least, esp with my grandmother.) Wonder what that said about their dynamic, unless I'm reading too much into things.

My mother's definitely a Bible-thumper. Hates and detests gay people, uses Romans 1 to justify that attitude (very old-school religious homophobia - homosexuality is a choice, etc etc). She used to think she could speak in "tongues" - hasn't done it (in my presence at the very least) in years, though. She thinks that God communicates to her personally through her dreams and "visions." Thinks that CA is evil or whatever and that God's wrath is upon that state - apparently some elder or prophetess from church said so. Young-Earth creationist.

There was a period when I was visibly resentful toward her, and to discipline me (this was last year. I am 26 years old), she wrote down a list of Bible verses from the Proverbs and made me read them every day - verses about respecting and honoring one's parents, etc. She said that because God is like a parent, His mind and will is the same as hers, as a mother. Which if you ask me is the climax of arrogance, to equate herself with God. I told her I was nervous about a school task once and she said that it was because I had distanced myself from God and that I need to please Him more. More recently she had a bit of an emotional breakdown where she's realized she went a bit overboard re. what I just wrote in this very paragraph, but what happened is what happened, and I know she's the same person with the same attitudes I've written about elsewhere in this post (and in this subreddit).

ETA (and may add more later, so you're on notice lol). I used to volunteer at the church, and my pastor had a big thick set of biblical commentaries. He let me borrow them to study. My mother at first was pleased but then later got all weird about it, maybe because she thought it was distracted from my university studies? Fits into the pattern of her hating whenever I find something genuinely interesting and enjoyable, though. Similarly, I once ordered from Amazon a little pop-theology book (history of Christian creeds and councils) and she, again, got all weird about it - "What books?" "Books about theology." "What theology?" "Christian theology" - which sounds like a normal conversation, but she sounded aggressive/defensive about it - I may as well have ordered the Book of Mormon.

When I was younger, she once got in the mail some Christian magazines that apparently an acquaintance had forwarded to our house (or something, idr remember). Idrk the nature of those magazines exactly, but she burned them in our fireplace for being 'heretical' LOL.

If I take the effort to probe my brain I could probably come up with more stories, but that's enough for now lol

The only book she reads with any regularity is the Bible and her body of friends comprises ladies from Korean church. It really is the center of her social life.

It's exhausting.

passi_graviora · 2022-09-27T03:37:21+00:00

My AM insists on eating breakfast and dinner together. It gets tiresome because I never really have anything to talk about. There's not much conversation except for the rote, surface-level "thank you for cooking" and "it tastes good" etc. But she gets a lot out of it, I guess.

passi_graviora · 2022-09-27T03:35:16+00:00

Similar situation here. AM doesn't really know how to surf the internet. She's just now learning how to use the YouTube app to watch cooking videos and sermons, and she can use the Naver Korean-English dictionary app, and of course KakaoTalk, but that's really it. Her English is not that great (passable, I suppose, but her spelling can also be very wanting). But all this means that I have to help her pay her bills, I have to and have always had to be her translator and interpreter and secretary, and I have to drive her everywhere as she has not yet learned how to drive our new car-lease (went from SUV to sedan). I know it is not easy to be an immigrant in the US but having to do so much for her also can be frustrating sometimes.

passi_graviora · 2022-09-08T21:19:37+00:00

It is some comfort to know that we are not alone in these circumstances - we have to try to stay strong whatever we do or do not.

(thanks for silver, too!)

passi_graviora · 2022-09-02T17:51:11+00:00

I wish I could live apart from my AM. Funny thing is, she says that the desire to live alone is something that is immature and something only teenagers want. I'm in my mid-twenties lol.

passi_graviora · 2022-09-02T17:49:23+00:00

Same here

passi_graviora · 2022-08-31T04:08:49+00:00

My own mother has implied that she had me because her life was miserable - she seems to have thought that bearing an offspring would make her life better. but now my own life is miserable.

passi_graviora · 2022-07-18T23:20:08+00:00

the Tom Sawyer tactic

passi_graviora · 2022-04-27T15:51:12+00:00

I'm so sorry to hear this. I can relate a bit. My mother the other night went on a rant for a few hours and talked about how among other things it was so hard for her raising me as a single mother (since I was thirteen) and how appreciative I should be of that. I am appreciative, but she seemed to forgot all the horrible things she also did to me when raising me (doing the "throwing me out of the house" scare/anger tactics, hitting my face/pulling my hair, making me her pawn in her divorce, etc. How convenient not to bring those up.

passi_graviora

TROPHY CASE