Reply to My in-laws refuse to speak English in my present

Forum Index » Family Relationships

Reply to "My in-laws refuse to speak English in my present"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]OP here. Thanks for all the understanding. It feels much better that I am not the only one and reasonable and that I am not too sensitive in this situation. So it seems like with Chinese culture, the younger person get no respect (for this matter) in the family, I married the Chinese husband so I need to blend in. I get it but I can't help with my own feeling. 
What bothering a lot is since the baby arrive, they visit my house one night a week and this becomes too much to handle sometimes as I still think they are being rude to me in my own house and I am not good to hide my feeling from my expression.

[b]As I don't want to make more tense between me and his family, what can I do to make myself feel better to ignore this issue? Please give me some advice (especially from Cantonese speaking families) that I am not consider rude to them. [/b]

To give you more information, I have done this once and my husband said I was rude. 
We were out with his family and his ex-girlfriend, who came to visit for her short school/vacation here from HK, I wasn't happy to go but forced to. It is already awkward enough to be with his ex and now with the group that I don't speak the same language. As usual, they all spoke in Cantonese the whole time and my husband did nothing to engage me into the conversation. I felt very left out and upset. After I finished my food, I was playing food prep with my left over and discard. Ok, I admit I was childish to do this but I got nothing to do and was so bored. When we were back home, he was update and told me how rude I was. I tried to explain why I did what I did, he still thought I was rude so since then I did nothing to improve the situation and I am still pissed to this moment (lol).

I think if you want respect from other, you should show your respect first regardless where you are from. I made this effort at the beginning by trying to learn Cantonese but I lost the respect for them from what feel from them and obviously it makes me feel un-easy but it is not bothering my husband or my ILs.

[/quote]

OP, may I ask what ethnicity are you? I know you're not American, but I wonder if in your culture things are quite as hierarchical as in Asian cultures and that's why you're having a hard time dealing with this.

I'm the PP who lived in Asia for an extended time and married an Asian man. I sometimes think it's a lot easier for me to deal with the cultural differences because I studied some of this cultural stuff for a long time before meeting him and his family. I also sometimes wonder if some people are more predisposed to be exposed to other cultures without being hurt/offended when they are really very different. Like, more sensitive people would be hurt, but less sensitive people wouldn't mind.

It is interesting, though -- even in Japan (which most people think is a super-polite country), there is so much you could be offended by. There's no chivalry at all (men don't treat women special), people don't hold door for each other, etc. It's easy to feel hurt by little stuff if you're sensitive to it![/quote]

I'm Vietnamese and I consider Chinese and Vietnamese cultures are very similar and I thought it is an advantage and would be no problem for me to blend in. Soon enough I found I have very different opinion in this matter. I guess all I want from them is some consideration so that I don't feel totally excluded. Do you think I am not supposed to PP as you may know about culture thing than myself. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics