Should I tell my father I've bought a car?
November 9, 2024 8:08 PM Subscribe
This feels ridiculous, but: I am a 40-year-old woman who recently moved to a place with poor public transport, and will likely need to buy a car soon. My mother wants me to hide this from my father 'for the sake of his health'. This seems to me to be completely ridiculous and potentially a sign of some other problem that needs to be addressed, either with my father's mental health, my mother's, or something with me that makes them believe that I'm unfit to have a car. How should I navigate this?
I have had a license since I was 18, have done many road trips with rental cars since then, and feel comfortable driving. I have had two accidents, both over twenty years ago: once when I dinged the car while parking, and once when somebody else rammed into me when I had right of way. I have never owned a car before, and would want to purchase a used vehicle, likely from someone else working at my research institute. I have been researching car brands, used car caveats, and local driving laws. I can legally drive here.
My new workplace is a big international (English-speaking) research institute in a country where I do not yet speak the local language (and likely won't to an appreciable extent before my contract is up); I expect to be in this little multinational expat (not immigrant, because we're not planning to stay here) bubble for the sake of my career for the next couple of years. Most of my colleagues also don't speak the local language, and most have (secondhand) cars because public transport is so bad and our institute is in the middle of nowhere.
My father, in his late 70s, was very unhappy about me moving here and has an anxious personality in general. I can understand his concerns because I am halfway around the world, in a place where I do not speak the local language, and where driving is on the other side than what we're used to. On the other hand, I moved abroad when I was 18, have lived in three other countries since then, one of which I learned two local languages in; and I've rented and driven vehicles in all of them, and in several more, including countries with the same driving side as here. I don't think I'm being complacent about the need to be aware of which side of the road I'm driving on, or the extra responsibilities that come with car ownership, but I don't believe that they are such huge obstacles that they should prevent me from buying one. I am using my own money to do this, not asking for any of theirs.
My mother has now asked that if I buy a car, I hide the fact from him 'for the sake of his health'. I can't get a good answer from her what she means by that, other than that the thought of me having a car here is causing him a lot of stress. I raised the possibility of him seeing a doctor if she truly feels that he is in danger, and she told me that he would never consider it and that it's out of the question (they live in a country where psychological help is available in theory, but culturally really isn't a thing for people in their generation). I asked as gently as possible if there was a reason why they felt I shouldn't be driving (though I'm not aware of anything myself), and she said no. I'm not sure whether she has an accurate read on my dad's state of mind and he's been making life miserable for them both (my guess is it's this), or whether *she's* actually being overly anxious and blowing his reaction out of proportion.
I actually don't feel that I can or should realistically hide a car purchase from my father. We speak often enough that I won't be able to hide the fact that I have one (since I'm planning on using it to go on trips around my area, and would need to be able to explain how I got there). If I buy a car and don't tell him and he finds out because I mention it later, I *know* he'll be furious because he'll see that I've been deliberately lying and hiding the purchase from him. And I'm honestly furious that at my age I'm even being asked to hide something that is such an ordinary part of so many people's lives. I asked my mom what we are supposed to do in case of actually serious news, like a cancer diagnosis. She didn't have an answer.
How should I navigate this situation? Should I just mention in passing that I'm buying a car, swallowing my own fear of his reaction, and let them deal with their own reactions and relationship dynamics? Should I try to push harder for one or both of them, or all three of us, to get some sort of professional help? (If so, for those of you coming from parts of the world where that's not really a thing...*how*?)
I have had a license since I was 18, have done many road trips with rental cars since then, and feel comfortable driving. I have had two accidents, both over twenty years ago: once when I dinged the car while parking, and once when somebody else rammed into me when I had right of way. I have never owned a car before, and would want to purchase a used vehicle, likely from someone else working at my research institute. I have been researching car brands, used car caveats, and local driving laws. I can legally drive here.
My new workplace is a big international (English-speaking) research institute in a country where I do not yet speak the local language (and likely won't to an appreciable extent before my contract is up); I expect to be in this little multinational expat (not immigrant, because we're not planning to stay here) bubble for the sake of my career for the next couple of years. Most of my colleagues also don't speak the local language, and most have (secondhand) cars because public transport is so bad and our institute is in the middle of nowhere.
My father, in his late 70s, was very unhappy about me moving here and has an anxious personality in general. I can understand his concerns because I am halfway around the world, in a place where I do not speak the local language, and where driving is on the other side than what we're used to. On the other hand, I moved abroad when I was 18, have lived in three other countries since then, one of which I learned two local languages in; and I've rented and driven vehicles in all of them, and in several more, including countries with the same driving side as here. I don't think I'm being complacent about the need to be aware of which side of the road I'm driving on, or the extra responsibilities that come with car ownership, but I don't believe that they are such huge obstacles that they should prevent me from buying one. I am using my own money to do this, not asking for any of theirs.
My mother has now asked that if I buy a car, I hide the fact from him 'for the sake of his health'. I can't get a good answer from her what she means by that, other than that the thought of me having a car here is causing him a lot of stress. I raised the possibility of him seeing a doctor if she truly feels that he is in danger, and she told me that he would never consider it and that it's out of the question (they live in a country where psychological help is available in theory, but culturally really isn't a thing for people in their generation). I asked as gently as possible if there was a reason why they felt I shouldn't be driving (though I'm not aware of anything myself), and she said no. I'm not sure whether she has an accurate read on my dad's state of mind and he's been making life miserable for them both (my guess is it's this), or whether *she's* actually being overly anxious and blowing his reaction out of proportion.
I actually don't feel that I can or should realistically hide a car purchase from my father. We speak often enough that I won't be able to hide the fact that I have one (since I'm planning on using it to go on trips around my area, and would need to be able to explain how I got there). If I buy a car and don't tell him and he finds out because I mention it later, I *know* he'll be furious because he'll see that I've been deliberately lying and hiding the purchase from him. And I'm honestly furious that at my age I'm even being asked to hide something that is such an ordinary part of so many people's lives. I asked my mom what we are supposed to do in case of actually serious news, like a cancer diagnosis. She didn't have an answer.
How should I navigate this situation? Should I just mention in passing that I'm buying a car, swallowing my own fear of his reaction, and let them deal with their own reactions and relationship dynamics? Should I try to push harder for one or both of them, or all three of us, to get some sort of professional help? (If so, for those of you coming from parts of the world where that's not really a thing...*how*?)
You gotta rip off this bandage and tell them about your car and let the chips fall where they may.
posted by panhopticon at 8:26 PM on November 9, 2024 [12 favorites]
posted by panhopticon at 8:26 PM on November 9, 2024 [12 favorites]
Best answer: You're overthinking this small interaction. Buy the car. Feel free to tell people you did. If this stresses them out for any reason, that is OK.
posted by shadygrove at 8:32 PM on November 9, 2024 [15 favorites]
posted by shadygrove at 8:32 PM on November 9, 2024 [15 favorites]
Yeah you don't know what's going on with your mom, and I certainly don't, but lying/hiding information seems sketchy and bad, and I think you should just talk about it like it's no big deal because it's no big deal. Resist your mother's attempts to make it into one - your father may supply whatever baggage he needs to but that way he'll at least have to make his own anxiety instead of borrowing your mother's second-hand through you.
posted by aubilenon at 8:42 PM on November 9, 2024 [4 favorites]
posted by aubilenon at 8:42 PM on November 9, 2024 [4 favorites]
Tell him when it comes up.
("I understand you're worried about me, Dad. Thank you, but I'm going to be fine." (change topic of conversation))(x37)
posted by praemunire at 8:43 PM on November 9, 2024 [3 favorites]
("I understand you're worried about me, Dad. Thank you, but I'm going to be fine." (change topic of conversation))(x37)
posted by praemunire at 8:43 PM on November 9, 2024 [3 favorites]
Best answer: Your parents have recently entered true elderly status which can be scary. Maybe your mother is terrified of losing your father and trying to protect him from all fear and stress is her way of trying to stave off his risk of heart attacks or strokes or other stress-related declines. This is magical thinking in a way but it might be her only way of trying to control a situation beyond control, mortality. If you think of this as your mother trying to shield your father due to her own worries about the vulnerability she feels in this stage of life it might make more sense emotionally to you. That doesn't mean you should go along with her suggestion but you could, instead of just blithely announcing you have a car, reassure them about how careful and meticulous you have been about researching car ownership, and how much safer it will actually make you to have your own transportation. You don't have to indulge their stress by explaining all this, but if you do so for their sake, you'll switch from the "child" role this whole episode is making you feel like, and it will be a kindness to them.
posted by ponie at 8:53 PM on November 9, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by ponie at 8:53 PM on November 9, 2024 [1 favorite]
Best answer: My parents have a similar dynamic I think as to what you’ve described. I have figured out that whatever thing my mom wants me to hide, however much crap (ie transfer of his anxiety) my dad is going to give *me* about it, he’s going to give my mom 10-fold (when I’m not around). So that may be part of your mom’s motivation. But that’s just to give some insight, if helpful - I’ve learned to tune my dad’s anxiety out so i can get on with life and have encouraged my mom to as well, but it’s really not my responsibility (or yours!!!) to adjust your behavior to salve over someone else’s anxiety….
posted by Tandem Affinity at 9:02 PM on November 9, 2024 [23 favorites]
posted by Tandem Affinity at 9:02 PM on November 9, 2024 [23 favorites]
If you are financially independent from your parents - if you do not need their money to buy this car - there is literally no reason they should care whether you buy a car or not. Buy the car, don't hide it, and as harsh as it may sound, it's on them to deal with it as they will. Don't lie; don't try to cushion the blow. Don't be rude about it either, just be factual - "I bought a car" is all they need to know. That's not a value judgment, it's a statement of fact.
You're an adult, you need to live your life the way it makes the most sense for you.
posted by pdb at 9:26 PM on November 9, 2024 [9 favorites]
You're an adult, you need to live your life the way it makes the most sense for you.
posted by pdb at 9:26 PM on November 9, 2024 [9 favorites]
It seems to me that it should be a comfort to your dad that you are in control of your own transportation. It's much more nerve wracking to have to deal with the uncertainty of trying to scrounge lifts or hire strangers that you can't communicate with.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:47 PM on November 9, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by a humble nudibranch at 9:47 PM on November 9, 2024 [1 favorite]
Best answer: "Mom, I'm not going to lie to dad or you."
posted by zippy at 10:38 PM on November 9, 2024 [12 favorites]
posted by zippy at 10:38 PM on November 9, 2024 [12 favorites]
Don't set yourself on fire to keep somebody else warm. Your parents' anxiety does not trump your need for reliable transport.
Obviously it would be a kindness to your mother not to mention your car to your father, but there's also no need to treat it like some kind of State secret worth getting tangled in a web of lies to protect, so if he asks you point blank how you're getting around, just tell him. Unless and until he does that, there's no harm in leaving things ambiguous.
posted by flabdablet at 3:16 AM on November 10, 2024 [6 favorites]
Obviously it would be a kindness to your mother not to mention your car to your father, but there's also no need to treat it like some kind of State secret worth getting tangled in a web of lies to protect, so if he asks you point blank how you're getting around, just tell him. Unless and until he does that, there's no harm in leaving things ambiguous.
posted by flabdablet at 3:16 AM on November 10, 2024 [6 favorites]
I dealt with something similar years ago - one of my parents stopped speaking to me for several weeks when I bought a bicycle in college. There was no perfect way to handle that situation that didn't involve me putting aside my own needs and desires in order to help control their anxiety. If your perfectly compliant behaviour is the only way to manage someone else's anxiety then their anxiety is ultimately a way of controlling you, and that wasn't acceptable to me at 18 years old, let alone as a long since grown adult.
Despite being strongly pressured not to do the right thing for me in order to manage someone else's anxiety on their behalf, I did it anyway and everyone survived. Buy the car, tell both parents - this is the definition of a them problem rather than a you problem.
posted by terretu at 4:24 AM on November 10, 2024 [17 favorites]
Despite being strongly pressured not to do the right thing for me in order to manage someone else's anxiety on their behalf, I did it anyway and everyone survived. Buy the car, tell both parents - this is the definition of a them problem rather than a you problem.
posted by terretu at 4:24 AM on November 10, 2024 [17 favorites]
Best answer: I only briefly skimmed through your question but: screw them, ignore this, live your life.
My brother got a new puppy earlier this year. My brother, who is in his mid thirties and is a homeowner and has a family with children and who already has a dog, got a new puppy. A few months after his beloved first dog died. He got a puppy.
Our mom told him he could NEVER tell our dad. That dad would freak out and not like it, so the puppy must stay a secret. My brother respected that. This continued for months and included my mom making two separate multi-day trips (they live 3+ hours apart) to go to my brother's house to dogsit while my brother's family was out of town, which my mom lied to my dad about. So now we have a secret puppy and secret cross state solo travel by a 70 year old woman. And then it turned out that puppy had congenital kidney disease and died (terrible) and you can add secret family mourning to the mix.
Stupid!!! It's all so fucking stupid!!! Why!!! None of this makes any sense!!!!!!!!
Other things that were kept a secret: mom had cancer, dad had a stroke, extended family history of alcoholism and depressive suicide. "Don't want to worry you," sorry?? This is my medical history too, you dorks. There are so many other examples over the decades but these just happen to be the most recent. And the dog secret most incredibly stupid. (No that's not true, there was also years long secret family scuttlebutt about my tattoo--note that I do not have a tattoo, but I was the last in the family to know. THAT was the most stupid.)
Anyway, my point is you can choose to participate in their drama and continue this nonsense, or you can choose to make your life heaps, heaps easier. I've chosen the latter. I sleep well at night.
posted by phunniemee at 4:50 AM on November 10, 2024 [22 favorites]
My brother got a new puppy earlier this year. My brother, who is in his mid thirties and is a homeowner and has a family with children and who already has a dog, got a new puppy. A few months after his beloved first dog died. He got a puppy.
Our mom told him he could NEVER tell our dad. That dad would freak out and not like it, so the puppy must stay a secret. My brother respected that. This continued for months and included my mom making two separate multi-day trips (they live 3+ hours apart) to go to my brother's house to dogsit while my brother's family was out of town, which my mom lied to my dad about. So now we have a secret puppy and secret cross state solo travel by a 70 year old woman. And then it turned out that puppy had congenital kidney disease and died (terrible) and you can add secret family mourning to the mix.
Stupid!!! It's all so fucking stupid!!! Why!!! None of this makes any sense!!!!!!!!
Other things that were kept a secret: mom had cancer, dad had a stroke, extended family history of alcoholism and depressive suicide. "Don't want to worry you," sorry?? This is my medical history too, you dorks. There are so many other examples over the decades but these just happen to be the most recent. And the dog secret most incredibly stupid. (No that's not true, there was also years long secret family scuttlebutt about my tattoo--note that I do not have a tattoo, but I was the last in the family to know. THAT was the most stupid.)
Anyway, my point is you can choose to participate in their drama and continue this nonsense, or you can choose to make your life heaps, heaps easier. I've chosen the latter. I sleep well at night.
posted by phunniemee at 4:50 AM on November 10, 2024 [22 favorites]
This seems to me to be completely ridiculous and potentially a sign of some other problem that needs to be addressed, either with my father's mental health, my mother's, or something with me that makes them believe that I'm unfit to have a car. How should I navigate this?
Well first, the “something unfit with me” is an under stably child viewpoint. There’s nothing wrong with you that makes you unfit to have a car unless you didn’t mention you’re an alcoholic who would drive drunk. So, ignore that tiny voice. Your parents’ anxiety is not and never has been your fault.
Second, buy a car, say so. Don’t expect them to be anything but weird about it. Live your life.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:51 AM on November 10, 2024 [3 favorites]
Well first, the “something unfit with me” is an under stably child viewpoint. There’s nothing wrong with you that makes you unfit to have a car unless you didn’t mention you’re an alcoholic who would drive drunk. So, ignore that tiny voice. Your parents’ anxiety is not and never has been your fault.
Second, buy a car, say so. Don’t expect them to be anything but weird about it. Live your life.
posted by warriorqueen at 5:51 AM on November 10, 2024 [3 favorites]
The only thing in this situation that would make sense to me is that when people learn to drive on the other side of the road I get anxious that they will intuitively go to the wrong side of the road in a split second reflex decision, so I hope they re-take driving lessons in the new location, just to help re-train those reflexes. So if you want to slightly address some of the loving rational parental anxiety, maybe do that.
But keeping a secret for years isn’t really sustainable so I would just get your car and live your life and if he asks questions, answer them as you wish.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 6:06 AM on November 10, 2024 [1 favorite]
But keeping a secret for years isn’t really sustainable so I would just get your car and live your life and if he asks questions, answer them as you wish.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 6:06 AM on November 10, 2024 [1 favorite]
1. Definitely tell whoever you please about your new car, including your dad. Your mother has no control over you.
2. Your mother seems to be going through something scary and she deserves your attention and your help. Why is she so anxious about your dad - is he abusive? has he deteriorated health wise? does he have dementia? is he flying off the handle with her? And is your mom okay, health wise and mentally? Is she suffering from debilitating anxiety? Does she have dementia that makes her imagine things about your dad?
Don't follow your mother's suggestion to lie to your dad. And also, do not ignore what she said or dismiss it as nonsense unworthy of further investigation. SOMETHING is going on.
posted by MiraK at 6:24 AM on November 10, 2024 [10 favorites]
2. Your mother seems to be going through something scary and she deserves your attention and your help. Why is she so anxious about your dad - is he abusive? has he deteriorated health wise? does he have dementia? is he flying off the handle with her? And is your mom okay, health wise and mentally? Is she suffering from debilitating anxiety? Does she have dementia that makes her imagine things about your dad?
Don't follow your mother's suggestion to lie to your dad. And also, do not ignore what she said or dismiss it as nonsense unworthy of further investigation. SOMETHING is going on.
posted by MiraK at 6:24 AM on November 10, 2024 [10 favorites]
You asked HOW to help your parents seek professional help when that may not be possible culturally.
There are other effective forms of help other than the traditional therapy office. For example, my extremely unstable BPD mother has had a really wonderful 3-4 years since she joined a hymn group that travels to temples to sing at events, sometimes even out of town. The hymn group gives her structure and a place where she is needed every day, being involved in faith based activities calms her anxiety - and so does the act of singing, the group itself forms her social support system, and being invited to various temples is a nice ego boost for her, it gives her a sense of accomplishment. Of course it has not cured her of every paranoid thought and every meltdown but the difference in her life and her level of happiness is HUGE. (And as a result my dad's too!)
So I suggest you encourage your mother to get involved in some community activity that she enjoys and finds fulfilling, as a first step. From the stable base that she builds there, you will have the capacity to bring up questions about hyow your dad treats her and hmm does she think Dad needs to get a full physical assessment? etc. in casual ways without shaking up her sense of stability and safety in her own life.
posted by MiraK at 8:19 AM on November 10, 2024 [3 favorites]
There are other effective forms of help other than the traditional therapy office. For example, my extremely unstable BPD mother has had a really wonderful 3-4 years since she joined a hymn group that travels to temples to sing at events, sometimes even out of town. The hymn group gives her structure and a place where she is needed every day, being involved in faith based activities calms her anxiety - and so does the act of singing, the group itself forms her social support system, and being invited to various temples is a nice ego boost for her, it gives her a sense of accomplishment. Of course it has not cured her of every paranoid thought and every meltdown but the difference in her life and her level of happiness is HUGE. (And as a result my dad's too!)
So I suggest you encourage your mother to get involved in some community activity that she enjoys and finds fulfilling, as a first step. From the stable base that she builds there, you will have the capacity to bring up questions about hyow your dad treats her and hmm does she think Dad needs to get a full physical assessment? etc. in casual ways without shaking up her sense of stability and safety in her own life.
posted by MiraK at 8:19 AM on November 10, 2024 [3 favorites]
Don't keep it a big secret, but also don't make it a big announcement on principle. Do the thing that will make your life easier. That probably means not mentioning that you're planning on buying the car, but letting the fact that you have one come up naturally in conversation. "I was driving to work and the I heard on the radio–" "What?? You have a car??" "Yeah, it's great, anyway the radio." That is your response to anything car related, it's great, next topic.
posted by umwelt at 9:22 AM on November 10, 2024 [5 favorites]
posted by umwelt at 9:22 AM on November 10, 2024 [5 favorites]
I recognize so much of my own life in your questions.
Before I say anything else, though:
1. If at all possible, I want to suggest that you buy a car you love, and that is a loud, proud and joyful part of your life, and, convenience aside, lets you really expand your life into territory you’ve always wanted to explore but is only possible where you are now. If the opportunity presents itself from the cars your colleagues drive (or can help you access locally through Google Translate?), I want to encourage you to go as completely wild as your comfort, budget and circumstances allow. If you find yourself wanting to get a car with absurd rally-driver seats and bright red five-point restraints so you can pull up at the local equivalent of Cars and Coffee and then find yourself with your new friends down at the dirt track every weekend, or a van kitted out with a pop-up roof and a water tank so you can go camping in all of your new home’s national parks in your few years there, or, heck, if you can really only stretch to buying the affordable, available, safe, but otherwise suffocatingly boring beige late-model sedan and gracing the rearview mirror with fuzzy dice because they remind you of your favorite aunt who always told you she dreamed of winning it big in Las Vegas one day, do it.
2. Your mom may very well be right, and fearful, about your dad’s health being precarious. It is certainly true that irritability and, more widely, poor emotional regulation can be a sign of wider health issues in older people, and a decline in communicative ability about things that are unfamiliar to him, like car buying and ownership in your corner of where you are now, may mean your dad really is struggling with some observable mental-decline issues. Is there a way you can find out what your peers and other close people to you back at home who might be on the outer reaches of your parents’ lives but perhaps still have a lot of familiarity with folks like him and know the cultural milieu well (your old schoolmates? your previous neighbors? maybe some cousins?) are doing as they see the same kinds of issues in their older relations’ lives?
My overall thought about this car situation is this: I wonder how much of this car-related fear is your dad and mom, by necessity given where they live, being unhappy or anxious about their inability to ever get enough high-fidelity, accurate, and immediately relatable information about the place you are living, and your life away from the home and world they know so intimately, to feel that they can relax about it at least approximately as much as if you were around the corner or just in another city in the same country as them.
I know nothing about your upbringing, of course, but as someone who followed what sounds like quite a similar path living first a few hours away, and then across the world, from my family while studying, working and living independently in my late teens and my 20s and 30s, I can tell you that my parents sometimes really struggled to look outside the society where we lived as they raised me and which they know like the back of their hand to trust that my childhood and education, both of which played a mostly-positive role in what propelled me to go to university away from home and then overseas in the first place, were good enough to make the wider world an appealingly safe, lucrative, fun and enriching place to me because they couldn’t envision themselves making the same moves. Fundamentally, the longer I was away, the more it seemed that their knowledge of what I could do and who I could become had really begun to diverge from reality when I moved out at 18. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I had stayed in our home country, but I didn’t, and so it became one.
Now, I am fully aware that my being male, white, and American meant at least some of my parents’ comfort with me living away from home, travelling overseas and working abroad was them not needing to think about how they or I or we would have to fight against society-wide misogyny, confront racial discrimination or fear that I’d be seen as unwelcome because of my nationality. Yet there was always, and is still, at least some noticeable discomfort around me living outside contexts they know well.
For example, I’m the first person in the family to go to and graduate from university and also the first person to get a graduate degree, and as part of that, there came a point when my parents could no longer give me useful advice about how to make those experiences work for me. They were genuine in their attempts to be helpful when they felt they knew how to be, but as those times became less frequent, they felt quite reluctant, I think, to even offer commentary, let alone advice, because I think they sometimes misinterpreted me talking about my life as a young adult and how I kept noticing all the ways it was different from what I’d learned or grown up with as me critiquing their life, their career, or their choices about how I’d been raised, even though it was never that at all.
There is an insecurity they have had to manage around not being able to slot me into an easily-describable “this is my normal adult child who does normal things like the adult children of my age-peers” framework, and sometimes this has become a kind of misplaced criticism or even rejection of the things I am doing that are totally normal and safe and appropriate where I am — in your case, like buying a car. This criticism and rejection feels quite likely to be rooted in their fundamental inability to know better than me what I need where I am anymore.
In my experience, all parents regardless of where they are from feel pangs of uncertainty around the adult lives of their children to some extent, but for living-overseas adult kids like us, especially if we have siblings that don’t live as far away as we do to whom our “deviance from the norm” can be quickly and easily compared, I think our still-at-home parents simply have a lot less to go on, and, I would suggest, believe trying to exert this kind of control-through-disapproval over us is obviously what we must need, since their not being present for the ins and outs of everyday life must mean we really need them for “the big stuff”. Otherwise, they might ask themselves, what are they for in our lives now? If we don’t need them, do we still love them?
It doesn’t really change when we go home, either. Now that I live in the US again, I am the recipient of a lot of “tips” from my dad about things he doesn’t think I know about. The first time I hear this, I usually opt to listen for a bit, and then quickly and patiently explain that the places I lived also had car detailing or plant nurseries or scammers on eBay before trying to move on, but this only annoys him. He usually succeeds in saying that “things are different here” and usually softens his tone toward the end of his response, saying that he “just wants to make sure I am okay” since “I was gone for so long”. It’s quite visible to me in these moments that to him, my time overseas does not have any relevance or applicability to my context now — a context that he is an expert-level, black-belt, gold-medal-recipient understander of — and is a liability he needs to shut down for me, even if I don’t want him to.
It is easier for him to believe, I think, that despite his aging, his health and his choices in life all beginning to catch up to him — he is about 70 and I am about 40 — he is still needed and still loved because he can still “be my dad”, and still be able to be a protective, advisory figure to me. But this only works as long as I do not deploy my weird unknowable foreign knowledge or experience to make him feel like he’s been replaced by someone or something else he can’t even name in our relationship. I feel for him, honestly.
I mention all that personal background to say that at a certain point, then, my being-abroad-ness, on its own, led to a lack of understanding and relatability between me and each of my parents because of my parents’ choices around what they did with what I was showing and telling them about my life, and their different responses to what became the defining element of my life during those years — my not-understandability — might be relatable enough to help you find some answers to your questions.
I found, as perhaps you have, that online guides for expats on relationships with folks back home always seemed to assume that you’d be back home in a year or two. I thought this too at first, and so for a few years at the start, I think my parents did okay, both because I was genuinely still quite young and because they had some familiarity inside and outside our family with folks whose lives resembled mine, like their friends or our relatives whose kids had studied abroad. I was working single academic years in a single country at a time, usually making not much money and having, in general, a good time, with long visits home in the summer. (If this academic-like life is how your life or career has seemed to them up to now, perhaps your parents still see you as a student in need of teaching.)
But as the years went on, things became more strained. I settled for a decade in the same city and became a permanent resident there with a wide network of people they couldn’t relate to as easily. I also built a career that was difficult to “transfer back” to the US as my credentials and experiences diverged from ones followed by people with a career path at home in the same field. I was maturing this whole time, and had good reasons why I had chosen these paths, but fundamentally my parents really began to diverge in their sense of comfort with how distant my life seemed from what they knew, especially when things heated up politically where I was living in my last few years overseas. (The pandemic also kept us apart for 26 months when I went home twice a year or more for perhaps eight years before 2020, which also didn’t help. Did you experience a similar gap in contact with them?)
To her credit, my mom, always an avid reader and keenly interested in new places, very eagerly visited me during my vacations throughout my time abroad, and we often took trips together both where I was living and in nearby third countries, usually where neither of us knew the language. Far from being worried about this, she saw it as an adventure and also just generally had a lot of fun. This worked because we had, early on in my life away from home, found a communication routine (a single, always-at-the-same-time, quite long and leisurely phone call each week) which was both a nice release of a week’s worries for us both, and also a good place to talk out whatever wasn’t okay — and we stuck to that routine for over 15 years. Of course, we texted more as smartphones made that simpler and cheaper, but sometimes we might only exchange a short message, or maybe a photo, with the other person. We did not have a both-parents-and-me group chat, notably, as it never really fit our lifestyle or schedules. My mom’s career was also very emotionally intense and she relished the break from the constant interruptions and the always-on-call nature of the work.
My dad and I, however, had a comparatively much rougher time of things communications-wise, and so he never really got the depth of knowledge my mom got from her consistent calls, messages and visits. For example, she knew my friends’ and colleagues’ names because she had met them and because we talked about them all the time, and she’d ask about them or their kids or pets even when I’d forgotten I’d mentioned them the week before. My dad, instead, often wanted to talk about his work and career when we spoke, and seemed to think since that’s “why” I was “there”, that was what I wanted to talk about, too. He wasn’t seeking to win a competition, really, so much as he was constantly looking for anything from his life he could relate to in mine, dissimilar as it was. If I had a difficult meeting or got a promotion, those were things he could essentially say “Oh! Me too!” to, and the conversation would flow well, sometimes with him monologuing for a while and the call ending amicably.
But if I was talking about something he knew far less or even nothing about, like a problem in my academic research or some event in local politics where I was living, he was much less patient and often more critical, as he could only go back to what he knew, and regardless of how many times we’d talked about it, or how many links or photos or videos I sent him about whatever it was at his request, he seemed annoyed that he would never match my knowledge.
He also sometimes seemed uncomfortable with being curious about the overseas-dependent parts of my life that brought me peace or happiness, as if my mentioning positive things about where I was living was actually an unprovoked, unfair attack on his sense of security that deserved a nasty response. In one quite unforgettable conversation, me saying off-handedly one very rainy day that I was relieved I lived in a society where I enjoyed really excellent public transportation and didn’t have to drive in weather like this became him saying that I had always hated cars because he was a “car guy”, and that I didn’t want him to enjoy the classic car he had inherited from his parents.
It took a very long time, then, to move our relationship somewhere healthier. For years we struggled through awkward visits when I came home, infrequent and inconveniently-timed calls and, rarely, short emails when I was away. He tried only haltingly to manage his end of the communications, too, relying a lot on text and only finally getting more comfortable with me on the phone in the pandemic.
As he aged, it became harder for him to hide, I think, that he felt it was my responsibility to give him all the information and knowledge he needed so he could be as comfortably unchallenged at all times as I was in whatever place we happened to be. When we were together, I noticed a kind of physical, palpable discomfort with not being able to ensure I constantly do this.
In 15 years abroad, he visited me just once, but against my advice he chose to come at the height of summer — and he was physically miserable as well as very jet-lagged. Later in the trip, he seemed to find his feet, and we went to an island destination in a neighboring country that drives on the opposite side of the road to the US. Here things fell apart, because he found himself seated in the passenger seat of the rented SUV that only I had the right to drive since he hadn’t got an International Driver’s Permit like I’d told him to, and as we plied some very quiet rural roads only passing the occasional scooter, he worked himself into what might be described as a panic attack, screaming that we were going to crash and trying to pump the brakes on his side of the car. I saw him try to grab the wheel and had to bat his hand away, then pulled over until he calmed down. He apologized later that day, but we had to abandon the day trip we were taking to get him back to our hotel.
Old habits die hard. When we go out together now at home, he simply refuses to let me drive, instead offering to save me gas money; it was he, of course, who taught me to drive. (My mom, however, is delighted to let me drive because it’s one less thing she needs to think about, and she can instead tell me whatever story she’s been saving up.)
In this situation, then, I would not excuse your father’s ill treatment of you and your mother because of his insecurity with you doing things he cannot mentally slot into a familiar milieu, especially if this is becoming more visible because of his declining health — but I would also be researching ways, as many answers above have mentioned, to think about how, if at all, you choose to respond to the possibility that the central problem he has with your life is that he cannot be better at it than you are.
Good luck!
posted by mdonley at 1:20 PM on November 10, 2024 [8 favorites]
Before I say anything else, though:
1. If at all possible, I want to suggest that you buy a car you love, and that is a loud, proud and joyful part of your life, and, convenience aside, lets you really expand your life into territory you’ve always wanted to explore but is only possible where you are now. If the opportunity presents itself from the cars your colleagues drive (or can help you access locally through Google Translate?), I want to encourage you to go as completely wild as your comfort, budget and circumstances allow. If you find yourself wanting to get a car with absurd rally-driver seats and bright red five-point restraints so you can pull up at the local equivalent of Cars and Coffee and then find yourself with your new friends down at the dirt track every weekend, or a van kitted out with a pop-up roof and a water tank so you can go camping in all of your new home’s national parks in your few years there, or, heck, if you can really only stretch to buying the affordable, available, safe, but otherwise suffocatingly boring beige late-model sedan and gracing the rearview mirror with fuzzy dice because they remind you of your favorite aunt who always told you she dreamed of winning it big in Las Vegas one day, do it.
2. Your mom may very well be right, and fearful, about your dad’s health being precarious. It is certainly true that irritability and, more widely, poor emotional regulation can be a sign of wider health issues in older people, and a decline in communicative ability about things that are unfamiliar to him, like car buying and ownership in your corner of where you are now, may mean your dad really is struggling with some observable mental-decline issues. Is there a way you can find out what your peers and other close people to you back at home who might be on the outer reaches of your parents’ lives but perhaps still have a lot of familiarity with folks like him and know the cultural milieu well (your old schoolmates? your previous neighbors? maybe some cousins?) are doing as they see the same kinds of issues in their older relations’ lives?
My overall thought about this car situation is this: I wonder how much of this car-related fear is your dad and mom, by necessity given where they live, being unhappy or anxious about their inability to ever get enough high-fidelity, accurate, and immediately relatable information about the place you are living, and your life away from the home and world they know so intimately, to feel that they can relax about it at least approximately as much as if you were around the corner or just in another city in the same country as them.
I know nothing about your upbringing, of course, but as someone who followed what sounds like quite a similar path living first a few hours away, and then across the world, from my family while studying, working and living independently in my late teens and my 20s and 30s, I can tell you that my parents sometimes really struggled to look outside the society where we lived as they raised me and which they know like the back of their hand to trust that my childhood and education, both of which played a mostly-positive role in what propelled me to go to university away from home and then overseas in the first place, were good enough to make the wider world an appealingly safe, lucrative, fun and enriching place to me because they couldn’t envision themselves making the same moves. Fundamentally, the longer I was away, the more it seemed that their knowledge of what I could do and who I could become had really begun to diverge from reality when I moved out at 18. This wouldn’t have been a problem if I had stayed in our home country, but I didn’t, and so it became one.
Now, I am fully aware that my being male, white, and American meant at least some of my parents’ comfort with me living away from home, travelling overseas and working abroad was them not needing to think about how they or I or we would have to fight against society-wide misogyny, confront racial discrimination or fear that I’d be seen as unwelcome because of my nationality. Yet there was always, and is still, at least some noticeable discomfort around me living outside contexts they know well.
For example, I’m the first person in the family to go to and graduate from university and also the first person to get a graduate degree, and as part of that, there came a point when my parents could no longer give me useful advice about how to make those experiences work for me. They were genuine in their attempts to be helpful when they felt they knew how to be, but as those times became less frequent, they felt quite reluctant, I think, to even offer commentary, let alone advice, because I think they sometimes misinterpreted me talking about my life as a young adult and how I kept noticing all the ways it was different from what I’d learned or grown up with as me critiquing their life, their career, or their choices about how I’d been raised, even though it was never that at all.
There is an insecurity they have had to manage around not being able to slot me into an easily-describable “this is my normal adult child who does normal things like the adult children of my age-peers” framework, and sometimes this has become a kind of misplaced criticism or even rejection of the things I am doing that are totally normal and safe and appropriate where I am — in your case, like buying a car. This criticism and rejection feels quite likely to be rooted in their fundamental inability to know better than me what I need where I am anymore.
In my experience, all parents regardless of where they are from feel pangs of uncertainty around the adult lives of their children to some extent, but for living-overseas adult kids like us, especially if we have siblings that don’t live as far away as we do to whom our “deviance from the norm” can be quickly and easily compared, I think our still-at-home parents simply have a lot less to go on, and, I would suggest, believe trying to exert this kind of control-through-disapproval over us is obviously what we must need, since their not being present for the ins and outs of everyday life must mean we really need them for “the big stuff”. Otherwise, they might ask themselves, what are they for in our lives now? If we don’t need them, do we still love them?
It doesn’t really change when we go home, either. Now that I live in the US again, I am the recipient of a lot of “tips” from my dad about things he doesn’t think I know about. The first time I hear this, I usually opt to listen for a bit, and then quickly and patiently explain that the places I lived also had car detailing or plant nurseries or scammers on eBay before trying to move on, but this only annoys him. He usually succeeds in saying that “things are different here” and usually softens his tone toward the end of his response, saying that he “just wants to make sure I am okay” since “I was gone for so long”. It’s quite visible to me in these moments that to him, my time overseas does not have any relevance or applicability to my context now — a context that he is an expert-level, black-belt, gold-medal-recipient understander of — and is a liability he needs to shut down for me, even if I don’t want him to.
It is easier for him to believe, I think, that despite his aging, his health and his choices in life all beginning to catch up to him — he is about 70 and I am about 40 — he is still needed and still loved because he can still “be my dad”, and still be able to be a protective, advisory figure to me. But this only works as long as I do not deploy my weird unknowable foreign knowledge or experience to make him feel like he’s been replaced by someone or something else he can’t even name in our relationship. I feel for him, honestly.
I mention all that personal background to say that at a certain point, then, my being-abroad-ness, on its own, led to a lack of understanding and relatability between me and each of my parents because of my parents’ choices around what they did with what I was showing and telling them about my life, and their different responses to what became the defining element of my life during those years — my not-understandability — might be relatable enough to help you find some answers to your questions.
I found, as perhaps you have, that online guides for expats on relationships with folks back home always seemed to assume that you’d be back home in a year or two. I thought this too at first, and so for a few years at the start, I think my parents did okay, both because I was genuinely still quite young and because they had some familiarity inside and outside our family with folks whose lives resembled mine, like their friends or our relatives whose kids had studied abroad. I was working single academic years in a single country at a time, usually making not much money and having, in general, a good time, with long visits home in the summer. (If this academic-like life is how your life or career has seemed to them up to now, perhaps your parents still see you as a student in need of teaching.)
But as the years went on, things became more strained. I settled for a decade in the same city and became a permanent resident there with a wide network of people they couldn’t relate to as easily. I also built a career that was difficult to “transfer back” to the US as my credentials and experiences diverged from ones followed by people with a career path at home in the same field. I was maturing this whole time, and had good reasons why I had chosen these paths, but fundamentally my parents really began to diverge in their sense of comfort with how distant my life seemed from what they knew, especially when things heated up politically where I was living in my last few years overseas. (The pandemic also kept us apart for 26 months when I went home twice a year or more for perhaps eight years before 2020, which also didn’t help. Did you experience a similar gap in contact with them?)
To her credit, my mom, always an avid reader and keenly interested in new places, very eagerly visited me during my vacations throughout my time abroad, and we often took trips together both where I was living and in nearby third countries, usually where neither of us knew the language. Far from being worried about this, she saw it as an adventure and also just generally had a lot of fun. This worked because we had, early on in my life away from home, found a communication routine (a single, always-at-the-same-time, quite long and leisurely phone call each week) which was both a nice release of a week’s worries for us both, and also a good place to talk out whatever wasn’t okay — and we stuck to that routine for over 15 years. Of course, we texted more as smartphones made that simpler and cheaper, but sometimes we might only exchange a short message, or maybe a photo, with the other person. We did not have a both-parents-and-me group chat, notably, as it never really fit our lifestyle or schedules. My mom’s career was also very emotionally intense and she relished the break from the constant interruptions and the always-on-call nature of the work.
My dad and I, however, had a comparatively much rougher time of things communications-wise, and so he never really got the depth of knowledge my mom got from her consistent calls, messages and visits. For example, she knew my friends’ and colleagues’ names because she had met them and because we talked about them all the time, and she’d ask about them or their kids or pets even when I’d forgotten I’d mentioned them the week before. My dad, instead, often wanted to talk about his work and career when we spoke, and seemed to think since that’s “why” I was “there”, that was what I wanted to talk about, too. He wasn’t seeking to win a competition, really, so much as he was constantly looking for anything from his life he could relate to in mine, dissimilar as it was. If I had a difficult meeting or got a promotion, those were things he could essentially say “Oh! Me too!” to, and the conversation would flow well, sometimes with him monologuing for a while and the call ending amicably.
But if I was talking about something he knew far less or even nothing about, like a problem in my academic research or some event in local politics where I was living, he was much less patient and often more critical, as he could only go back to what he knew, and regardless of how many times we’d talked about it, or how many links or photos or videos I sent him about whatever it was at his request, he seemed annoyed that he would never match my knowledge.
He also sometimes seemed uncomfortable with being curious about the overseas-dependent parts of my life that brought me peace or happiness, as if my mentioning positive things about where I was living was actually an unprovoked, unfair attack on his sense of security that deserved a nasty response. In one quite unforgettable conversation, me saying off-handedly one very rainy day that I was relieved I lived in a society where I enjoyed really excellent public transportation and didn’t have to drive in weather like this became him saying that I had always hated cars because he was a “car guy”, and that I didn’t want him to enjoy the classic car he had inherited from his parents.
It took a very long time, then, to move our relationship somewhere healthier. For years we struggled through awkward visits when I came home, infrequent and inconveniently-timed calls and, rarely, short emails when I was away. He tried only haltingly to manage his end of the communications, too, relying a lot on text and only finally getting more comfortable with me on the phone in the pandemic.
As he aged, it became harder for him to hide, I think, that he felt it was my responsibility to give him all the information and knowledge he needed so he could be as comfortably unchallenged at all times as I was in whatever place we happened to be. When we were together, I noticed a kind of physical, palpable discomfort with not being able to ensure I constantly do this.
In 15 years abroad, he visited me just once, but against my advice he chose to come at the height of summer — and he was physically miserable as well as very jet-lagged. Later in the trip, he seemed to find his feet, and we went to an island destination in a neighboring country that drives on the opposite side of the road to the US. Here things fell apart, because he found himself seated in the passenger seat of the rented SUV that only I had the right to drive since he hadn’t got an International Driver’s Permit like I’d told him to, and as we plied some very quiet rural roads only passing the occasional scooter, he worked himself into what might be described as a panic attack, screaming that we were going to crash and trying to pump the brakes on his side of the car. I saw him try to grab the wheel and had to bat his hand away, then pulled over until he calmed down. He apologized later that day, but we had to abandon the day trip we were taking to get him back to our hotel.
Old habits die hard. When we go out together now at home, he simply refuses to let me drive, instead offering to save me gas money; it was he, of course, who taught me to drive. (My mom, however, is delighted to let me drive because it’s one less thing she needs to think about, and she can instead tell me whatever story she’s been saving up.)
In this situation, then, I would not excuse your father’s ill treatment of you and your mother because of his insecurity with you doing things he cannot mentally slot into a familiar milieu, especially if this is becoming more visible because of his declining health — but I would also be researching ways, as many answers above have mentioned, to think about how, if at all, you choose to respond to the possibility that the central problem he has with your life is that he cannot be better at it than you are.
Good luck!
posted by mdonley at 1:20 PM on November 10, 2024 [8 favorites]
The first thing that came to mind reading your Ask is if your Mother is worried that purchasing a car in this country would sound to your father like you are putting down roots. As in she's worried he would be stressed that (as they get older) that you may decide to stay there? And doing a "major purchase" sounds to them like you might be staying.
Everyone else has a lot of great advice about if you should or should not tell him...
posted by niteHawk at 4:46 PM on November 10, 2024 [2 favorites]
Everyone else has a lot of great advice about if you should or should not tell him...
posted by niteHawk at 4:46 PM on November 10, 2024 [2 favorites]
I thought the exact same thing as niteHawk above. I think they’re worried the car is a symbol of putting down roots and they’re afraid you’re drifting farther away. Perhaps addressing that might help mitigate the anxiety?
posted by annie o at 6:48 PM on November 10, 2024 [1 favorite]
posted by annie o at 6:48 PM on November 10, 2024 [1 favorite]
Could you directly ask your dad what he’d think? “Hey Dad, there’s no way to get around without one, it’s actually **not safe** to not drive here. Mom says you’d be worried about that - what is your concern?” And then address his concerns using points you know he’d have to recognize as valid. He will probably never love it but maybe you can help take his anxiety down a few notches. (It’s about him, not you right.
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:51 AM on November 11, 2024 [2 favorites]
posted by cotton dress sock at 5:51 AM on November 11, 2024 [2 favorites]
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That seems completely messed up. Most people own cars, (in certain countries).
Maybe your father is having anxiety issues that are extreme. If you have good relations with your mother, I would ask for her explanation as to why.
Or maybe, you need to question your mom's reactions.
posted by Windopaene at 8:15 PM on November 9, 2024 [3 favorites]