my toxic asian parents is trying to control my life
Hi Reddit, I’m usually just a lurker but I’ve never posted before. I’m kind of in a dilemma right now.
I’m 24F, first-generation Chinese American. My parents are from Fuzhou, China and immigrated to the U.S. in their early 20s. Even though they’ve been here most of their lives, they’ve never really adapted to the American lifestyle, and since they live in nyc, they heavily rely a lot on their kids. I recently told them I have a boyfriend that I’ve kept from them for about 3 years. The main reason I hid it is because he doesn’t have U.S. citizenship, and I know my parents look down on immigrants based on things they’ve said in the past. I only told them now because they’ve been trying to set me up with a friend’s kid (selling points: his family has a house), and I’ve told them multiple times I’m not interested in that or in dating within our circle. I have heard this is very typical FJ behavior.
Even after I set that boundary and told them about my boyfriend, they completely freaked out and demanded I break up with him. This was back in Feb 2026, the last time I visited home. Their main concern is that he’ll use me for citizenship and leave me after marriage. I get the concern, but we’ve been together for years, we’ve talked about it, and I honestly don’t believe that’s who he is. He’s treated me better than my parents ever have, he’s patient, and he’s currently doing his post-grad. Even if things somehow went wrong, I feel like I’ve been treated with real love in this relationship.
They basically gave me an ultimatum: choose them (and go on the blind date) or stay with my partner. I told them I’d think about it, then went back to my own place (I’ve been moved out for about 2 years now) and talked to my boyfriend. He knows about my family situation and has been really supportive, telling me it’s my decision. After that, my mom kept calling me nonstop, trying to force me to decide. She has a pattern of narcissistic behavior, lots of guilt-tripping and gaslighting. She belives she is always right and overreacts over everything. No one in my distant family likes her, shes broken up my cousin's family and treats my grandparents on my dad's side like absolute garbage. For context, she also forced me to give her all the money I made in high school and college, and now takes about 1/3 of my paycheck which I soon stopped giving. She always says she’s “saving it” for my future (marriage, house, emergencies), but those aren’t even my goals or something I have a say in.
She’ll call me for hours just to talk about how great of a mother she is. Honestly, she was very abusive, when I was growing up, especially because I’m a girl. I’ve kind of learned to tune it out over time as she goes in cycles of how she treats me. I am highly persusade that she has some sort of narcissistic disorder with the constant gaslighting and her own self praised. After about two weeks of nonstop calls, one night she started spamming me with really aggressive texts out of nowhere- calling me shameless, a slut, garbage, saying she was disgusted with me just for having a partner, this list of insults is about 30 messages in a span of 2 hours that I ignore. It was shocking because no one has spoken to me like that, let alone my mother. There was no trigger that day for those messages. She kept calling and texting from multiple numbers for days. At that point I blocked her because I was completely blindsided. Now I’m no-contact with her. My dad reached out once, telling me to come home, quit my job, and basically just obey/ ignore what my mother said because she’s my mother. I told him no, and honestly said that just because she gave birth to me doesn’t mean I owe her this. He also doesn’t accept my partner.
I still have two siblings at home who are in college, and they’re my ride-or-die. But my mom has been acting erratically with them too, being super controlling, going through their rooms, and trying to access their phones/appleid/social media. She is a nightmare to deal with and I am worry for my siblings. I honestly don’t know what to do from here.