*THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT BASHING RELIGION* My parents are hardcore Christians, and I am not at all religious. In order to keep them in the dark about my feelings, I still come home to celebrate Christmas and Easter with them. I don't want them to think I'm a heathen. On top of that, they may disown me if they knew the truth. I'm really not sure how they will react. This year Easter weekend happens to coincide with my birthday, and a ski trip with friends. I plan on skipping church on Easter Sunday for the first time ever. This makes my parents very uneasy they keep trying to talk me out of going skiing. Their constant pestering is stressing me out enough that I plan on breaking the news to them, that I don't feel the same way about the church that they do, just so they will stop harrasssing me. Well it would also be a big burden off my back, since I wouldn't be living a lie in front of them anymore. To say I am scarred shitless would be an understatement *THIS THREAD IS NOT ABOUT BASHING RELIGION* Focus: Tell about a time when you have gone against your parents. What was the outcome? Did they disown you?
Even if it may be intellectually dishonest for you, this is something I found w/ regards to my Irish Catholic mother: it's a lot less upsetting if they simply believe that you've become disillusioned with the church or a particular religion, than with religion in general or with a higher deity. You strike me as the atheist/agnostic type, so it might be a stretch of the truth, but if your parents are like my mother (my father is a naturalistic Deist of sorts. And non-Catholic), it will go over much better if you don't suggest that you are an atheist or anything ambiguously close to that.
Sex in general and having a "wildly promiscuous" lifestyle. Let me define this for you in their mindsets. I've had four boyfriends in seven years. And yes, have had sex with them. In between the boyfriends was an occasional fuck buddy. My current boyfriend, whom I will probably marry if he or I don't fuck anything up, and I have decided to move in together by early next year. My main motivation to do so: I don't want to marry someone I hate living with and want to make sure we can be in the same house and not kill each other. They gave up on scolding me years ago since they realized I was going to do it anyways, but they have stopped hanging out with some of their friends. Apparently, my love life has been a topic of conversations for years and my Mom told me that she's tired of defending me, and both my sisters of similar mindsets, all of the time. This upturned nose coming from friends who refused to pay for any wedding if they even got a hint of a whiff that their daughters were hitting the prenuptial sheets. Being close to their daughters, I know that all of them, married with kids now, had imbibed the forbidden fruit well before 'I do'. They also can't understand why my sisters and I haven't married and had children yet just like their obedient spawn. (I'm the oldest and not yet 25) The 'moving in' ordeal would be icing on the cake and my folks would never hear the end of it from their friends. My thought? Eat a dick "friends". What the hell do you care who I'm fucking? I don't see it affecting your lifestyle anywhere in the near future, you fucking hypocrites. And just because I want to do other things with my life than be a human farm and stay at home dishwasher, don't berate my parents for doing a bad job at raising us. We're all actually happy and living good lives unlike your miserable daughters already at two spawn each.
I feel your pain. My dad is a fairly hardcore Christian and I am still on the fence if I believe in anything at all. I get a call every Sunday from my parents and my dad will always ask how church was that day and I'll reply that I was either too busy sleeping or I'll catch the reruns on the Joel Osteen hour. Reading the above statement, I'd go for the disillusioned approach as well. Most of my family on my dad's side is hardcore Christian (they post things on facebook or e-mails saying "praise god, the car repair bill was less than I thought - Jesus is always watching out for us!") which boggle my mind. Anyway, what the big deal with missing Easter? I've argued this point with my dad and have said that if there is a God, I feel that it is worse to disingenuously show up one (or two) days a year rather than to go with the belief that I am questioning my faith. I do dread the day my wife and I have kids and I tell my parents that I won't be baptizing my child as they make you stand in front of the congregation (and God, theoretically), that I promise to raise my child in the church, raise him to believe in the saints and the apostles and all the other religious things. If there is a God, I'd rather be called a nonbeliever than a liar when I die.
Dear mom and dad, I'm an adult who is fully capable of making my own decisions. I hope that you truly know that the decisions I do make have no bearing on the respect and love I have for you. I'm going skiing, suck it. Love, Frebis.
I've often thought of all the things I lucked out on, my family is probably the biggest. I'm an only child, but I have a large extended family and we're all pretty close. Not, "My big fat Greek wedding" nosy and interfering close, but close in the sense that we spend time together, care deeply for each other and want only what's best for everyone. Both my parents have always been supportive of my decisions, and there have been some stellar ones over the years. The choice to stay in school and take another degree. The choice to quit all my jobs and go live in foreign countries with questionable safety track records. All they care about is the fact that I'd like to do it and it makes me happy. This also means that I'm the only cousin who hasn't married and/or had kids, so who knows if this laissez faire philosophy is working out.
Drugs, which apparently wasn't as taboo for my parents growing up at my mom had lead me to believe. The only thing that stuck was not smoking cigarettes. She pestered and hounded us mercilessly if she even smelled a hint of it on our clothing. I never started smoking and find it rather gross. On the subject of drugs. Ive never heard any direct stories of my mom doing anything but my dad smoked weed when he was a teenager and apparently everyone was doing whippets after his sister, my aunt's, first wedding. I assume that since he was in his late teens early twenties during the 60-70s and went to a lot of rock shows, that he did his share. To this day she rails against all drugs, which I guess she does as some sort of job as a mother. It's been fun watching her struggle to keep this up in the face of that fact that her boyfriend and his brother smoke weed all the damn time and have even tried growing it.
My girlfriend's mother has given her three specific requirements for a boyfriend: -he is Cantonese (or at the very least, Chinese) -in the same program as her so they can get married, open a pharmacy together, and get rich -not a member of a certain profession to which I belong I only fit half of one of these requirements. Hooray. In related news, like everyone else on earth, I was raised Catholic. I don't think any of my siblings buy into it in the least. I think my parents have caught on to it and they don't seem to care. Maybe they'll care if one of us refuses to get married in a church or baptize their grandchildren. Light that firecracker when we get to it. EDIT: Frebis, I found a time machine, snuck into your parents' home, and took this video: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.toxicjunction.com/get.asp?i=V2416" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.toxicjunction.com/get.asp?i=V2416</a>
I understand what it's like to address a sensitive issue with your parents and be nervous about it. Nobody wants to disappoint Mom and Dad. But scared shitless? What's the worst-case scenario here? If you were 17 and living in their house, I could see being afraid of getting kicked out, but you're on your own at this point, right? You pay your own way? I dunno, man. If I were you, I'd be thinking less about making my parents angry and more about why I feel guilty enough about a personal belief to hide it from them in the first place. I disagree. Instead of maintaining a complete lie, you'd just be propping up a half-truth. Either way, it's still sugar-coated deceit. Just tear off the band-aid already.
My parents are divorced and my father is "elder-in-the-church" religious. When I started dating my wife all the way back in high school, he objected to the relationship because I was raised Protestant and she was Catholic. There could've been a million other things wrong with her, but this was the hill they chose to die on. I was kinda forced to choose between this girl (whose family loved me as one of their own regardless of religious affiliation) and my father and his side of the family. I (obviously) chose the girl, and for a long time, our relation with that side of my family was frosty to say the best. It took my mother confronting my father (her ex) and pretty much telling him to "get with the program or he was gonna lose me as a son" before he woke up to the situation. In reality, it took the birth of my daughter to really get the ship totally turned around. While I know that his decision to tune me out was his own, I still lament the time lost because of it.
When my parents met my ex they both disliked him right off the bat. I so wish I'd have listened to them, especially my Mom, and dumped him. Instead I moved into his apartment at 18 like a dipshit. He turned out to be an abusive dogstealing asshole that I hope is dead now. The older I get I realize that much, if not all, of what my Mom gave/gives me advice on is spot on. I hate that but am thankful for it and for the fact I'm old enough to realize that.
As I've said before on this forum, my parents are traditional southern European Catholics, but they're not what you'd call hardcore Catholics, and my dad rarely if ever goes to church, so I'd thought my parents would be cool with me being non-religious. I've never told them that I'm an Atheist/Agnostic or anything like that, I only remarked that lighting candles and putting them in front of a statue of the virgin Mary won't help me pass my exams. My mum wasn't very understanding, and this lead me to say that "it's all bullshit." This lead to a lot of arguments and name calling (directed at me) however finally we came to an agreement, I don't mention my "godless, heathen lifestyle" and everything will be okay. This lead me to believe that my parents are far from understanding. A few months ago, my younger sister decided that she's a lesbian and that it was high time to came out to my parents (only after coming out on facebook first). I've never been very close with my sister, so I enjoyed the fact that now she'd be the one facing my parents' wrath. I expected screaming, crying and a lot of drama. Unfairly, my parents only told my sister "We accept your decision." However, I'm still the good son, and I don't usually "go against the grain."
Truer words are rarely ever spoken. No matter what it is - from advice on what to pack for a trip to advice on whether or not to buy a house - every time I've disregarded my mother's words I can flash forward to the situation where I stood there and consciously thought, "Goddammit! My mother told me this would happen and I ignored her."
I felt the need to come out of lurking for this, simply because I find it so ridiculous. I'm a lesbian, which is sort of whatever with my parents. They don't love it, but they've accepted it. However, the great divide comes from me not wanting kids. You would think that would come with the gay acceptance, but no... apparently I should already be researching adoption. I can't be home for more than 10 minutes without my mother bringing up her desire for grandchildren and getting all emotional about it. Sorry mom, talk to my brother. edit: I know that gay people have kids all the time, and that's awesome. I just plain don't want any. The only reason I mentioned my sexuality is that I lived a good chunk of my life scared to tell my parents, yet they don't even care. Instead, they are more disappointed in something I didn't even consider to be a big deal.
My dad became disillusioned with the Catholic church when he was growing up, so I have never had to worry about anything like that. My guess is that any sort of "I just don't feel this way about religion" conversation, whether a full "I don't believe" or a half "this particular church" kind of talk will go over nearly the same. Obviously the full "I don't believe" is a bigger blow, but unless you feel like you are going to lose your parents/family over this I would tell the full truth. Are you open to the concept of religion? Because if you are, even if you don't believe your particular previous faith, you should also explain that you are open to the concept, but that your previous faith was lacking, and that attending an Easter service is both morally and intellectually dishonest to you, and that you need some time to find your way. Since I obviously don't know you, your family, the dynamic there, and most of the other factors in this all I can really say is good luck.
I pose this question to any member of the board who has ever suffered being disowned by their parents: before they chose to cut you out of their lives, were they loving, supportive, stable parents? Or was their decision to abandon their child in keeping with their behavior up to that point? My point is, if they are the kind of people whose love for you is apparently conditional on your unquestioning agreement with their values, what exactly do you think are you giving up?
The fiancee and I are going through the "house buying" process right now. The last house we bid on, instead of listening to my parents, I listened to a mix of the fiancee, her well-meaning, but retarded relatives, and our cock-face agent, with respect to our starting bid (and increments during the negotiation problems). Of course, the price went way higher than I was willing to pay, and I pulled the plug on it. Like SheGirl and Dcc (and many others, I'm sure), I realized (sometime during and after college) that, barring certain technical subjects, when my parents give advice, they generally know better, so I try to listen to them as much as possible. Not only that, but they also have a track record of not steering me in the wrong direction.
I was an only child and my parents were ultra-protctive and careful poeple, so defiance meant death. My dad is an ex-gang member and master of child psychology, so talking back would get the fear installed into your person faster than you can say "Indian Jones and the Temple Of Doom". Also, going past the "play boundry" from our house meant getting held dangling by one arm and smacked all the way down the street to our house by the other. My parents generally were very good parents (if you didn't get smacked in the early-mid 80's from time to time then there was something wrong with your parents) and they generally treated me to cool stuff and cool vacations otherwise (reward for being an only child) and truth be told, I was a really good kid when I was a small fry. When I did get tough and decided lip off, though....look out. EDIT: Parents are complete pussies nowadays. You PARENT you kids. You don't DATE them. Quit byuing their affection and approval and use your size advantage.
For those of you asking me what is the worst that can happen- Consider this- The most important thing to them is eternal salvation. This is how they see it- Me denying the church means I will burn in hell for all eternity. They don't want that for their son, and really don't want to be associated with anyone who they feel are going that way. Outside of their religion I love my parents. I really don't want to lose them over this.