I told him, you can always wait to get engaged, but you can't undo something like this.
asphyxiateit: yo
bbroadhurst20: yo yo yo
asphyxiateit: sup queer?
bbroadhurst20: how's you?
bbroadhurst20: I'm ok
asphyxiateit: I'm better than last night/this morning
asphyxiateit: there was a family crisis
bbroadhurst20: what happened?
asphyxiateit: It's a really long story.
asphyxiateit: it centers around my brother and his girlfriend, Nadia
bbroadhurst20: rocky times?
asphyxiateit: Yes, but not involving whether or not they'll be together
asphyxiateit: I have to explain a little bit about my brother, first, I think
asphyxiateit: his name is Jonathan, he's twenty years old now. Nadia is nineteen. Jonathan and my parents have always been on edgy terms because of school. My parents place school and family before anything because both my mother and father came from war-torn countries where they had to start over with absolutely nothing and put themselves through school.
asphyxiateit: My father came from Vietnam and he was actually alone, and my mother came from Lebanon with only her family and nothing else. They both didn't speak the language and they both absolutely had to do well in school or else die.
asphyxiateit: So needless to say education is a huge deal in my house, and they expect us to do well, which is totally fair, I think.
asphyxiateit: For my brother, though, he feels like all that matters with him is his grades, and that they don't care enough about him as a person. He might know that's not true, but he feels differently. This makes it extremely difficult for him to talk to my parents.
asphyxiateit: He's also always had difficulty opening up to people and dealing with negative emotions, especially anger and resentment. And he has a lot of that inside him.
bbroadhurst20: I understand how he feels, sorta
bbroadhurst20: with the parent thing
asphyxiateit: Yeah
asphyxiateit: Both of my parents are very concerned about school, in different ways. My mother has a very strong personality and I can see her being severe about it. But my father is very quiet and I cannot see him being mean in any way about it.
asphyxiateit: Anyway, my brother has been with Nadia for about a year and six months or something, whatever. When they started going out it was nice because he finally had a girlfriend and she made him happy.
asphyxiateit: But, for the past year or so, my brother's grades have been absolutely dropping. To the point where he had to drop a class and failed two others.
asphyxiateit: For four years we've been hearing about how it's because of bad teachers, bad classes, school is hard, etc. etc. Now, I know what it's like to have a shitty teacher because I went through that with AP chemistry last year, but I also know I could have taken my own initiative if I wanted and I could have studied my ass off to do well in that class. So I take all the blame for that. He has never taken responsibility for his bad grades, even if school is that bad.
asphyxiateit: He also goes to a miltary college called the Citadel, where he has to deal with physical training and military responsibilities. But he wanted to go there, and he still wants to go there. It's always been his dream to go into the military and he loves it, so even though my parents, who come from war-torn countries and have lost everything to warm, don't want him to go into the military, they love him enough to let him do what he wishes with his life.
asphyxiateit: They could have let him go into an ROTC program where the government pays for your college and in return you have to serve in the military for a set amount of years, but they wanted to send him to a school paid out of their own pockets so that he could have a choice about the matter.
asphyxiateit: My parents went through fucking hoops to get the money for that. They took out loans, put a mortgages on the house, all of this when my father was unemployed for a year because he got laid off.
asphyxiateit: in high school, they took him out of the one he attended for the first two years, an extremely prestegious one where you have to be selected and accepted in, in order to send him to a military high school that already cost the same tuition as a good college.
asphyxiateit: Basically my parents work themselves to the bone in order to pay for his schooling. And they're not young anymore. My dad just wants to retire and enjoy his life, and my mother hates her job, but they go to work every day and deal with all of that shit so they can make enough money for us.
asphyxiateit: So, when my parents have high expectations on my brother's schoolwork, when you put it into perspective, it's really not unfair at all. And if he can't see that they're doing all of that because they love him and want the best for him, I don't know what to say to him. It is taking money away from me when I have to go to college, something I'm not even sure he's considered, and something I didn't even think about until last night.
asphyxiateit: Another thing that is important is the dynamics of my family. We're really close-knit because family is one of the most important things in life to us - that's how I was raised and that's what I believe, because my family has been amazing to me. You can see how much they care about my brother and how they're there for him even though he's not doing well and he's doing something they totally disagree with, which is go into war.
bbroadhurst20: I see
asphyxiateit: My family thinks that it's important to be open with one another and not hide things, which is perfectly reasonable. They want to be able to communicate with one another, and they value each others' opinions. We're very close.
asphyxiateit: One day, out of nowhere, I hear my brother talk about getting engaged to Nadia.
bbroadhurst20: :-S
asphyxiateit: My brother is twenty years old and is not finishing college in two years like he's supposed to, be three years because he fucked up a year.
asphyxiateit: Nadia is nineteen years old and still in high school for different reasons. Not even in college yet.
asphyxiateit: My brother is here for his summer break. Nadia is visiting for a week. They planned on getting engaged during this stay in New Jersey.
asphyxiateit: My aunt and uncle's sixth year anniversary was last night. They were going to announce it during desert, which is what might have happened if things didn't go awry.
asphyxiateit: My parents did not know about any of this until just as my brother was about to announce it.
asphyxiateit: That is a huge diss to my family, where you're supposed to include people in decisions that major out of respect and love. That's just how my family works. And my brother knows that.
asphyxiateit: The only people who knew about it in my family before that were me, my aunt Sue, and my Uncle Peter. My Aunt Sue is my mother's younger sister and best friend, and she's like a second mother to me. We have a lot of respect for her, and she's a very intelligent, very amazing person. My uncle is her husband.
asphyxiateit: The way I knew about it is that my brother mentioned getting Nadia a ring a few weeks ago - he didn't even sit down and talk to me about it.
bbroadhurst20: I see
asphyxiateit: The way my aunt and uncle found out about it is that my family - aunts, uncles, grandmother, etc. - was eating dinner at my aunt's new house, and my brother casually asked my Aunt if he could borrow money to buy an engagement ring.
bbroadhurst20: sorry if I dont reply much, I am reading and listening
asphyxiateit: No, it's fine
asphyxiateit: A few days later my brother and I went to her house again and we talked about the matter with her and my Uncle. And he knew that we thought it was bad that he didn't tell anyone, especially after it turns out he discussed it with her parents first and they know everything already.
asphyxiateit: Then, the timing is absolutely horrible. To begin with, almost all of us think they're too young, and then on top of that, they both need to be focusing on school.
bbroadhurst20: this is true
asphyxiateit: They want this engagement to be a three-year thing where they would get married once he graduates college, because the idea is that if he gets deployed in the military, if they're married any deployment is automatically shortened because he has a family, and if he goes to a safe zone Nadia can go with him.
asphyxiateit: The way it happened was we were sitting at the dining room table at my house eating dessert and my brother says something and goes "How do I say this.." and apparently let my mother see the ring in his hands.
asphyxiateit: They bought a ring at the mall a few days ago - I was the first person to see it, because they showed me at the fucking food court and we sat down and talked about how this was going to be a really rough course of action.
asphyxiateit: My mother says to my brother in Armenian so that Nadia doesn't understand, "If you do what I think you're doing, then you can get out of this house."
bbroadhurst20: :-(
asphyxiateit: This is the first time anything about the matter is revealed to her. My father still knows nothing.
asphyxiateit: My brother becomes silent and Nadia knows something bad happened. Eventually she excuses herself to go outside onto my deck, and we're left at the dining room table, silent.
asphyxiateit: My mother, aunt, and grandmother begin to speak to Jonathan in Armenian, so my father still doesn't know what's going on, and my uncle doesn't understand what they're saying but knows what it's about.
asphyxiateit: It gets to a point where my aunt asks if she can go outside to talk to Nadia, and he lets her. Then he goes upstairs.
asphyxiateit: My father asks me what's going on, and I know everything because I already know more than anyone else, and I understand Armenian. But I can't tell him because it's not something I should be telling him.
asphyxiateit: My mother comes around and asks me if I knew, and I look up at her and asked her if she wanted me to get into this, too. She told me yes, and I told her that yes, I knew. But I honestly didn't know that he didn't say anything to them about it at all, because that idea is beyond me.
asphyxiateit: When my brother showed my mother the ring, after she responded, tears started rolling down her face. I can't even imagine how it must have felt to know something like that was kept from her when he knows better and should respect her more than that.
asphyxiateit: My brother went upstairs. Eventually I tell them I want to go outside to be with Nadia and my aunt Sue, so I can hear what's going on, because now I'm the bridge between my brother and Nadia and my family. And I still am.
asphyxiateit: I go outside, and my Aunt is explaining very kindly and gently about why the engagement just won't go over well here. She explained about my family and how it works, she explained about how they need to focus on school and why school is so important to us, and so on.
asphyxiateit: I sat there and listened and said things occasionally, acting as a sort of mediator between them, because my Aunt also has a strong personality and can seen overpowering and commanding.
asphyxiateit: But she was being very calm and was doing a good job at talking to her. My father went upstairs to talk to my brother.
asphyxiateit: There are some things that I knew about already. Nadia had been asking my brother to tell us ever since they began discussing engagement. Her family knows all about it already and they have being "planning things".
asphyxiateit: I learned that, between the families, engagement is different.
asphyxiateit: To her, engagement is a period of growth together where you are close the way you are in a marriage, but not married. She does not believe in divorce. In my family and to me, engagement is something that comes after that period of closeness, and it's a time to make it official and begin the logistics of marriage. I guess the term 'engagement' is something closer to a promise ring in her family's definition, and to us it is something much more immediate and serious.
asphyxiateit: However, engagement still means they are going to get married. And if the two are engaged, no matter when the wedding is, that will take my brother's focus from school and place it elsewhere, and it will add pressure to him and to his relationship.
bbroadhurst20: true
asphyxiateit: He can't afford that, and that is why we wanted him to wait for a better, more reasonable time to do it.
asphyxiateit: Then, the conflict between family philosophies came up.
asphyxiateit: They feel that the decision is to be made between the two and the two alone, as they are both adults and it's between them. We feel that although the decision is to be made by them, there are consequences to that decision, in this case the alienation of family in an environment when my brother knew better. When it comes to engagement, though the choice is between them, that doesn't mean you disregard family and how it will effect them.
asphyxiateit: affect, rather
asphyxiateit: After about four hours in the smothering humidity until something like one in the morning, my Aunt and I sat outside talking to Nadia. My mother came out at one point but didn't say much.
asphyxiateit: She went inside to call her parents and went up to my brother's room. We were inside speaking amongst ourselves for a bit. My Aunt decided to go upstairs to talk to them both and asked me to accompany her.
asphyxiateit: She went upstairs and started talking to my brother, giving him the rundown of what happened. He doesn't say anything, because the way my brother gets is that he clams up when conflict is brought up and bottles everything inside, brooding and being angry and resentful and impossible to communicate with.
asphyxiateit: It gets to a point where she's explaining how the focus needs to be on schol because otherwise they won't have a foundation for life, and he says something along the lines of, "If I hear school mentioned one more time I'm going to go outside and shoot myself in the head."
asphyxiateit: My aunt has finally had enough of that and says, "Jonathan, you can do whatever you want." He storms out of the room, and Nadia is left there and asks her, "If you don't support this decision, then why do you say you report Jon?"
asphyxiateit: My aunt responds that there is a difference between supporting someone and being taken advantage of when supporting someone. And I see where she is coming from. We do support him, and if constantly paying for him and trying to keep in touch with him and being there for him isn't supporting him, and support him is instead being delighted about everything for him even if it's not something we agree with or even in his best interest, then no, we don't support him the way she wants.
asphyxiateit: Her family is ecstatic about this and she told us that they expected her to be wearing a ring when she went back to South Carolina, which is where he goes to school and she lives.
asphyxiateit: Her family also knew about all of this before us and didn't even seem to care that we knew nothing about it.
asphyxiateit: Her parents have never spoken to my parents, despite my mother's efforts to get in touch.
bbroadhurst20: hmmm
asphyxiateit: Between Nadia an my Aunt, things begin to get rapidly heated. Nadia keeps asking the question of why does my Aunt says she supports Jonathing when she really doesn't, and my aunt keeps responding that there's a difference between being supporting and being taken advantage of. Really, that doesn't directly answer the question, which I supposed Nadia took to mean she was trying to be evasive.
asphyxiateit: Regardless, it got to a point where they started going back and forth in that mock-sweet way women do when they're a step away from getting into a fight, and Nadia ends up saying, "If you don't support this decision, then screw you and screw your family. I'm calling up a hotel and staying there tonight."
asphyxiateit: screaming, rather
bbroadhurst20: oof :-(
asphyxiateit: My aunt is shocked and infuriated, of course, and goes downstairs to where my brother is standing at the bottom of the stairs where my parents and grandmother are, and she is yelling not at him but yelling out of anger what just happened.
asphyxiateit: She said to him, "It's no wonder we lost you! Ever since you started dating Nadia!" and my brother explodes and screams in her face "Hey!!" and sticks his hand in front of her as if he were almost about to hit her, and my mother yells "Hey!!" as if to warn him to keep himself in check, and he yells that we lost him the minute it became all about school and slams his fist into the wall.
asphyxiateit: My mother yells at him again and he storms upstairs, and my aunt is fuming in the dining room about what had just happened, and saying how Nadia is pressuring my brother into getting married, and no wonder my brother has been so down lately with all of this stress.
asphyxiateit: She said, "And this is the woman he's going to marry?" and said how it's like white trash, and how serious this was and how we've lost him. Because now it's at a point where he's standing at a choice between her and his family. And so far he's chosen her, from what it looks like.
asphyxiateit: I started crying because from everything I saw and heard and from the way things had been going for the past year, it did look like I had lost my brother.
asphyxiateit: Eventually we went into the sitting room next to my dining room to talk about it, and I finally hear from my Uncle and father, who had been merely listening the entire time.
asphyxiateit: We ended up talking about what to do in this situation. We can't make him choose, because if we do that he will definitely not choose us. We can't stop them from what they're going to do because it is their choice to make.
asphyxiateit: My father said we have to guide them the best we can. It was decided that boundaries needed to be set, and it got into talking about financial boundaries.
asphyxiateit: We're almost completely sure that if things keep going the way they are, especially with engagement in their heads how, my brother isn't going to finish college within five years instead of four already, but perhaps even six years.
asphyxiateit: We can't do that. We just can't. That's too much money, and I have to go to college, too.
asphyxiateit: My uncle came up with an idea that we pay for the next year, and that if they do end up getting married, and at this point we can honestly see him getting married in a year because they're both legally adults, that the minute he does that, he's on his own.
asphyxiateit: They talked about how he could get loans and if my parents had to be co-signers or not.
bbroadhurst20: that's reasonable enough
asphyxiateit: Yeah
bbroadhurst20: if he wants to go off in that direction, she should support himself
asphyxiateit: We figure that marriage is a way of saying that he's a man, and if they're both adults the way Nadia's family says, then they should live like adults.
asphyxiateit: We're down there talking for a while, late into the night.. probably until three. Eventually they both come down, and Nadia has her things packed up.
asphyxiateit: The rest of my family besides my aunt and uncle leave, and as they are my aunt Sue and Nadia hugged and said I'm sorry, but in a face-saving way, not so much in a sincere way, to me.
asphyxiateit: We discover that Nadia has a flight booked for nine this morning and my brother and she are going to the airport to wait for it.
asphyxiateit: My father tries to convince her to stay for the rest of the night, but they won't, and I tell him they won't sleep anyway because they can't seem to find the strength to tell him no.
asphyxiateit: Like I said, I'm the bridge.
asphyxiateit: Her parents wanted her to leave, and they got her the flight.
asphyxiateit: But as I see them out to the garage, Nadia finds out that the earliest flight they could get her was for seven-fifteen that evening. So she ended up staying the night. And they're still here.
asphyxiateit: I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen now. I haven't talked to them and I haven't talked to my family about it.
asphyxiateit: But that's what happened last night.
bbroadhurst20: I see
bbroadhurst20: heavy :-(
asphyxiateit: Yes, very
asphyxiateit: I told him, you can always wait to get engaged, but you can't undo something like this.
bbroadhurst20: yeah, I dont understand why they are doing this now
bbroadhurst20: how long have they been togetheR?
asphyxiateit: Two months longer than Brandon and me.
bbroadhurst20: that's it
bbroadhurst20: ?
asphyxiateit: indeed
bbroadhurst20: that's not very long, and they are already thinking about marriage?
asphyxiateit: To be honest, I cannot imagine my brother creating that suggestion.
asphyxiateit: It does seem like Nadia is pressuring him into it, even if she doesn't mean to or doesn't see it.
asphyxiateit: She is controlling in her own way. My friend Mike has seen it before; I called him last night.
bbroadhurst20: are you ok, considering the circumstances?
asphyxiateit: I'm fine
asphyxiateit: It was shitty of my brother to put me in this position, but what can I do?
bbroadhurst20: I agree, the fact he hasn't discussed it with anyone is a real shitty thing to do
bbroadhurst20: he's burning his bridges here
asphyxiateit: He knew better. He shouldn't have put Nadia in this position, either.
asphyxiateit: And on top of all of this, she bought her own ring because my brother doesn't have the money. If he had done decent in school he could have continued his internship my father got him at my father's old company. But that didn't happen.
asphyxiateit: So Nadia paid for her own ring with her father's money.
bbroadhurst20: hmm
asphyxiateit: My questions are:
How can you get engaged and start if off this way?
How can you allow your finacee to keep something like this from his family? She should have made sure he told us if she cared that much about there not being this kind of situation.
If this is level of maturity he has and she has, how can they seriously consider being engaged?
Why didn't her family even care about getting to know mine, or even care that we didn't know about the entire thing?
asphyxiateit: Seriously, when she said that it's their decision because "they're adults", I almost gagged.
asphyxiateit: And don't get me wrong - I
asphyxiateit: I'm not against Nadia. I'm against how this happened.
asphyxiateit: There are things I like about her and things I don't, like anyone. But I honestly don't think the two families will work well together, and I don't think this will last. And if it does, I can't even imagine what this will do regarding my brother.
bbroadhurst20: yo yo yo
asphyxiateit: sup queer?
bbroadhurst20: how's you?
bbroadhurst20: I'm ok
asphyxiateit: I'm better than last night/this morning
asphyxiateit: there was a family crisis
bbroadhurst20: what happened?
asphyxiateit: It's a really long story.
asphyxiateit: it centers around my brother and his girlfriend, Nadia
bbroadhurst20: rocky times?
asphyxiateit: Yes, but not involving whether or not they'll be together
asphyxiateit: I have to explain a little bit about my brother, first, I think
asphyxiateit: his name is Jonathan, he's twenty years old now. Nadia is nineteen. Jonathan and my parents have always been on edgy terms because of school. My parents place school and family before anything because both my mother and father came from war-torn countries where they had to start over with absolutely nothing and put themselves through school.
asphyxiateit: My father came from Vietnam and he was actually alone, and my mother came from Lebanon with only her family and nothing else. They both didn't speak the language and they both absolutely had to do well in school or else die.
asphyxiateit: So needless to say education is a huge deal in my house, and they expect us to do well, which is totally fair, I think.
asphyxiateit: For my brother, though, he feels like all that matters with him is his grades, and that they don't care enough about him as a person. He might know that's not true, but he feels differently. This makes it extremely difficult for him to talk to my parents.
asphyxiateit: He's also always had difficulty opening up to people and dealing with negative emotions, especially anger and resentment. And he has a lot of that inside him.
bbroadhurst20: I understand how he feels, sorta
bbroadhurst20: with the parent thing
asphyxiateit: Yeah
asphyxiateit: Both of my parents are very concerned about school, in different ways. My mother has a very strong personality and I can see her being severe about it. But my father is very quiet and I cannot see him being mean in any way about it.
asphyxiateit: Anyway, my brother has been with Nadia for about a year and six months or something, whatever. When they started going out it was nice because he finally had a girlfriend and she made him happy.
asphyxiateit: But, for the past year or so, my brother's grades have been absolutely dropping. To the point where he had to drop a class and failed two others.
asphyxiateit: For four years we've been hearing about how it's because of bad teachers, bad classes, school is hard, etc. etc. Now, I know what it's like to have a shitty teacher because I went through that with AP chemistry last year, but I also know I could have taken my own initiative if I wanted and I could have studied my ass off to do well in that class. So I take all the blame for that. He has never taken responsibility for his bad grades, even if school is that bad.
asphyxiateit: He also goes to a miltary college called the Citadel, where he has to deal with physical training and military responsibilities. But he wanted to go there, and he still wants to go there. It's always been his dream to go into the military and he loves it, so even though my parents, who come from war-torn countries and have lost everything to warm, don't want him to go into the military, they love him enough to let him do what he wishes with his life.
asphyxiateit: They could have let him go into an ROTC program where the government pays for your college and in return you have to serve in the military for a set amount of years, but they wanted to send him to a school paid out of their own pockets so that he could have a choice about the matter.
asphyxiateit: My parents went through fucking hoops to get the money for that. They took out loans, put a mortgages on the house, all of this when my father was unemployed for a year because he got laid off.
asphyxiateit: in high school, they took him out of the one he attended for the first two years, an extremely prestegious one where you have to be selected and accepted in, in order to send him to a military high school that already cost the same tuition as a good college.
asphyxiateit: Basically my parents work themselves to the bone in order to pay for his schooling. And they're not young anymore. My dad just wants to retire and enjoy his life, and my mother hates her job, but they go to work every day and deal with all of that shit so they can make enough money for us.
asphyxiateit: So, when my parents have high expectations on my brother's schoolwork, when you put it into perspective, it's really not unfair at all. And if he can't see that they're doing all of that because they love him and want the best for him, I don't know what to say to him. It is taking money away from me when I have to go to college, something I'm not even sure he's considered, and something I didn't even think about until last night.
asphyxiateit: Another thing that is important is the dynamics of my family. We're really close-knit because family is one of the most important things in life to us - that's how I was raised and that's what I believe, because my family has been amazing to me. You can see how much they care about my brother and how they're there for him even though he's not doing well and he's doing something they totally disagree with, which is go into war.
bbroadhurst20: I see
asphyxiateit: My family thinks that it's important to be open with one another and not hide things, which is perfectly reasonable. They want to be able to communicate with one another, and they value each others' opinions. We're very close.
asphyxiateit: One day, out of nowhere, I hear my brother talk about getting engaged to Nadia.
bbroadhurst20: :-S
asphyxiateit: My brother is twenty years old and is not finishing college in two years like he's supposed to, be three years because he fucked up a year.
asphyxiateit: Nadia is nineteen years old and still in high school for different reasons. Not even in college yet.
asphyxiateit: My brother is here for his summer break. Nadia is visiting for a week. They planned on getting engaged during this stay in New Jersey.
asphyxiateit: My aunt and uncle's sixth year anniversary was last night. They were going to announce it during desert, which is what might have happened if things didn't go awry.
asphyxiateit: My parents did not know about any of this until just as my brother was about to announce it.
asphyxiateit: That is a huge diss to my family, where you're supposed to include people in decisions that major out of respect and love. That's just how my family works. And my brother knows that.
asphyxiateit: The only people who knew about it in my family before that were me, my aunt Sue, and my Uncle Peter. My Aunt Sue is my mother's younger sister and best friend, and she's like a second mother to me. We have a lot of respect for her, and she's a very intelligent, very amazing person. My uncle is her husband.
asphyxiateit: The way I knew about it is that my brother mentioned getting Nadia a ring a few weeks ago - he didn't even sit down and talk to me about it.
bbroadhurst20: I see
asphyxiateit: The way my aunt and uncle found out about it is that my family - aunts, uncles, grandmother, etc. - was eating dinner at my aunt's new house, and my brother casually asked my Aunt if he could borrow money to buy an engagement ring.
bbroadhurst20: sorry if I dont reply much, I am reading and listening
asphyxiateit: No, it's fine
asphyxiateit: A few days later my brother and I went to her house again and we talked about the matter with her and my Uncle. And he knew that we thought it was bad that he didn't tell anyone, especially after it turns out he discussed it with her parents first and they know everything already.
asphyxiateit: Then, the timing is absolutely horrible. To begin with, almost all of us think they're too young, and then on top of that, they both need to be focusing on school.
bbroadhurst20: this is true
asphyxiateit: They want this engagement to be a three-year thing where they would get married once he graduates college, because the idea is that if he gets deployed in the military, if they're married any deployment is automatically shortened because he has a family, and if he goes to a safe zone Nadia can go with him.
asphyxiateit: The way it happened was we were sitting at the dining room table at my house eating dessert and my brother says something and goes "How do I say this.." and apparently let my mother see the ring in his hands.
asphyxiateit: They bought a ring at the mall a few days ago - I was the first person to see it, because they showed me at the fucking food court and we sat down and talked about how this was going to be a really rough course of action.
asphyxiateit: My mother says to my brother in Armenian so that Nadia doesn't understand, "If you do what I think you're doing, then you can get out of this house."
bbroadhurst20: :-(
asphyxiateit: This is the first time anything about the matter is revealed to her. My father still knows nothing.
asphyxiateit: My brother becomes silent and Nadia knows something bad happened. Eventually she excuses herself to go outside onto my deck, and we're left at the dining room table, silent.
asphyxiateit: My mother, aunt, and grandmother begin to speak to Jonathan in Armenian, so my father still doesn't know what's going on, and my uncle doesn't understand what they're saying but knows what it's about.
asphyxiateit: It gets to a point where my aunt asks if she can go outside to talk to Nadia, and he lets her. Then he goes upstairs.
asphyxiateit: My father asks me what's going on, and I know everything because I already know more than anyone else, and I understand Armenian. But I can't tell him because it's not something I should be telling him.
asphyxiateit: My mother comes around and asks me if I knew, and I look up at her and asked her if she wanted me to get into this, too. She told me yes, and I told her that yes, I knew. But I honestly didn't know that he didn't say anything to them about it at all, because that idea is beyond me.
asphyxiateit: When my brother showed my mother the ring, after she responded, tears started rolling down her face. I can't even imagine how it must have felt to know something like that was kept from her when he knows better and should respect her more than that.
asphyxiateit: My brother went upstairs. Eventually I tell them I want to go outside to be with Nadia and my aunt Sue, so I can hear what's going on, because now I'm the bridge between my brother and Nadia and my family. And I still am.
asphyxiateit: I go outside, and my Aunt is explaining very kindly and gently about why the engagement just won't go over well here. She explained about my family and how it works, she explained about how they need to focus on school and why school is so important to us, and so on.
asphyxiateit: I sat there and listened and said things occasionally, acting as a sort of mediator between them, because my Aunt also has a strong personality and can seen overpowering and commanding.
asphyxiateit: But she was being very calm and was doing a good job at talking to her. My father went upstairs to talk to my brother.
asphyxiateit: There are some things that I knew about already. Nadia had been asking my brother to tell us ever since they began discussing engagement. Her family knows all about it already and they have being "planning things".
asphyxiateit: I learned that, between the families, engagement is different.
asphyxiateit: To her, engagement is a period of growth together where you are close the way you are in a marriage, but not married. She does not believe in divorce. In my family and to me, engagement is something that comes after that period of closeness, and it's a time to make it official and begin the logistics of marriage. I guess the term 'engagement' is something closer to a promise ring in her family's definition, and to us it is something much more immediate and serious.
asphyxiateit: However, engagement still means they are going to get married. And if the two are engaged, no matter when the wedding is, that will take my brother's focus from school and place it elsewhere, and it will add pressure to him and to his relationship.
bbroadhurst20: true
asphyxiateit: He can't afford that, and that is why we wanted him to wait for a better, more reasonable time to do it.
asphyxiateit: Then, the conflict between family philosophies came up.
asphyxiateit: They feel that the decision is to be made between the two and the two alone, as they are both adults and it's between them. We feel that although the decision is to be made by them, there are consequences to that decision, in this case the alienation of family in an environment when my brother knew better. When it comes to engagement, though the choice is between them, that doesn't mean you disregard family and how it will effect them.
asphyxiateit: affect, rather
asphyxiateit: After about four hours in the smothering humidity until something like one in the morning, my Aunt and I sat outside talking to Nadia. My mother came out at one point but didn't say much.
asphyxiateit: She went inside to call her parents and went up to my brother's room. We were inside speaking amongst ourselves for a bit. My Aunt decided to go upstairs to talk to them both and asked me to accompany her.
asphyxiateit: She went upstairs and started talking to my brother, giving him the rundown of what happened. He doesn't say anything, because the way my brother gets is that he clams up when conflict is brought up and bottles everything inside, brooding and being angry and resentful and impossible to communicate with.
asphyxiateit: It gets to a point where she's explaining how the focus needs to be on schol because otherwise they won't have a foundation for life, and he says something along the lines of, "If I hear school mentioned one more time I'm going to go outside and shoot myself in the head."
asphyxiateit: My aunt has finally had enough of that and says, "Jonathan, you can do whatever you want." He storms out of the room, and Nadia is left there and asks her, "If you don't support this decision, then why do you say you report Jon?"
asphyxiateit: My aunt responds that there is a difference between supporting someone and being taken advantage of when supporting someone. And I see where she is coming from. We do support him, and if constantly paying for him and trying to keep in touch with him and being there for him isn't supporting him, and support him is instead being delighted about everything for him even if it's not something we agree with or even in his best interest, then no, we don't support him the way she wants.
asphyxiateit: Her family is ecstatic about this and she told us that they expected her to be wearing a ring when she went back to South Carolina, which is where he goes to school and she lives.
asphyxiateit: Her family also knew about all of this before us and didn't even seem to care that we knew nothing about it.
asphyxiateit: Her parents have never spoken to my parents, despite my mother's efforts to get in touch.
bbroadhurst20: hmmm
asphyxiateit: Between Nadia an my Aunt, things begin to get rapidly heated. Nadia keeps asking the question of why does my Aunt says she supports Jonathing when she really doesn't, and my aunt keeps responding that there's a difference between being supporting and being taken advantage of. Really, that doesn't directly answer the question, which I supposed Nadia took to mean she was trying to be evasive.
asphyxiateit: Regardless, it got to a point where they started going back and forth in that mock-sweet way women do when they're a step away from getting into a fight, and Nadia ends up saying, "If you don't support this decision, then screw you and screw your family. I'm calling up a hotel and staying there tonight."
asphyxiateit: screaming, rather
bbroadhurst20: oof :-(
asphyxiateit: My aunt is shocked and infuriated, of course, and goes downstairs to where my brother is standing at the bottom of the stairs where my parents and grandmother are, and she is yelling not at him but yelling out of anger what just happened.
asphyxiateit: She said to him, "It's no wonder we lost you! Ever since you started dating Nadia!" and my brother explodes and screams in her face "Hey!!" and sticks his hand in front of her as if he were almost about to hit her, and my mother yells "Hey!!" as if to warn him to keep himself in check, and he yells that we lost him the minute it became all about school and slams his fist into the wall.
asphyxiateit: My mother yells at him again and he storms upstairs, and my aunt is fuming in the dining room about what had just happened, and saying how Nadia is pressuring my brother into getting married, and no wonder my brother has been so down lately with all of this stress.
asphyxiateit: She said, "And this is the woman he's going to marry?" and said how it's like white trash, and how serious this was and how we've lost him. Because now it's at a point where he's standing at a choice between her and his family. And so far he's chosen her, from what it looks like.
asphyxiateit: I started crying because from everything I saw and heard and from the way things had been going for the past year, it did look like I had lost my brother.
asphyxiateit: Eventually we went into the sitting room next to my dining room to talk about it, and I finally hear from my Uncle and father, who had been merely listening the entire time.
asphyxiateit: We ended up talking about what to do in this situation. We can't make him choose, because if we do that he will definitely not choose us. We can't stop them from what they're going to do because it is their choice to make.
asphyxiateit: My father said we have to guide them the best we can. It was decided that boundaries needed to be set, and it got into talking about financial boundaries.
asphyxiateit: We're almost completely sure that if things keep going the way they are, especially with engagement in their heads how, my brother isn't going to finish college within five years instead of four already, but perhaps even six years.
asphyxiateit: We can't do that. We just can't. That's too much money, and I have to go to college, too.
asphyxiateit: My uncle came up with an idea that we pay for the next year, and that if they do end up getting married, and at this point we can honestly see him getting married in a year because they're both legally adults, that the minute he does that, he's on his own.
asphyxiateit: They talked about how he could get loans and if my parents had to be co-signers or not.
bbroadhurst20: that's reasonable enough
asphyxiateit: Yeah
bbroadhurst20: if he wants to go off in that direction, she should support himself
asphyxiateit: We figure that marriage is a way of saying that he's a man, and if they're both adults the way Nadia's family says, then they should live like adults.
asphyxiateit: We're down there talking for a while, late into the night.. probably until three. Eventually they both come down, and Nadia has her things packed up.
asphyxiateit: The rest of my family besides my aunt and uncle leave, and as they are my aunt Sue and Nadia hugged and said I'm sorry, but in a face-saving way, not so much in a sincere way, to me.
asphyxiateit: We discover that Nadia has a flight booked for nine this morning and my brother and she are going to the airport to wait for it.
asphyxiateit: My father tries to convince her to stay for the rest of the night, but they won't, and I tell him they won't sleep anyway because they can't seem to find the strength to tell him no.
asphyxiateit: Like I said, I'm the bridge.
asphyxiateit: Her parents wanted her to leave, and they got her the flight.
asphyxiateit: But as I see them out to the garage, Nadia finds out that the earliest flight they could get her was for seven-fifteen that evening. So she ended up staying the night. And they're still here.
asphyxiateit: I'm not sure exactly what's going to happen now. I haven't talked to them and I haven't talked to my family about it.
asphyxiateit: But that's what happened last night.
bbroadhurst20: I see
bbroadhurst20: heavy :-(
asphyxiateit: Yes, very
asphyxiateit: I told him, you can always wait to get engaged, but you can't undo something like this.
bbroadhurst20: yeah, I dont understand why they are doing this now
bbroadhurst20: how long have they been togetheR?
asphyxiateit: Two months longer than Brandon and me.
bbroadhurst20: that's it
bbroadhurst20: ?
asphyxiateit: indeed
bbroadhurst20: that's not very long, and they are already thinking about marriage?
asphyxiateit: To be honest, I cannot imagine my brother creating that suggestion.
asphyxiateit: It does seem like Nadia is pressuring him into it, even if she doesn't mean to or doesn't see it.
asphyxiateit: She is controlling in her own way. My friend Mike has seen it before; I called him last night.
bbroadhurst20: are you ok, considering the circumstances?
asphyxiateit: I'm fine
asphyxiateit: It was shitty of my brother to put me in this position, but what can I do?
bbroadhurst20: I agree, the fact he hasn't discussed it with anyone is a real shitty thing to do
bbroadhurst20: he's burning his bridges here
asphyxiateit: He knew better. He shouldn't have put Nadia in this position, either.
asphyxiateit: And on top of all of this, she bought her own ring because my brother doesn't have the money. If he had done decent in school he could have continued his internship my father got him at my father's old company. But that didn't happen.
asphyxiateit: So Nadia paid for her own ring with her father's money.
bbroadhurst20: hmm
asphyxiateit: My questions are:
How can you get engaged and start if off this way?
How can you allow your finacee to keep something like this from his family? She should have made sure he told us if she cared that much about there not being this kind of situation.
If this is level of maturity he has and she has, how can they seriously consider being engaged?
Why didn't her family even care about getting to know mine, or even care that we didn't know about the entire thing?
asphyxiateit: Seriously, when she said that it's their decision because "they're adults", I almost gagged.
asphyxiateit: And don't get me wrong - I
asphyxiateit: I'm not against Nadia. I'm against how this happened.
asphyxiateit: There are things I like about her and things I don't, like anyone. But I honestly don't think the two families will work well together, and I don't think this will last. And if it does, I can't even imagine what this will do regarding my brother.