Ruined my engagement trying to please my traditional parents, and now I deeply resent them.
I need to vent because I am completely drowning in regret, anger, and depression right now.
A while back, I decided to marry a girl I met. From day one, my traditional parents wanted to control every single aspect of the wedding. It became a toxic cycle: my fiancée and I would make a decision, my parents would guilt-trip me and claim I was "excluding them," I would back out to please them, and then my fiancée would understandably get frustrated with me.
The issues started immediately with the engagement. My fiancée wanted a small, simple home event. My family demanded a massive, expensive party. I couldn't stand up to my parents openly, so I fought with my fiancée to please them, only to cave at the last second and do the small event anyway. Nobody was happy, and my dad taunted me for a long time about the choices made, even though I was paying for everything.
I live and work abroad, and while I was away, my family went completely radio silent. When wedding planning started again, they objected to the timeline. My parents and sister were more interested in what expensive clothes and gifts I was buying them than asking how I was managing financially. They constantly reminded me they had no money to help, yet expected me to fund luxury for them.
Things hit a boiling point when my parents went to her house for a discussion, and a literal fight broke out between both families. After that, my family cut off all communication with her side for a long time. Right around this crisis, I lost my job. I was unemployed for a grueling year, drowning in severe depression and financial stress. Culturally, my parents were supposed to handle the family-to-family communication during this time, but they completely abandoned me to deal with her family alone.
When I finally landed a job and went back home to fix things, my family showed zero happiness. My mom complained about me taking my fiancée out, claiming it went against "tradition." My sister demanded I buy her multiple sets of outfits and jewelry for the wedding events. My dad gave me the usual guilt trip: "Since you decided everything on your own, just send us an invite." No one asked how she was, and no one welcomed her.
Eventually, the relationship with my fiancée was completely ruined. I was trying to defend my family out of some misplaced loyalty, while she was deeply resentful of how they had treated her. Mentally, I was totally depleted from the job loss and depression. Finally, the stress caused things to get toxic between us, she said some disrespectful things about my family, and in a state of absolute breakdown, I ended the relationship.
I didn't tell my parents for over a week, and they didn't even bother to ask how things were going. The day before I flew back abroad, they taunted me again, I snapped, told them it was over, and left.
I always thought that once my finances and mental health stabilized, I would reach out to her and fix it. But after a few months of silence, I just found out she is already engaged to someone else.
I am devastated. I feel like I was trapped in an impossible situation where I tried to please everyone and lost the person I loved. I recently confronted my mother about how their constant demands and lack of support ruined my life, and all she had to say was that it was a "misunderstanding."
I deeply resent my family right now. I'm sitting here abroad, questioning every decision I made, and struggling to process this grief.