Marrying a Sri Lankan

Dear Dr. P,

I’m a Korean living at home in a Western country. My family has just become aware of my Sri Lankan boyfriend, who I have been secretly seeing for a long time. We intended to marry within the next few years, once we have become settled into our jobs. We are both in our final year of medical school and will not be financially solvent for a while.

As expected, my family is strongly opposed to this relationship and has threatened to disown me if I continue. My mother believes it will be the end of my reputation within the Korean community and that it is a matter of “life and death.” For the time being, my partner and I have ended our relationship, with the intention to start publicly dating again next year.

I am torn between my love for this man and feelings of guilt for betraying and disobeying my family. I feel that if I give up this relationship I may be reasonably comfortable in a relationship with someone my parents approve of, but am afraid that I will be settling for less, and that I will miss out on a truly wonderful life. We love each other for our weaknesses as well as our faults, and would do anything to make the other person happy, even if it meant letting them go to be with someone else. If I do stay with him, I am afraid that my life will be haunted by feelings of guilt and regret at leaving my family. They want me to be happy but are blinded by deep-down prejudices and a need to remain respected by other Korean families here.

I know this is a decision only I can make but I was hoping you could give some advice as to how I should think about things. I am rather neurotic and obsessive by nature and am full of doubts.

Thank you for listening, and I’m sorry for such a long message.

Dear future doctor,

I see that you are facing a difficult decision. If you choose your boyfriend, you will disappoint your parents; if you choose your parents, you will suffer from losing your beloved.

As far as I am concerned, there are some requirements that need to be met in order to achieve your love and make a happy family together with your love. The most important thing is that you have to be two grown-ups who can make a living together on your own. If you are socially, financially and physically dependent on your parents and still choose to get married, it will bring about many agonies in the future.

I’d like to advise you to keep up your relationship with your boyfriend but, at the same time, delay your plan to get married. According to my own experience, the love of your life is never late. You can put effort into your study, and make your decision after you become socially and financially independent.

During that time you should try to do your best to persuade your family. I know how painful such an experience is, but I hope you make a wise decision that will not hurt anyone, including you.

I wish you all the best in your future!

Thank you.

Dr. P

Dear Dr. P

I am having a hard time dealing with my ex.

We broke up about a year ago, it was my first love, and our relationship ended like other couples. The reason he dumped me was that I couldn’t just do enough of everything and I always crossed the line whenever we had an argument, such as keeping texting him, sending e-mails or calling till I felt it solved or relieved. He was the one who always tried to avoid the matter and backed away from me. I know I may have a kind of obsession for contacting him during our fights which may have suffocated him. But I couldn’t stop because I was very upset and lonely with the belief that he was abandoning instead of understanding me.

Anyway, I have moved on since we broke up. Although I was in grief and miserable, I wished him to be happy. As time goes by, I put myself together to where I was before but suddenly he came up and said he wanted to keep in touch with me. He has a new girlfriend, whom he met two months after our break up, and I just don’t know why. Maybe I pretended to be a cool person, and I found out I wasn’t because whenever I hear from him or see him at the pictures with his girlfriend at SNS I feel so angry and I just can’t control my anger.

For him, she is just a fine woman but personally I was a bit disappointed with his liking her. It may sound like judging someone but even people close to him agreed. I shouldn’t be comparing but when I listed things about me and her, I scored nine out of 10 and she got two out of 10, and I was dumped because of this one thing he couldn’t manage and I feel it was so unfair. Dr P! I don’t know why but I feel it was so unfair and I feel so regretful that I spent most of my time and efforts to do my best to love him and his family.

I feel betrayed, angry and unfairly treated. I don’t know why I feel this way as well, as I need some kind of therapy to get rid of this feeling of unfairness from my mind.

Dr. P! Please help! I think I am mentally unstable at the moment.

Your sincerely, Jay

Dear Jay,

It might be more traumatic for you that your ex-boyfriend already started a new relationship with another girl less than two months after breaking up, although you are still wounded after being separated from him, who was your first love. If he did not fall in love with this girl so fast, you could have perhaps been able to tolerate this hardship a little easier.

But it seems that you are too preoccupied with your ex-lover. You seem to want your boyfriend to do something more for you than you can do for him.

It would be very difficult to maintain a stable and smooth relationship with your boyfriend if you keep up this attitude. No matter how smart and beautiful you are, you won’t succeed in love without warm empathic understanding of your partner.

The bible says that, “Love is patient and kind. And love does not demand its own way.” In that sense, you need to find the real reason of your failure in love psychologically first, even if you are such a smart lady. First of all, I will send you my E-book of marital counseling, “Finding Yourself within Love.” It would be very helpful for you to understand this suffering.

Best of luck to you!

Dr. Park Jin-seng is a psychiatrist who runs a clinic for foreigners in Seoul and operates personal therapist forums on www.lifeinkorea.com. Please submit questions for him, either in English or in Korean, to mdoctor@korea.com or call the hotline at 02-563-0678. Those who have their questions selected will be presented with a copy of his book “Finding Yourself within Love” (Korean e-Book).