Is OTHER wrong in the post ? POST : So for some context, my mom definitely treated me rather questionably as a kid. I hesitate to call her actions outright abuse, but some of it certainly bordered on it: for example, she would be very quick to anger and hit me for very minor mishaps (such as, say, forgetting my lunch box at school) and when I had a pet hamster around age 11-ish, whenever I would disobey her she would threaten to kill the hamster or release it outside of the house and leave it to its fate. There's more, but suffice to say my opinion of my mom hasn't exactly been the greatest. She did "apologize" for these actions and attempt to make amends, but even still, I have my resentments towards her. When I was in high school, my mom left working full time to stay at home so she could "devote more time to the family."

By the end of my final year of HS, I got into a good college in another state. In order to get in-state tuition as well as a larger home, my parents found out they could move to the new state. It was at this point that apparently, my father had asked my mother to find a job and get back into the workforce. Without saying too much personal detail, there were some disagreements between my parents about my father sending money to support some of his family back in my parents' country, and my father had basically told my mom that if she had a problem with the money being spent that way, she should find a job and get back into the workforce now that I was in college. My mom more or less dragged her feet on getting a job until about my sophomore year when my father started demanding it more seriously. Even then, she was reluctant to do trainings and apply to jobs and such, saying that she didn't know where to start. My dad pointed her to some resources and told her how she could get back into the job, and mentioned the names of some of his friends' wives who had gotten back into the workforce after their kids went off to college. For whatever reason she said that their advice wouldn't work or she couldn't make sense of what they told her and still put off getting a job. My dad in response to this began to up the ante.

It started small and kind of petty: for example, my dad would refuse to eat at home and always go out for dinner, claiming he would only eat at the table with her once she seriously began looking for a job. Then whenever she wanted to do anything other than some kind of training/job hunting (for example, when they had first moved to the new state they talked about how they wanted to set up the media room in the new house with a projector and stuff), he would "remind" her that she needed to find a job, and begin using the job to shut down any arguments. At this stage I'd ask my dad why he was being this punitive in terms of not eating at home or constantly reminding my mom she needed to get a job, and he would always say that that was "the only way to get through to my mom," as he'd tried explaining to her "normally" that she needed to find a job and she didn't take any action towards doing so when he'd done it that way. I explained to him many times over that shame wasn't an effective way to get her to find a job, but to no avail: he kept on doing the same. The money situation and the job situation resulted in lots of arguments between my parents, devolving into yelling matches and many times I had to mediate the situation for them.

Then he ramped it up further. He threatened to divorce her if she didn't find a job by this past March. On numerous occassions, my mom would call me to basically vent to me about how my dad was treating her, and these calls would go on for an hour at a time. She would expect me to step away from whatever it is that I was doing, promising me she just needed to talk for "ten minutes," when I knew that wasn't the case. She was clearly miserable, but at the same time I had my own life as a college student to deal with and in some ways I resented having to carry the burden of the same woman who treated me so badly when I was younger.When I went home to visit, I asked my dad on the car ride back if he was actually planning on divorcing my mom if she didn't find a job by the end of (this past) June. He said that he was, because he felt that he had compromised on a lot of stuff for my mom's sensibilities: for example, allowing her to be something of a helicopter parent when I was a kid, not eating meat in the house (a common thing in my parents' culture since meat is seen as "dirty" food), not drinking alcohol at gatherings with family friends while she was there (since my mom is rather religious and against drinking), etc. He expressed disdain that my mother wasn't willing to compromise for him when it came to him asking her to get a job even if she had some hesitations about getting back into the workforce, and that if she couldn't make this compromise, then maybe their values weren't compatible any more. My mom's side of the story on her lack of compromise is as follows: In dealing with my dad's side of the family (as mentioned earlier, they basically kept demanding he send them money, which he did to an extent but then basically told them to piss off because it was clear these people couldn't manage money responsibly for the life of them), she said she had to sacrifice all sorts of things that their peers in America had: for example, being able to buy a bigger house for our family, having another kid, etc. She said that she felt satisfied being a housewife and that she felt it was unfair for my dad to demand she get a job without any regard to how she felt about it, that they wouldn't have been so tight on money if not for his family, etc. Now it's important to mention my mom definitely isn't lazy or some kind of gold-digging leech freeloading off of my dad: as many negative things as I have to say about her, I can say this about her confidently.

Anyway, my dad's treatment of her has gotten even worse. He extended the "deadline" for her job hunt to the end of this year, but he refuses to talk to her in person, saying that he gets frustrated every time she talks to him. Instead, he expects her to always text him, even if they're under the same roof. He also expects her to email him weekly progress reports on her job hunt letting him know about any leads she found, trainings she completed, etc. Another thing that's relevant to mention is that he picked up a smoking habit while my mom had gone on a trip last winter to visit her family in their home country. My mom was very concerned for my dad's health, and would demand he stop smoking. When my dad stopped talking to her face to face, she made me go and ask him to stop smoking for the sake of his health. When I was at home for summer break, she would expect me to wake up at 6:00 AM right when he had his morning cigarettes to "catch him red-handed" and tell him to stop smoking. I humored her at first, but after a few times, it became very clear that this was an ineffective approach. Accordingly, at one of these incidences, he blew up at me, saying that my mom should "stop using me to police him" and that the next time either of us brought this up, he would just get up and leave my mom on the spot. Still, despite the fact that my dad blew up at me, my mom demanded I keep engaging with my dad about how he was treating her. When I refused to do this and told her it was an ineffective approach and that I couldn't just burn my hands for her sake, she got angry at me, saying that I was "the only person she had left" and "I've done so much for you, why can't you have the gratitude to help me back?!" (These were the same things she would tell me when she called and I was busy either studying or with my friends and didn't have the luxury of stepping away for a long time to talk to her.)

Now here's the thing with my reaction how my dad treats my mom. He is treating her unfairly, no doubt, but I can't bring myself to have that visceral level of sympathy for my mom because of how she treated me in the past. Whenever I see my dad giving my mom the cold shoulder and beating her over the head with this job hunt thing, I definitely see it as wrong, but I don't see it as worse because it's my mom; I just see it the way that I'd see it if it were some random guy doing the same to his wife, if that makes any sense.

And also, I've gotten frustrated with my mom refusing to see that what she demands of me in helping her isn't furthering the cause of getting my dad to back down. She says that I should "express to my dad my desire for us to stay a family," and quite honestly, I don't feel that way. I feel that if one person wants out of the relationship, then the relationship is over, no matter the reason for wanting out: you can't make someone stay in a relationship with you. When I expressed this to my mom, she said that in her culture "you don't just throw a marriage away," and that I wouldn't understand since I was raised here. And I'm at my limit in being the emotional outlet for my mom. At a point, I feel that she is saying the same thing over and over, to the point where I dread having a phone call with her. I realize that I am part of the family and this affects me, but at the same time this is her and my dad's marriage: I can only do so much to influence the situation, yet she seems to expect me to fix everything or devote every last drop of energy to consoling her even if she won't say that's what she wants outright. Am I wrong in feeling this way? I feel like she'd call me a monster or something for saying I want out, but shit, that's how I feel.

TL;DR: Dad wants to divorce because my mom won't find a job, mom doesn't want to divorce. I wind up getting caught in the middle a lot, and I'm not sure if I'm selfish for wanting out, partly due to unrelated resentment towards my mom. Advice wanted.

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