Um, you don't see the problem with that when it's your father / husband?

“Problem” is not the same thing as “abuse”.

>because you see, my dad was a coward. mom had started asking for divorces by the time i was in my teens, and dad was the one who always said no. he would complain to her mother, a traditionalist, to ensure that she would berate her daughter back into line. his family and his culture had no place for him, so he used her as a shield to make sure that he would be spared the scrutiny.

What exactly do you call that? NoT ThE SAmE ThInG As "AbuSE"?

No. Being selfish is not the same thing as abuse.

People do selfish stuff all the time. It’s not abuse even if it’s shitty behavior. Abuse means more than that.

Calling up your wife's parents and telling them to scold her for wanting to divorce you IS ABUSE.

In Asian cultures this is pretty mellow.

It would be far worse if you let her divorce you, typically. Divorced women in East Asian cultures (well, Asian generally) are not treated well.

Not everyone works the same way.

So it was his responsibility to force her into the path that he believed was best for her?

That is a very toxic thing that people do in relationships all the time. It is used as a rationalization for prioritizing one's own desires.

Both of their parents certainly had that view, as does the wider society.

If you think that is very toxic, that is the tip of the iceberg.

To really put icing on the cake, they do it because they have plenty of examples of how badly people screw up their lives if someone isn’t doing that for them.

looks around at the opioid crisis in the west right now. Not that we would have anything like that going on.

There is no perfect, just different trade offs. And everyone usually cringes at the trade offs everyone else makes.

Coercing someone to remain in a loveless marriage while you abandon and repeatedly cheat on them sure is though.

so by this rational a person can be abused without even being aware of it and seeing no comparable ill effect?

Where is the line drawn? Am I abusing my spouse when I decide that we're a bit too over-stretched financially and that we're going to need to skip the surprise Disney World trip that I had planned but hadn't yet told them about?

What about if I think they just didn't try their hardest during the family softball competition? Are they abusing me?

His wife repeatedly requested a divorce and he basically forced her to remain in the loveless marriage. Your strawmen really aren't relevant.

Being miserable and emotionally distant is something the other people in the family are aware of...