✈️ My parents keep bringing up my NRI cousin every time we talk about my career

It can be really frustrating when every conversation about my career turns into a comparison with my NRI cousin. I understand my parents want the best for me, and they probably see his career as an example of success. But everyone's circumstances, opportunities, and timelines are different. Constant comparisons only add pressure instead of motivation. I wish they would focus more on my own progress instead.

Choosing to stay closer to your grandparents while they are still around is honestly a completely valid reason on its own, regardless of how it compares to your cousin's path abroad. My own parents took years to stop bringing up a similar comparison, and it only really faded once they saw how settled and genuinely happy I actually was here.

In my experience it does not fully stop on its own, it just gets brought up less frequently as time passes and your own life visibly settles into something they consider stable by their standards. What helped a little was redirecting the conversation myself toward specific things I was actually working on, rather than waiting for the comparison to fade away.

My cousin moved to the US for his masters about six years ago, settled into a decent tech job there, and somehow every single conversation with my parents about my own career eventually finds its way back to some version of look how well he is doing there, have you thought about applying abroad too, even when the actual topic we started talking about had nothing directly to do with moving anywhere at all. I have a stable job here in Hyderabad, genuinely like the work most days, and have no strong pull toward moving abroad myself for reasons that go beyond just career growth, closer to my grandparents while they are still around, comfortable with my current social circle built up over several years, generally content with the actual day to day of my life here even without the specific milestones my cousin has hit on his own path. My parents are not being intentionally hurtful about it, I think it comes from a place of genuine pride in my cousin combined with some worry about whether I am doing as well as I could be by comparison, but the repeated comparison still lands the same way regardless of the intention behind it, making me second guess decisions I was previously fairly confident about before the comparison got brought up again. Tried explaining once that I am genuinely happy with my current path and do not need to match his specific trajectory to feel like I am doing fine, and got a response along the lines of we just want the best for you, which does not really engage with what I was actually trying to say, more just restates their underlying worry in slightly different words. Not sure if this eventually fades once enough time passes and my own life visibly settles into something they consider stable by their own standards, or if this is just going to be a recurring comparison brought up indefinitely regardless of anything I actually do or achieve here locally. Has anyone dealt with a similar ongoing comparison to a specific relative abroad, and did it ever actually stop once your own path became clearer, or does it just eventually fade into the background on its own over time regardless?

The 'we just want the best for you' response landing without actually engaging with what you said is such a familiar pattern, my own mother says almost the exact same phrase whenever I try explaining I am content with my current path. It rarely stops the comparison itself, but naming it out loud at least helps me feel less unheard in the moment.