I am going through the hardest time in my life at the moment. To cut a long story short, my Mum and Sister do not approve of my boyfriend. My sister has decided to cut all ties with me and my mum will not answer any of my attempts to contact her.
I am 28 years old and I love my boyfriend dearly and I am faced with the decision of either choosing him and losing my family or going with my family and resenting them forever for making me choose.
It has been going on for at least 3 long years now and there are a lot of ins and outs to the story but here is the basic outline..
I come from a small family, me my sister and mum and dad. My parents have a rocky relationship but stayed together for the sake of my sister and I. Growing up I never asked for much attention from my parents. A lot of the time their energy was focused on my sister who has a lot of issues with depression/ anxiety/ bad boyfriends. I was happy to just plod along with life and my mum made up for this by taking me out every weekend to buy me something new. In a lot of ways I did feel like I was in my sisters shadow but I always felt like this was made up for as my parents would always support me with my hobbies. I was always seen as the happy go lucky one, who used to love to get dressed up and go out on the town. My mum wanted me to be on the stage and sing so I pursued that for her too. I also spend most my weekends with my sister and her boyfriend or if not I was with my mum out shopping.
Towards the age of 25-26 my priorities started to change. I wanted so much to find a guy who would treat me how I deserved. I�d always seen how my sisters boyfriends had been welcomed into our home and I couldn�t wait for the day that someone would treat me how he now partner treated her. Then my boyfriend came along. He was very much the gentleman I had always looked for. He was kind and generous, has a great job and family and everything felt like it was starting to fit into place for me. When he and I started dating we saw eachother one or two days a week my sister started to make my life a misery. She would ask me why I was seeing him so much and challenged why I wanted to see him so much. In my opinion two nights a week didn�t seem an awful lot. Things got worse and one day I went round to my boyfriend�s house in floods of tears and said I don�t know why she is being like this. He decided to go round to discuss this with her, I was in the room at the same time and at the end of the conversation we all came to a conclusion that no one has a problem with one another and we all sat down to a meal together. As the years have gone by my sister has developed this into a story where my boyfriend went round to verbally attack her- not the case.
One day I saw messages on my mums phone to my sister saying she didn�t like him either. I confronted her on this and she said �it�s a gut feeling�. I said I needed something more than that. She said � I don�t know, I don�t like his car and he�s too cocky�.. �there is no atmosphere when he�s round and he�s too shy� all completely contradictory. I decided that if they wanted me to break up with him I would need to hear something a little more solid. Such as he takes drugs, hes cheated on me, hes a murder.. or something of the sort.
It all started off as a 'gut feeling' and trivial things like they didn't like his car and he is too confident, hes too cocky and - I didn�t agree with them on this.
Living at home became like a prison. If I decided to go out with him I would get the silent treatment from my family for days after. I would receive messages to ruin my time with him and my mum would text my friends to see if I was with him or them. I felt suffocated.
Then one day I fell ill. I found out I contracted herpes. I felt my world come crashing down. I asked my boyfriend what had he done to me. After all of the fighting id done for us I thought he had cheated on me. He was confused as he has previously been tested and never had any symptoms. After my results came back I learnt that I contracted the oral virus strain commonly associated to cold sores � which my boyfriend has never had. We decided to go to the doctors and they explained that the hsv1 virus can lay dormant in your system for days, months or even years and can be triggered by stress. The doctor clarified that it doesn�t mean my boyfriend cheated, a large percentage of the population have the virus but just don�t have any symptoms. This set my mind at ease. If it was my boyfriend who passed it to me I was able to forgive him as it was an unintentional accident and how he dealt with it that mattered to me. Unfortunately when my mum found out she said if she ever saw him again she would stab him. It was clearly the reason she needed to hate him even more and she said I am no longer her �perfect little girl�. She made me feel imperfect and stupid. She said I had no respect for myself and threatened that if my sister ever found out she would want to kill him. This was when it turned from a bad situation into an absolute hell.
I felt trapped and confused. I questioned my own opinions and ability to be forgive.
Then one day I found out my mum and dad had arranged to go and meet my boyfriend�s parents at their home. From what I gather they went round to convince them that their son is a bad person. I wondered why everything was being taken out of my control at the age of 27. To this day, his parents have remained supportive and have never said a bad word about my parents even though they had to endure an afternoon of them ripping into their son�s character and person.
My boyfriend has never physically or mentally abused me, he doesn't take or deal drugs, he hasn't committed any crime. He has a good job and he looks after me and makes me happy. This doesn't seem to be enough for my family, they think its just as important how they feel about him. I don�t know what to do.
I have moved out of the family home now and in with my boyfriend. He has done everything he can to make me comfortable and happy and has promised that if it�s the last thing he does he will prove to me that hes worth all the grief they have given me.
I just wanted someone else�s perspective on things�am I right to trust my own judgment? Or should I be adhering to what my family say? Are family always right. Im so confused.