Don't know where to start... I'm here because I didn't know who I could talk to. I never wrote on a message board, but this situation is so different from what I'm used to I feel like it takes uninterested advices from strangers to make me think better.

I'm 24 and I come from a social environment where education and money are important matters and least but not last, honestly I know I look very pretty. This for me always meant I could walk into a room and be noticed by many, and it is a reason of pride especially for my mother. This always made her think I am the best thing she has done and always tried to push me to be ambitious, in marriage also.
I'm latina based in the south of France right now, living with both my parents. They run a holiday house rentals business, I have an interior design degree and I use to help them.

This summer I had a one month holiday in the U.S. east coast with my cousin, she is married to a guy whose family owns a cottage there. So I met this blue eyed salty seaman, I immediately liked him, despite the age difference between us (he's 52) and his initial coarseness. Probably he liked me too from the beginning. He's a charterboat captain among his activities (he is sailor, fisherman, runs a small oil/alcoholic business also, he is the boss of himself) so for me it was not hard to get the chance to know him better, I found an excuse to get on his boat, we chatted and surprisingly he asked me out. He is so different from anyone I know. He's crusty, genuinely macho, with a rugged exterior but a wealth of wisecracks, he may have this intimidating surly demeanor, this "my way or no way" truculence at the beginning, but I knew him better and felt how intense, amazing and brave he is. He's a guy who has seen some **** (sorry for this word), he is a man definitely used to work and hardship, he is battered but not beaten, he's just tough as hell. We have been going out for several weeks until I had to come back home, I had the best time with him, we've been sailing, he showed me a part of him none could imagine (buying flowers, taking me out to dinner, and at the end of my journey he told me that I could move to his place and take care of each other), I cooked for him, he took me out to sea teaching me to fish, we started acting like a couple.
He's a loner and this affair astonished many people living there. I told him I'd have planned my next stay next month and I begun trying to figure out how I could do to move and be with him.

I am having a hard time. I broke up with my ex last year, after I discovered he was much more interested in his money (and appearance) than he was in me. My previous ex cheated on me and after I dumped him he begged me to forgive him. My exes were all such jerks. The type of guys my family liked, socially respectable with good carreers, but they were not real men to me. Sounds like it is the first time I met one. Probably the european community does not offer much in this sense. The problem is that I love my family, I am afraid they will be mad at me when I will tell them what's happening, I won't have their support nor I will have a job easily (for two reasons, first I am not a U.S. citizen, second he is old fashioned and thinks I should be home, he as a man wants to provide). I think I'm going to feel extremely lonely and will miss my family and friends to death if I choose to move, by the way.

The only person I dared to share what I lived with has been my cousin for I was on vacation with her so she even met him, and unfortunately her reaction was "You nuts to believe it could go beyond a summer affair with Captain Achab". She thinks I should try to forget what happened, to put my feelings aside, that this is passion, not love, that I should use brains and that this should remain a beautiful adventure I can tell to my kids when I will have them. She says I'm going to destroy my life if I move there in his "shanty" in a foreign country and that in her opinion he will turn out to be a man no woman would want.

If any of you have some tips or ideas please share. I started think about the possibility something is wrong with me and I need help. Thank you!