Thank you, Olive, for letting me know I was helpful. In your post above, you show a great deal of wisdom. I have a strong feeling that you will make sound decisions for yourself without any help from the peanut gallery.

There are families where the members stay way over-involved with each other in ways that are inappropriate. Though I'm a big believer in staying connected with one's relatives, I do believe that a person's main relationship should be with their spouse/sig. other/domestic partner. Some families don't want that. They want their members to be primarily loyal to the family of origin and, only secondarily, attached to their partner. That, IMO, is very unhealthy. These kind of families get upset that a member is putting someone before them. Whoever you end up with, that man should be first in terms of your loyalty. I think that's the direction your mom and sis see you headed in, and it doesn't sit well with them. Your guy has even remarked that you need to be more independent of your family. They probably sense that he is encouraging you to be more emancipated, and I'll bet that's really what they don't like about him.

I knew a woman who ended a relationship with a man who was considered unsuitable by her mother. The mother had reasonable grounds, as the man drank a lot. So the woman broke up with this man she was very in love with mainly to please her mother. On the rebound, she met and married another man whom her mother approved of. (He had no bad habits.) The problem was that she felt little passion for the guy she married and missed the guy she left. Pretty soon, she developed a very serious drinking problem herself. If her mother had just left her alone, she probably would have married the first guy. Maybe that marriage wouldn't have worked out. But she might have grown from the experience. People have to be free to make their own decisions and - yes - even make their own mistakes. Ironically, the guy she originally wanted to marry ended up dying very young of alcohol related problems. So, had she married him, she would have been free of him fairly soon anyway. Her mother saved her from marriage to a drunk, but she became a drunk herself. Ironic. The old Law of Unintended Consequences.

Don't let anyone choose your destiny, but you. I've known a number of individuals who overly acquiesced to parental wishes - particularly in regards to romance and how they related to their partners. In the long run, they had bad outcomes. It starts off seeming like a safe way to live, but it leads to profound unhappiness and a stifled spirit.

Your conclusion, stated above, is an excellent one, IMO.