Hello friends, I am new here but I loved the look of the community and I think the articles posted are very good and insighful. I would like opinions from you, specially since we are strangers, on this delicate topic. Let’s get started, I’m sorry if this gets a little long.

When I was 18 (over 7 years ago) I began dating a guy, an artist with whom I had a lot of fun with, but our relationship was full of tempest, since we were not on the same page about nearly anything: ambitions, life goals, marriage, politics, social injustice, drugs, religion, family, sex, money, you name it. My family hated him, and whenever they talked about it I knew deep inside that many things were wrong, even if I defended him. It was all doomed to fail but I still dated him for nearly 5 years. Fortunately this episode is over, I’m totally healed, but I’m telling you this background because I think I learnt from it and it made me sensible to asking the right questions.

A year later, I began dating my now fiance. Due to all the time, all the things that had happened to me with my ex, I was really not for losing time and I cared about the important questions. I think we asked each other all of these ideological-related and future-oriented questions on the second week of dating, and realized we were on the same page, with a few, complementary rather than destructive differences. Not only this, but we also had a lot of tastes in common, so conversation was always flowing, non stop, and I would always be impatient to see him the next week, even if we texted all day long, all week.  We told each other secrets that we had told nobody before and emotional intimacy grew amazingly fast. Needless to say, I fell in love. We saw each other for three months before entering a relationship, which lasted a year before engagement: a year in which I saw him get a promotion, a new car, travel for work, I met and fell in love with his family, I saw him open about his feelings regarding his differences with his work mates.  He saw me quit my abusive job and decide to pursue my dream profession in spite of the finances, he supported me during my uncle’s death, he met my family, and saw me try new fronteers in my post universtiy studies. We have nurtured each others’ minds by, and we are smarter an more mature than before we dated. Every month, for a year, we would celebrate little things.

I’ll tell you an important cultural parentheses: I am Mexican, and you might have already heard, that family matters a lot in our culture (to an unhealthy point even, in my opinion). A lot of people are still very traditional and grooms ask the family for approval before asking the girl if she would like to be married. When my family met my man, back when we were dating, they loved him. They told me we were perfect together and that they hoped this relationship would evolve into a marriage later on. My mother would joke telling me I should start looking for a wedding dress. My family is a very jealous one, I have three sisters and none of us had ever brought home a man that my parents liked.

Things radically changed after engagement. My man did not do the traditional protocol, he decided to propose me with a beautiful sapphire ring he had designed on his own for over 6 months… but he did not tell my parents first. When we went home to tell my parents, they were dead silent. After this, there’s been a huge wave of negative feedback from my mother:

That it’s too soon to get married. That he’s too short and ugly for me. (we are the same height). That I don’t really know him yet. That he did engagement all wrong. That his family is too poor. (I’m upper middle class, his family is solid middle class… but his income is above his father’s). That she was going to need “professional help” because she could not let her daughter leave like that…hell, even told me our horoscopes don’t match.

She managed it now, she managed to get to me, and I’m starting to have doubts about my engagement and future wedding. I feel unexcited. I hate parties, and I absolutely hate hosting and planning them… so it was no news to me that the party was not going to excite me, but I was once excited by our future together, and now I’m starting to doubt it. His height, something that did not matter to me before, now bugs me to the point I stopped wearing heels. His family, which I loved, now seems like too humble to me. I start to feel like there might be something better for me out there, and I feel horrible, because I was always the girl who believed in love in spite of looks, in spite of money. This goes totally against what I’ve believed all my life and I can’t believe it got under my skin.

During university, I used to have a therapist and she told me my relationship to my mother was a bit unhealthy, because she’s manipulative and I like pleasing her a bit too much, to the point I confuse her desires with my own. I remember having a very similar issue when choosing my major. I’m wondering now if it’s me doubting my love, or if it’s my stupid mind being manipulated by my mother, like it’s always been.

This guy is truly the nicest, most patient man I’ve met, rivaled only by my own father. He understands me to a level I thought impossible, and he has absolutely never let me down. He’s been there every time I needed, from being a crying shoulder to literally getting me food when I can’t get anything at work. Every time we’ve had a disagreement (althought they’ve been all small), he’s always open to listen and improve, and he really does it. He was financially supportive when I quit my job. He always tries to make me laugh and smile, and his life goals involve me in every beautiful way. He’s not perfect: he cries, he breaks sometimes. He doesn’t always eat healthy and he wakes up very late on Saturdays. He has a weird laugh sometimes, he’s not the definition of masculine.

But even so, I really wonder if I will ever find this type of connection again if we break up. To be honest I feel like his imperfections are not a big deal, but his good things are amazing. I know he’s in love with me and everyone around can tell it too. He doesn’t even turn his head at the sight of a pretty girl when we’re out. I feel like I’m being unfair to him by being this unexcited, and I feel like I should break up, but I can’t help feeling I might be losing a treasure and making possibly the worst mistake in my life. HELP.