Dear Pastor,

I am an 18-year-old girl who is very much in love with a 19-year-old guy. We are both attending the same institution and have known each other for six years, but we have only been in a relationship for a year. We were friends before best friends as a matter of fact. We have both decided that shortly after graduation, we will get married, but there is just one big problem. My parents do not approve of him because of the family he is from.

According to my parents, his mother and his grandfather (his mother's father) were in a sexual relationship which produced a child, and that same child had a sexual relationship with her brother and they, too, had a child. My parents' fear is that this guy that I am in love with will do the same to my child if we were to get married. Part of me thinks that they are wrong and that he is nothing of the sort, yet there is another part that is asking what if they are right and I would be making the biggest mistake of my life?

I really do not know what to do. I really love him and he loves me, too. I can see it in the things that he does and says and I feel as if I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. I have thought about ending the relationship and I have even tried to do so, but the pain was too much. I could not do it.

Pastor, please help me make the right decision.

P.S

Dear P.S.,

Perhaps this might be painful to for you to hear from me, but I must tell you that I am supporting your parents. I would not encourage you to marry this man. Therefore, I would urge you to seriously consider ending the relationship with him. With such a dysfunctional family, you can't be sure whether or not this man would follow in the footsteps of his incestuous relatives. It is better to be safe than sorry.

You are still very young and you have many years ahead of you. You are likely to find another man, so don't get tied up with this man. You don't have to give him the reason why you are ending the relationship.

Pastor