Dear IpkRO9:

I took the time to read through this thread. Here is my input:

Your boyfriend is 29, a software engineer. You completed your master degree and plan on earning a PhD. The two of you are intelligent and educated. And you live in India, where parents’/ family’s approval of marriage is of outmost importance.

As it stands now, the following items are irrelevant to your future: your intelligence, your education (master’s, future PhD), your boyfriend’s intelligence, his education and job (software engineer), your life experience, his life experience.

As it stands now, the following is the only relevant item to your future: your sister. So let’s look at what qualifies her to determine your future and your boyfriend’s future:

– her education: “My sister wasn’t very good at academics”

– her current romantic relationship (she is about 30): “My sister was supposed to be married but things went wrong”.

-her honesty, straightforwardness and courage: you asked your sister’s approval of your current relationship, she “talked to him and asked him to call me directly and ask me out this evening.. Once she got off the call with him, she asked (you) to  deny his date request when he calls”, so she is dishonest and indirect, didn’t have the courage to tell  him No, so she told you to tell him No.

– her being consistent with her word and keeping her word: first she expressed a good opinion about your ex boyfriend and about your current boyfriend, then regarding your current boyfriend, “suddenly she changed her entire opinion about him and told me how bad he was”. Regarding your ex, “When my sister met my ex… She approved at first… she totally went back on her words.. much like this time”, so she approves, then disapproves with no rational reasoning. And she goes back on her words.

– her honesty, directness, trustworthiness and fairness: she called your mother while you were dating the current boyfriend “and painted the worst kind of image of the guy… She poisoned their minds against me in general and then against the guy”, so she is acting not only against her former friend, but against her own sister. “She ruined his reputation amongst his friends, their mutual friends, and his flatmates”, she lies and easily betrays a person’s trust, her friend’s and her sister’s trust, and she doesn’t deal with the person she is angry with directly, instead she goes to third parties to destroy the person’s reputation.

-more about her trustworthiness and loyalty: “My sister was a close friend so naturally she knew his secrets. She bared them all to his friends and flatmates… She had gone through my old phone when I was in college, two three years ago.. She saw my conversations with my ex and shared them with my mother and when she saw even that didn’t bother me, then with my dad as well”.

-her willing to talk through problems, resolve problems and negotiate: “My sister never discusses anything… it’s always she speaking her mind and then walking off… Currently they don’t talk… my sister had blocked both of us on all social media… And there is no communication between me and my sister or him and her…said she does not consider me her sister anymore”.

— Well, is she qualified to determine your future and your boyfriend’s?

Let’s look at what your boyfriend thinks: “he feels this period will help us convince our parents and my sister in particular that we are mature enough to not think emotionally but logically”- problem with his thinking is that he doesn’t understand that a person who is not mature(your sister) is not able to notice or care about the maturity of another (you or him, your boyfriend.

Back to the two of you living in India and needing parents’/ siblings’ approval. Maybe you and your boyfriend, if you … have to have your sister’s approval, maybe you can buy  it. Maybe a certain amount  of money can purchase her approval. For a while at least.

You can’t reasonably expect a dishonest, untrustworthy, irrational person to be persuaded by ..honesty, trust and rationality.

Look at your sister’s lack of qualifications in every part of her life, and you will see that it is most unwise to continue to give her the power to determine your life.

I sure hope that you and your boyfriend put together your intelligence, your education, your life experience and make the best lives for yourselves, individually and in the context of your relationship, instead of placing your… fate in the most unqualified person imaginable to me… it will be difficult for you to find a person more unqualified than your sister, don’t you think?

anita