You can't help or change anyone who doesn't first want to help themselves.

"Competition is the law of the jungle, but cooperation is the law of civilization." Peter Kropotkin

Do your family traditions have you on a path through life where you're just using people for your own personal gains and benefit rather than traditions that encompass the Golden Rule? If you're not on the path in life of treating everyone how you yourself would like to be treated and loving your neighbor as you love yourself you're not just living your life by wrong traditions, you're living a life of being and doing evil all around.

Civilizations always collapse due to moral decay and if you're living your traditions by the former and not the later, then people like you are the reason why societies collapse, and humanity would be more peaceful and prosperous without carrying the curse of family traditions such as yours.

It's hard to outrun our socialization, god know I tried, and most people have the self awareness of an ape, they feel emotion and recognize themselves in a mirror, that's why most people are so easily led around by their nose. Our economy depends on it.

Sounds like things just weren’t meant to be. I’m curious if you’ve considered what the experience would have been like if his beliefs and family traditions aligned with yours. Equally as perpetual of your family traditions with limited differing opinions… Maybe the relationships between romance, intimacy and bias would be nullified?

Or do you strive for someone who challenges your ways of thinking and being in the world?

Many of your opinions of him and his family sound like a refining of your own desires in a partner. Consider your own learning the biased win in the grand scheme of it all.

I’m not going to explain the details of the particular situation because that would violate privacy. Let’s just say that the person doing the using of others for their personal gain was NOT me. My family had very little contact with his family and when they did they certainly didn’t try to get him to fall into line in any way. My family is a lot more accepting and welcoming than that and wouldn’t dream of trying to convince someone else to behave how they wanted them to. It’s just not our style at all. His group however, strongly believes that they know better than anyone and if you disagree with anything they say, you’re obviously misguided and they have to convince you of how wrong you are. The narcissistic tendencies are very prevalent in all of them that I met, and it was a constant struggle to just be myself without having to justify myself all the time. I’m not talking about any conspiracy theories or anything (that would be more their domain actually), because I’m not at all like that. I’m just a person who is willing to consider other people’s ideas (assuming they’re not evil or harmful to others) and willing to accept that we’re not all the same.

I didn't ask or need explanations of your situation with another person. I don't know and I'm not interested in which of you have the right traditions or which of you have the wrong traditions. This is why I said "IF". You know what you did or didn't do and so do they. Your projecting and posturing on an anonymous thread isn't going to change the past with the subject of your obsession.