Being the hopeless romantic that I am, I like to believe that love can overcome all obstacles.
I was in a long distance relationship for years, when I first went away to university, and we were very much in love. Everybody said "you can't make it work" "you are both from different worlds" "the distance splits up 99% of couples". They wanted us to give up before we even tried, they wanted us to split up the day I went to uni.
Here's the thing: we still split up, but it was two years later, for totally different reasons than the distance. We remain good friends, and when people say "I told you so" we say that we had to TRY. At least we tried, and weren't defeatist from the start. If we hadn't tried, those two years we had together, being happy and enjoying each other's company wouldn't have existed. We are both glad we had those years, and even though things ended anyway, we wouldnt change a thing.
Now, I know there are times when love is impractical, when it is going to hurt or offend other people, but you have to use your own judgement on this. Are you, at the end of the day, going to sit back and say to yourself "yes, it was worth it" even if you only got a little time together, because spending just a little time with the person that you loved, was and is, the most imprortant thing in this life?
There was someone incredibly special in my life I didn't ever get together with because of loyalty and fear of hurting others. I stick to my belief that although in retrospect it's easy to say "i should have done this", and got together with him...at the time, when I was in that cirumstance, I knew that love was LESS important that saving the hurt of others - it was more important that I be without my love, and others stayed unhurt. Each situation is unique, we weigh up in our heads what we think is right, and we can take a long time to come to that descision, but without being there, at that exact time, no one else can ever tell us wether love is worth it or not.
I believe that the purpose of life is love, which is incredibly corny and cheesy, but there are more types of love than one. If you are going to hurt your family by pursuing romantic love, you might want to decide what to prioritise, and if you are going to hurt your romantic love by obeying your friends, again, your loyalty is going to be torn. No one type of love can be clearly set above the others. For example, I am anti-arranged marriage, for ME, but for other people that is the right choice.
Love cannot be taken lightly, in any of it's forms, and sometimes someone is going to get hurt whatever you do.