Being close to your family is awesome. Being so close to your family that you won't make any decision without their approval is another. When Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson split, it was rumored that a influencing factor was the longstanding over-involvement of Jessica's father Joe in both her career and their personal life, which, as an embarrassed "Newlyweds" viewer like myself knows, overlapped in many lucrative ways.
The lesson here is not that Mom and Dad's opinion doesn't matter once you tie the knot or that lines in the sand need to be drawn between parents and spouses; no, it's that both members of the couple need to be aware and accepting of the role family plays in their S.O.'s life. Because family, as much as we may love them (or not love them), causes stress and it's how the couple weathers that stress that ultimately determines their fate. Nick supposedly couldn't handle Papa Joe's influence on Jessica and Jessica couldn't or wouldn't put Joe in his place in an effort to save her marriage; it's irrelevant whether anyone was right or wrong, only that they were incapable of overcoming it.
