Dear Annie: I am a 56-year-old stepfather to two wonderful young women, ages 20 and 17. My wife of five years did a wonderful job raising the girls after their father died. Our relationship is open and trusting. I never call them stepdaughters. I view them as my own. And they tell me they love me.

After graduating from college, I moved back in with my mother and grandmother while I try to find work. Since no one in my family has ever really seen me live as an adult, I’m still treated as a child, and that means I have my mom, grandmother, aunts, older cousins and even a younger niece with a superiority complex constantly telling me everything I’ve done wrong in my life, what I should be doing and basically mothering me to death. For the past few weeks, they’ve been implying (or, in one instance, telling me flat out) that I should stop looking for work and just take care of my grandmother (keep in mind that none of them volunteer to help.) This wasn’t as much of a problem when my job hunt seemed completely futile. However, I’m inching closer and closer to a potential job offer in a town two hours away. The dilemma has left me on the verge of a breakdown: Do I stay, and let the resentment build that I’m being denied the chance to live my life on my terms, or do I keep searching and gain the scorn of my entire family for becoming “the bad grandchild?”