I would love your objective opinion on a problem I’m having with my mother-in-law. She is a 70-year-old chain-smoking alcoholic with various health problems. According to her, she is always on the brink of death. She recently retired from her part-time job, and seems to have started full-time drinking as a replacement. Here is where my problem comes in.

She is always nagging at my husband about how lonely she is and how we never spend any time with her, even though “she probably won’t be around much longer.” She claims that is why she drinks. I say that she is lonely because she drinks since she is a mean drunk and very unpleasant to be around. She loves to lay the guilt trip on him about how she knows we are always too busy with our friends to spend any time with her. My husband, who is a nice guy, is deeply affected by her guilt trips and therefore puts up with way too much of her crap. The truth is that we don’t want to spend our precious free time with someone who is so miserable to be around. I know that deep down she loves me and is glad I am married to her son, but when she is drinking she acts like a jealous ex-girlfriend, making comments about how “fat” I was while I was pregnant, et cetera. In short, she is really rude.

Also, we have a one-year-old daughter, who is her only grandchild and her “reason for living.” Well, last time she invited us over for dinner, she was already drunk when we got there, and announced that she was too drunk to play with the baby (not to mention she is chain-smoking the whole time). So there was a wasted Saturday with no credit for spending time with her.

Her latest stunt involves my father-in-law, who she has been divorced from for 25 years. He has been ill and has had several heart operations in the recent past. She likes to call us and leave sobbing messages on our answering machine about how he is dying and she is going to fly down to his house and take care of him. We have been through this many times before. Last night she sank to a new low by leaving a message saying that he had died and begging my husband to answer the phone (he doesn’t answer when he knows she has been drinking). Naturally this scared both of us, and after a call to my father-in-law verifying that he was in fact still alive, I told my husband that she had gone too far. She basically ruined our Sunday evening. One of these days if something really did happen, we would probably ignore it, thinking she was crying wolf again.

I know that alcoholism is a disease, but I believe she is still accountable for her actions even if she doesn’t remember them, because we sure do. I have dealt with her by ignoring her drunken stunts in the past, but it is getting to the point where we can’t even answer the phone. Not to mention I really don’t want my baby subjected to a wasted grandma. When she is sober, she can be nice, although she has a pretty irritating personality. She is a very negative person and doesn’t have anything good to say about anyone or anything. I put a lot of effort into keeping my mouth shut when she is around, just because I love my husband and I know her behavior is very embarrassing for him. Basically I wish she would just go away, but since that is not going to happen, I would love to hear any advice or suggestions you may have on how to deal. Thanks so much!

Screening All Calls

I’m friends with a medium-sized group of people who all pretty much hang out every time we can. We all get along marvelously as a group and fabulously one-on-one. I like every single one of them for different reasons, and really love hanging out with them as often as we can manage it. Here’s the problem.

One of us is dating the most annoying she-beast from hell who all of us, independently of one another, have come to dislike. Some of us hate her, some of us find her mildly irritating, but all of us don’t really like it when she’s around. Even the one who’s dating her seems to find her annoying most of the time, but won’t (or can’t or doesn’t) break up with her for whatever reason. At first we all just sort of dealt with her, because we knew we had to and because she seemed harmless enough. Several months have passed since then, and this girl has managed to piss us all off individually at different points by saying or doing something directly to us that we found offensive. And we’re REALLY not the kind of people who offend easily. He spends 40 hours a week working with her and basically lives with her, even though nothing’s official and he keeps insisting they’re not that serious. I think he doesn’t break up with her because it’s not like he can tell her to shove off and then never see her again; she sits right next to him all day every day at work.

We all adore him (even if he’s clearly got issues) and love hanging out with him, so cutting him off or not calling him if we’re getting together would be out of the question. At the same time, I don’t know how much longer I, or any of us, can keep going the way we’ve been going. As it stands now, we all get together; she shows up and says or does something really stupid or mean, and either gets walked away from, made fun of, or yelled at, depending on what she’s done and who she’s talking to. This causes her to storm off until he goes to make nice, and causes him to have to either apologize on her behalf or get pissed at us for being mean to her. Normally I’d wash my hands of the whole thing and just avoid her like the plague, but to avoid her means to also avoid him, and in some cases to avoid all my friends altogether. I don’t want to do that, and I’m tired of her constantly ruining our good time. What should I do?

Tiptoeing around the elephant in the living room