My Boyfriend Is Constantly Defending a Despicable Man. I Can’t Take It Anymore.

Care and Feeding is Slate’s parenting advice column. Have a question for Care and Feeding? Submit it here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My partner and I have been together for 14 years, and we love each other very much. My partner’s best friend, who is basically his brother (they’ve been best friends since high school), married my middle sister and they had a child together. BUT over the course of Best Friend’s relationship with my sister—and especially after they had a child—and ESPECIALLY after COVID—Best Friend made it clear that he was a sociopath with no real interest in being part of a family. (For example, he stole a couple thousand dollars from Sister and was emotionally and financially abusive to both her and Nibling.) He’s also taken advantage of my family in many ways, such as asking my mom for money and running a scam in which Partner unwittingly paid him cash for board games that Best Friend charged on Sister’s card (once Partner realized that, he put an end to it).

Sister divorced Best Friend under very difficult circumstances, and Best Friend has not paid a penny of child support nor has he kept up his side of the visitation agreement. I have cut off all contact with Best Friend—he hurt my sister and my nibling!—but Partner and Best Friend still have a relationship. I’m trying not to judge Partner for wanting to keep Best Friend in his life. Their relationship goes back to long before Partner and I met. BUT Partner sometimes sticks up for Best Friend and claims I don’t know the whole story. I am aware that Best Friend grew up in an unstable and abusive household, but, to me, the relevant concern here is that HE HURT AND CONTINUES TO HURT MY SISTER AND NIBLING. (Sister is still terrified of the demands he may make upon her—and yes, she does have a lawyer.) Partner came home tonight after a game day with Best Friend and proceeded to tell me that Sister and Nibling are lying about some of the continued abuse they are suffering during his contact with them. Partner actually believes Best Friend over Sister and Nibling! I love Partner more than anything, but I feel like he has a terrible blind spot about Best Friend. Both my mom (who is a doctor of psychology) and my therapist agree that Best Friend is a psychopath who has been basically abusing and taking advantage of everyone (and both my family and Partner’s family have bent over backward to make him feel welcome). Partner and I had a screaming fight tonight wherein I insisted that Sister and Nibling DO NOT LIE and Best Friend is trying to ruin their lives.

This is just so awful. It started out like a fairy tale (two brothers marry two sisters—well, even if Partner and I aren’t married, even if Partner and Best Friend aren’t brothers for real) and turned into a nightmare. I want to respect Partner’s right to continue his long-term friendship with Best Friend, but I can’t stand hearing him take the side of an abuser. And, for the record, Partner is incredibly wonderful and empathetic in general—it’s just this one (big) thing. What should I do?

—Snow-White and Rose-Red in Real Life, but With an Unhappy Ending

Dear Snow-White,

I assume that in this modern fairy tale retelling, you’re the gentler, quieter sister who gets with the prince (who had once been a bear), while the more adventurous Rose-Red marries the prince’s brother. (You did make me wonder if the brother in the original tale who has never been a bear turns out to be a bad guy—a “psychopath,” as per Snow-White’s therapist and both sisters’ psychologist-mom—but that’s neither here nor there, although that would be a modern fairy tale worth reading.)

Here’s what I know: Your partner and his longtime closest friend are like brothers, bound for life. Your partner is not going to turn on him. You note that, to you, the (only) relevant concern is that Best Friend hurt your sister and her child. Of course that’s your only concern—why wouldn’t it be? But it is not and cannot be the only thing that matters to your partner about this person he has known and loved for many years. You and your beloved need to agree to never speak of Best Friend, whether as the man who did your sister wrong or as a guy who’s been misunderstood. If you cannot erect a firewall around this explosive subject, and create a DMZ in which any complaints about or justification of the actions of your former brother-in-law are forbidden, then your fairy-tale ending appears doomed.

Sure, you could instead ask him to choose between you and his loyalty to his friend/brother, but I suspect you won’t be happy if you do—either because he doesn’t choose you, or because he does, then resents you for it and it sours your relationship. Or you could make a choice of your own, between your sister and your partner, whom you love very much but who refuses to “just” take your side—and presumably you’ll choose your sister, which will break your heart (and thus won’t do your relationship with her any favors over the long term). It wouldn’t hurt, would it, to try my way—a cone of silence—first?

Want Advice on Parenting, Kids, or Family Life?

Submit your questions to Care and Feeding here. It’s anonymous! (Questions may be edited for publication.)

Dear Care and Feeding,

My spouse tends to treat run-of-the-mill setbacks as insurmountable problems, and I don’t know how to deal with it. Example: Last week we learned that, due to some shifting dates in our kids’ school schedules, we would not be able to stay at the beach house we traditionally book every Memorial Day weekend, because it was unavailable for the dates we could now go. To me, this wasn’t a big issue. We could book a different beach house for the following weekend, or we could book “our” beach house in August—or, you know, some other alternative. In any case, this isn’t a tragedy, it’s just life. But my spouse spiraled, going everywhere from, “If we were better parents, we’d be homeschooling, so we wouldn’t have to deal with school schedules at all,” to, “There’s no point in going on any kind of vacation,” and was in a funk for days. When they get like this, which is often, laying out the reasons not to be so distressed doesn’t help. Waiting for it to pass doesn’t help, as my spouse just gets progressively more upset because I’m not “taking things seriously.” The only thing that does help is for me to out-wallow and out-catastrophize them so that they can see that I “understand how serious this is.” But most of the time I don’t have the energy to pretend something is serious that is not serious at all. How should I respond to the next spiral?

—It’s Just A Molehill

Dear Molehill,

This is indeed frustrating (and can put a lot of wear and tear on a relationship over the years). I’m wondering if it would help you feel less irritated and impatient if you were able to make sense of what your spouse is really feeling; i.e., what the alteration in vacation plans or other minor setback is standing in for. Because here’s the thing: While this sort of mountain-out-of-molehill-making is not a mental health disorder, it is almost certainly a symptom of one. If your spouse has an untreated anxiety disorder or depression, or is living with some other ongoing mental health issue, consistently “overreacting” to life’s ordinary mini-troubles may be both a relatively safe outlet for their (possibly constant, repressed) distress and a displacement of real feelings. The question isn’t whether your spouse is overreacting, but why they are.

But you are not your spouse’s shrink, of course, and what you’re looking for, I know, is how you should react when they go from zero to 100 about a beach house’s availability. My instinct is that instead of either pointing out that what’s happened is no big deal (on some level, your spouse knows this, even if they can’t access that knowledge at the moment of the “crisis”) or jumping into the catastrophe pit with them, you might respond to each item of “cognitive distortion” (the psychiatric term for this) with calm reassurance. When your spouse leaps to “we’re terrible parents,” can you offer a reminder or two of the ways you are in fact good parents? When your spouse says there’s no point in taking a vacation, can you remind them why the family needs a vacation, how much all of you—including your despairing spouse—are looking forward to getting away somewhere together, and how much fun you’ll have? This will require patience on your part, but it does not require you to pretend to feel something you don’t—and, although you’ve found that your partner welcomes your falsified agreement that yes, indeed, the particular molehill that has triggered them is an insurmountably tall mountain, my feeling is that, in the long run, this approach will only reinforce their dysfunctional strategy.

And at some quiet moment, in one of the periods between these panic-spirals, when days have passed and everything is going smoothly, initiate a gentle conversation. If you can help your spouse to see that they could use some help getting ahold of this—and, more important, understanding the underlying cause of it—it will be a boon to them. And to all of you.

Need Advice? Submit to Slate’s New Advice Column.

Are you struggling with your sense of worth or self image? Are you—or a loved one—dealing with the fall-out of addiction, or recovery? Have you even realized that YOU are the asshole? Slate is starting a new advice column, called Ask A.J., and we want your questions. Submit them here.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I have two elementary school-aged kids, and I’ve tried to be thoughtful about providing them with what amounts to age-appropriate sex education: the actual names for body parts, a theoretical knowledge about where babies come from, and modeling consent for hugs and other physical touch with our extended family and with friends and classmates. If they ask a question, I answer in an age-appropriate way, even though it often feels awkward. My husband is happy to follow my lead about physical consent, but he doesn’t have conversations about this stuff with our kids—he says it’s “too uncomfortable.”

We also have 50/50 custody of his 12-year-old son, “Andy,” from a previous relationship. It’s clear that as much as Andy pretends to be above it, this 12-year-old is hearing/learning about for the first time a lot of what I’m teaching the little kids (at 12, that’s not great). I do everyday parenting with Andy but none of the big-moments stuff because his mom is sensitive about that, and that’s fine with me. I love Andy and have been in his life for quite a while, but he’s very private (even for a tween). His mom explicitly asked my husband to give Andy “the puberty talk” and, once he’s in high school, a sex talk, because she’s uncomfortable doing it. But so is my husband, who simply refuses to do it. What’s my responsibility here? Should I be pushing my husband to parent his son better? I’m honestly angry about his behavior here: Parenting is uncomfortable sometimes! It feels like both Andy’s parents are opting out of the hard stuff, but I that’s not for me to say: I try to stay out of their co-parenting relationship. But I know our school system doesn’t really offer a practical or science-based health/sex ed curriculum, so if Andy doesn’t learn it at home, he is only going to get his education from classmates and the internet down the line.

—Puberty Conundrum

Dear Puberty,

You’re right to stay out of the co-parenting relationship, but Andy is your stepson, and your instinct that you have a responsibility to him too is spot on. If neither of his parents will step up and be parents—in matters of sex education or anything else down the line—then you’ll need to. Tell your husband that if he continues to insist that he doesn’t feel comfortable talking to his son about puberty and sex, and will not—or feels he cannot—confess that to Andy’s mother, then you’re going to have to be the point person, not only for The Talk but for all ongoing talk (because conversations about puberty and sex are not one-and-done parenting jobs). Both his mom and dad have already done him a disservice by modeling that “this stuff” is uncomfortable to talk about—something to be ashamed of. Now’s the time to help him unlearn that lesson.

You might start by leaving a good book around where he will notice it and find it irresistible (not necessarily handing it to him—unless you can do this without stammering and blushing, which I mention only because you write that answering the younger kids’ questions “often feels awkward”). Then you can ask him if he has any questions, letting him know that he can ask you and talk to you about anything that’s on his mind. If he doesn’t pick up the book bait, you’ll have to take the bull by the horns. “Hey, Andy, I remember 12. It’s not easy, being 12, is it? What with not being a little kid anymore but also not being a teenager yet” would be a good start. But however you feel least uncomfortable about approaching this with him (I hope it will help if you remind yourself that he too is one of your children), the most important thing is making it clear to him that he can trust you, that he can bring questions and worries to you, and that you’re there to support him in any way he needs, always.

If this ruffles his mom’s sensibilities—assuming that Andy mentions to her that his stepmom has taken on one, or any, of the “big moments” of his childhood—well, that’s just too bad. Someone needs to be the grownup, and I’m afraid it looks like you’re the only one in the room.

Catch Up on Care and Feeding

· Missed earlier columns this week? Read them here.
· Discuss this column in the Slate Parenting Facebook group!

Dear Care and Feeding,

My partner and his family are lovely people, but I’m utterly exhausted by my life with them. He and I have dated for four years and lived together full-time for almost two years. He shares his kids 50/50 time with ex, so the three kids (girls, 16 and 18, and a 10-year-old son) live with us half of the time. His mom lives with us too, in a separate unit in the duplex.

I like a clean, well-organized household. I raised my four kids, who are all grown up and living on their own, to be tidy and organized, reasonably self-sufficient, etc. Whereas in this household, it’s chaotic, loud, messy, and wildly disorganized unless I take the reins, so I find that I’m cooking, cleaning, doing never-ending laundry, grocery shopping, driving the kids to school and my partner to work, fixing or arranging for repairs or handling general maintenance, and everything else that ever needs to be done. Besides this, my partner’s son clings to him nonstop. Up until last year, he slept in our bed! (And then, recently, my partner actually asked one night if it would be OK if his son fell asleep in our bed!) We’ve had serious challenges changing his son’s behavior and it is really due to my partner’s permissiveness and lack of resolve.

Over the last 18 months, I’ve tried to change the way things are done, and while there’s been some progress, it’s not been enough to make a real difference. I’ll attempt to leave the mess and walk away, or not cook dinner, but then the kitchen’s a disaster, my partner orders pizza three or four times a week, the laundry hamper is overflowing, and so on and so on. I’ve reached the point where I dread a future in this household. I take responsibility for the situation, as I’ve set myself up by tending to do too much (as both my partner and his mom are forever reminding me). But where do I go from here? And there’s another big issue: I’m not sure my partner really trusts me, as he has major hangups from the breakdown of his marriage. I don’t want to live in a chaotic household, where I have to do everything or nothing gets done, and have a partner who isn’t fully in it with me. What steps can I take, going forward?

—Help! I’m Exhausted

Dear Help,

Steps to take, going forward: out the door. This is clearly not the relationship for you. Among many other things, your conflict with your partner about his son’s “behavior”—which is a display of deep anxiety for which the child needs help, which neither one of you seems to be recognizing—is sufficient reason to cut your losses now. But even if you were on the same page about the child, and were willing and able to move forward together to get him the help he needs, this is not a sustainable situation for you. Eighteen months of effort to change the household’s dynamic strikes me as more than enough: It is not going to change in the ways you need it to.

I assure you that once you’re not there to do everything for them, your partner and his kids will figure out how to stay fed and have clean clothes, get to school and work, and otherwise function as a (messy, chaotic, disorganized—but so what? They’re not the ones who mind that) family. I advise you to find yourself a man whose children, like yours, are grown and gone; who is ready for a new relationship after a divorce or death, and welcomes you into his life with open arms and heart; and who is capable of getting himself to work, using a washing machine, cooking a meal or doing all the cleanup after you have cooked a meal, and so on. You’d be wise to check out how he lives, too—if you have compatible styles of cleanliness and tidiness—before moving in with him.

—Michelle

More Advice From Slate

My mother-in-law and I don’t have a warm and fuzzy relationship, though I promise you that I am very accommodating and pleasant with her. My husband would describe her as a pretty difficult person who doesn’t have much ability to think of the world outside herself. My husband and I have been together for eight years and married for almost five. Despite having four bedrooms, being recently separated, and having only one of her children living at home, my mother-in-law does not have a guest bedroom.