Help! I Bring My Girlfriends Family Free Food. But They Have the Gall to Make Complaints.

Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. The easy answer here is that you could essentially “use” your spouse’s discomfort with this relationship as a simple way to shut him down. If you’re dead set on maintaining a working relationship with him, tell this man something along the lines of, “Hey, so we’ve known each other long enough that my spouse would really like to meet you.” Observe his reaction to this; my guess is that he’s nursing some kind of fantasy where you guys run away together. —Deep Waters Dear Deep Waters, Your sister is working through some geological-level issues here with her sense of self-worth, and it sounds like she’s forming a very ugly relationship with her stepdaughter as a result. On this front, you need to give your sister some tough love: something along the lines of “I love you, I support you in this difficult time, but you are actively turning into an evil stepmother if you don’t get a handle on your anger toward your stepdaughter.” She is putting that relationship—and I imagine, her marriage—at risk if she can’t find a constructive outlet for working out her feelings about this immediately.