My Husband Wants to Participate in My Family’s Thanksgiving. But He Doesn’t Want to See One Particular Guest.

Dear Prudence I’ve come up with so many compromises. Advice by Enter your email to receive alerts for this author. Sign in or create an account to better manage your email preferences. Unsubscribe from email alerts Are you sure you want to unsubscribe from email alerts for Shannon Palus? Nov 10, 20266:00 AM Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by innovatedcaptures/iStock/Getty Images Plus and Gratsias Adhi Hermawan/Getty Images Plus. Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Dear Prudence is Slate’s advice column. For this edition, Shannon Palus, Slate’s features editor, will be filling in as Prudie. Submit questions here. (It’s anonymous!) Dear Prudence, I don’t like my sister’s husband, “Blake.” He doesn’t know how to read a room—he makes boorish comments, and he’s annoying at best. But he’s not actively harmful, and I don’t have to see him that often. I know my mom feels the same way, although my dad dotes on him. He’s not going anywhere. My husband is a different story: He hates Blake. Every time we have to spend time around him, my husband gets a stress migraine and/or gets very upset. My solution is to minimize the time we spend with him, and at events like the holidays, cut our visits short. My family does a lot of activities where people drift into separate groups of women and men at the holidays, and I just make sure to pull my husband along with me. But it’s not really enough. The holidays are coming up, and we’ll do Thanksgiving with my family. I suggested doing a small holiday with just us and then leaving my husband at home and visiting my family alone the day after, and my husband was very upset. He wants to participate, but he doesn’t want to see Blake. What do I do here? —Family Puzzle Dear Puzzle, Surprise! Your husband is actually the problem here. Let’s take Blake out of the equation here for a moment. Imagine your husband isn’t your husband, but is, instead, a 4-year-old. Your 4-year-old doesn’t want to go to Thanksgiving. So you give your 4-year-old the option to stay home. But the 4-year-old also doesn’t want to stay home. This is an issue with the 4-year-old, and their ability to accept reality! You’ve been very accommodating of your 4-year-old by giving them the two options that exist. Actually, the three options that exist—you created a third option, as you’ve already tried keeping your 4-year-old close to you during visits so they can see as little of Blake’s face as possible. Your 4-year-old doesn’t like Blake? Blake isn’t harming your 4-year-old? What other options are there—tell your sister that your 4-year-old needs her to divorce Blake? “My husband doesn’t like your husband, so you need to ban him from Thanksgiving” isn’t really something you can say to someone. Tell your husband that you get his frustration, but that families do often include people who suck, and yours is no exception. What he does about it is now up to him. Please keep questions short (<150 words), and don’t submit the same question to multiple columns. We are unable to edit or remove questions after publication. Use pseudonyms to maintain anonymity. Your submission may be used in other Slate advice columns and may be edited for publication. Dear Prudence, I am lucky to be good friends with my husband’s sister, “Gia.” We text almost every day, and we see each other at least once a month. Sadly, she and her husband have been struggling with infertility for two years. When Gia first opened up to me, I read a lot about how to support her. I have done my best to listen, affirm, and be a safe place. I was prepared for anger about other women being pregnant. What I was not prepared for was judgments about my own body. More recently, she has been making comments about my ability to get pregnant going to waste, and suggesting negative things about birth control, etc. If she’s not getting pregnant, then her brother had better have a baby, and we should stop delaying. But I don’t want a baby right now, or maybe ever. Also, I don’t even know if I’m able to get pregnant—we’ve never tried to conceive. I feel increasingly uncomfortable about her attitude. It’s making me want to talk less. Can I confront Gia about this without hurting her more? Should I say something after a comment, or preemptively? Or should I just let her words go? —Uncomfortable Dear Uncomfortable, The truth is that Gia will be hurting no matter what you do. Struggling with fertility for two years is just horrible, and that is the source of her pain. And it’s not something you’ll be able to fix, no matter how hard you try to be a good friend and to say the perfect thing. The next time she makes a comment about your fertility going to waste or you needing to have a baby, tell her that it makes you uncomfortable to hear her say stuff like that. It could be useful to open up to her about the deeper reasons why it makes you uncomfortable—I imagine you could be feeling some uncertainty around the choice to be potentially childfree, your own fertility, or perhaps the fact that you are in a stage in life where people are putting a lot of pressure on you to get pregnant. People love to value women for their ability to have babies, and for their desire to have them; you and Gia are probably experiencing some of those same pressures, if in very different circumstances. You two sound like you have a great relationship; don’t blow it up by burying these bad feelings. I am envisioning this starting as an uncomfortable conversation that ends in a teary heart-to-heart that brings you closer. —Shannon Classic Prudie What can I do to stop feeling like I’m stuck in neutral? While everyone my age seems to be married or engaged, buying houses, having babies, and getting promotions, I feel stuck in pretty much the same spot I have been since I graduated college several years ago… Advice Dear Prudence Family Marriage