Dear Prudie,
In my family, especially around the holidays, you have to be able to dish it out and take it. Good-natured ribbing about the things you’ve done, large and small, flies around the room, and the measure of how much we like you is how much we tease you. No matter how much I tell that to my current boyfriend, he doesn’t get it. He takes my family’s barbs as personal. They give him grief about his age (which really isn’t that old) or about how all his friends have kids (and he doesn’t) or about how his favorite team never wins the Super Bowl (while theirs does). He’s a super straight arrow, and it’s even hard to come up with things to tease him about. If he dished it out in return, they’d respect him for it. Instead, he politely sits there, smiles uncomfortably, and waits for it to end. My family winds up not knowing if he likes us or not. Does his discomfort mean that we should stop teasing him altogether? If so, I have no idea what he’ll do at any of our family gatherings.