Dear Prudence,
My best friend recently had a baby and I have been heavily involved with helping her. I am doing the cooking, cleaning, and taking her laundry to the laundromat. We have known each other forever and I was very happy when she decided to brave the single mother route rather than settle for another louse like her ex-husband. Her mother lives with her so it isn’t like she is going it alone, but I am happy to help out.
The problem is that my sister-in-law has been loudly complaining about how overly involved I am with my best friend’s baby while ignoring my other nieces and nephews. She claims I “never” helped out my “real” family. My sister-in-law and I got along when she first married my brother, but then she found religion—a particularly misogynistic brand.
So my queer, atheist self became enemy number one in her eyes. She would spend every conversation either trying to convert me or convince me of the validity of a lot of very horrible positions. My brother has never been one to stand up to his wife so in the interest of family peace, I have not spent a lot of time around them outside of the mandatory holidays, despite the fact I only live 10 miles down the road. How do I handle this? Telling my SIL, “Sorry, I don’t have a real relationship with your kids because you’re a bigot and a lunatic,” isn’t going to go over well.
—Helping Out