You dont' have to be around him

Dear Prudence, 

Ten years ago, I met my now husband, “Charles.” At the time, he was part of your typical nuclear American family. He was the first child to get married and everything was great. Fast forward five years, and his sister met “James.” After a whirlwind three-month romance, they got engaged and married within the year. During their brief dating/engagement period, James was a joy to have around the family. Although my husband and I voiced our concerns that you don’t really know someone three months after meeting them, we were happy his sister finally found her person. After the wedding, the tides changed and James finally began to show his true colors.

The laundry list of his bad behavior includes getting into a screaming match with my father-in-law, pretending myself and my husband don’t exist at family holidays, ignoring my 4-year-old when she says, “Hello” to him, yelling at a restaurant hostess, and calling a stranger a “female dog” on a family vacation because he felt she looked at him in the wrong way. This is just a snapshot of the behavior we have endured the last four years and just when we think we’ve seen it all, he gets worse.

Past attempts from the entire family to speak up about his behavior cause major blow-ups. My sister-in-law defends him while James leans on the notion that this is who he is and doesn’t have to apologize for it. While I used to be very vocal about my disdain, it was causing immense pain for my husband to be “stuck in the middle of his wife and his sister.” Over time, I have learned to ignore him and we only engage with James’s family when we have to. It’s important to note we all live in the same town and there are grandkids in both families.

The issue I now face is that my 5-year-old has begun to ask questions about his behavior. We brought up our concerns with my in-laws and they have adopted a stick-your-head-in-the-sand approach. My husband and I were told we couldn’t ask him to behave at events, we couldn’t keep from inviting him, and we would just have to explain to my children there are bad people in the world and he’s one of them. Children are extremely impressionable and I’m afraid if we continue to normalize his behavior my children will begin to pick up these same bad habits. I personally feel I can no longer allow my children to be around him while my husband says we can’t disappoint his family by not showing up. He is essentially on board with the head-in-the-sand approach. What do we do?

—All Out of Sand