Mitigate the damage instead of trying to please abusive parent

Dear Miss Manners:

Mom is a professional complainer. It is not that nothing is ever good enough; that would be easy. Everything is unbearably horrible, and she is going to let you know all about it — for hours at a time — and continue to bring it up for years.

If I cook for her during visits, the food is inedible, and we are too cheap to take her out. (I am a professional pastry chef. I know how to cook.) If we take her out, we can’t choose a decent restaurant and are too lazy to cook. She is deeply offended, and the whole restaurant knows it.

Every gift we buy her is the stupidest thing she has ever seen, and we should have given her cash. But if we do give her cash, it’s never enough. We owe her more. We once gave her a vacation to a place that is all about her main interest, and spent way more money on it than we could comfortably afford. She hated it, and reminds me of that fact every gift-giving occasion.

But still, she had better have more gifts than the kids do, or else! We obviously do not care about her at all, she says, and on and on.

We all want to tell her to just stay home, but she is getting up there in years, and is not in great health. Guilt keeps us coming back for more abuse. Can this situation be better managed, or do we all need to try to ignore it?

Gentle reader: Being an active sort, Miss Manners likes to fix problems. But she acknowledges that some situations cannot be fixed; they can only be, as you say, managed.

What is to be done after you have exhausted hope of correcting a relative’s ongoing bad behavior, but before you conclude that the behavior is intolerable — and that therefore, the relationship must be severed?

You must do what you can to mitigate the damage to others. You may be adult enough to ignore your mother’s outbursts, but it will be harder for young children. Perhaps they can be away on a playdate for some occasions. Avoid restaurant entertaining as a way of protecting your own good name, if not your mother’s.

As you are not going to please her — with gifts or menus — make choices that satisfy your own standards, and let that suffice. Guilt is not only counterproductive: It, sadly, fuels the bad behavior.

Dear Miss Manners: I have an online wedding registry, and 90% of the gifts I have received have been off there. The other day I received a present with no tag inside saying who it was from. I tried to check the registry, and there isn’t a name on there either.

I am a stickler for thankyou cards. It bothers me not to be polite and say thank you, so I have been very upset that I don’t know who to thank.

It was a pretty expensive gift, and I know someone is going to be upset they don’t get a thank-you note. What should I do? My head has been spinning trying to figure this out.

Gentle reader: Being a detective may not be in the job description of a bride, but solving problems certainly is. Miss Manners agrees that someone needs to be thanked, so it is time to get to work.

Step 1. Ask the shipper. Step 2. Due process of elimination against the guest list. Step 3. Share the problem with close family and friends, and ask if they know the giver, or if the gift itself suggests anything to them.

Each step is likely to be time-consuming and frustrating, which Miss Manners can only mitigate by allowing you a reasonable amount of additional time in which to send a charming letter that, in addition to giving thanks, recounts the research you had to do — with humor and good will. This will excuse the tardy reply, but must not be phrased so as to imply any misdeed on the part of the sender: The shipper’s website, having no feelings, is the intended target of your wit.

Dear Miss Manners: Here is a common but difficult conundrum: At the bank, I was greeted by a lovely older security guard. His fly was down. I mentioned it to a gentleman bank employee, who then told the guard. It all felt terribly awkward. Oh, and this probably matters: I’m a not-young woman.

Gentle reader: Matters how, exactly? Miss Manners is curious if it is the “young” or the “woman” that you consider problematic. Regardless, she assures you that you handled the matter perfectly. A not-old man could not have done better.