Circle of friends walking on eggshells around one person

Dear Miss Manners: When I started dating my fiancé four years ago, I became friends with the wife of one of his best friends. The relationship had been fine until a friends’ weekend away.

One evening, I tried to slow our group down to wait for my fiancé, who was walking about five minutes behind us all, before we sat down to dinner. We were on time for our reservations, not late.

The rest of the trip went fine, but two days after, I received a phone call from the wife, who was angry that I “made a scene.”

I attempted to apologize, but that just brought on a 45-minute gutting of prior grievances about me, with phrases such as “Read the room — no one wants to talk to you” and “Who does things like that?”

I was not allowed to talk, and frankly, I was in shock.

Several weeks later, I called to try to salvage the relationship, even though I still felt like I’d been beaten up verbally.

I was met immediately by defensiveness and a rehash of all the things that she thinks I do wrong, past and present.

I told her I wanted space and time to think, and to try to repair the relationship.

In the meantime, we hear that she and her husband have reached out to my fiancé’s two other best friends and told them there was a fight (inappropriate, in my mind, as I did not involve others).

Another month or so goes by, and she texts us both to say this was her last attempt at reaching out — that I had put forth no effort at reengaging with her (liking things on social media, wishing her a happy anniversary, etc.) and that she wanted to know “where I was at.”

My fiancé says I didn’t try hard enough to heal things/reach out, but also heard through her husband that it is a pattern of hers to “burn friendships to the ground” if things don’t go her way.

Am I correct in thinking there’s not much I can do here? Should I just let this pass and move on?

Gentle reader: It is not quite time to move on, which does not mean that you have to accept the unacceptable.

Explain to your fiancé that you did try to heal the breach, and that now it is up to the wife. He would not, you will add, want you to expose yourself to further bullying.

Miss Manners recommends this approach because it will cause both your fiancé and, presumably, his circle of friends, to rethink their assumption that appeasing this woman was the right thing to do.

Dear Miss Manners: A few days ago, my mother-inlaw informed me of the death of her husband’s brother. I passed along the news to more distant relatives who needed to be informed.

A day later, however, my father-in-law told us that the uncle in question was ... not actually dead.

I updated the relatives, but I had trouble not making it sound like a farce, which seemed disrespectful of the uncle in question.

I am curious if there is a more polite way to tell people, “My mother-in-law is declaring people dead when they’re not.”

Gentle reader: “It seems that there has been a mistake and fortunately, Uncle Lou is not, in fact, dead.”

Miss Manners hopes that the relief this news provides will overshadow the blame of whoever’s mistake it originally was.

I acquired, I don’t remember how, a spoon with teeth at the front.

I don’t see how it could be useful as anything but a grapefruit spoon, but it is twice as wide as any grapefruit spoon I have ever seen, and it is spadeshaped.

I have found no use for it except spading the window boxes containing my wife’s herbs.

Is this a very poorly designed grapefruit spoon, or can Miss Manners tell me that it was properly made for some other purpose?

Dear Miss Manners:

Gentle reader: What you have is a runcible spoon, lucky you. It is used to eat mince and slices of quince.

Or so Edward Lear tells us, in his immortal poem “The Owl and the PussyCat.” And he ought to know, because he made up the word. He also acknowledged that a duck might use it to spear spotted frogs.

You, however, are entitled to use yours as a spade.

Miss Manners also suggests that it serves well as a terrapin fork or a dessert fork for something with both gooey and dry elements.