Troubling encounters create social discomfort

Dear Readers: Like you, I’m often curious about what happens to the advice I offer once it leaves my desk, and so I’ve asked readers to send in “updates” to let all of us know how my advice was received, if it was followed, and how things turned out.

The responses have flowed in, and I’m interested and often gratified to learn what impact this experience has had on readers.

This year I celebrate my 20th year of writing this column. Publishing these updates reminds me that we have been through a lot over these past decades. Some of these updates read like postcards from old friends, and I’m happy to share them.

To refresh all of our memories, I’m running the original Q&A, followed by the update.

Dear Amy: My husband and I have become friends with another couple and have gotten together with them several times, either at one another’s homes or by going out.

Each time, over the course of the evening, the wife begins trying to pick a fight with her husband. She speaks to him in a belittling manner, her voice dripping with sarcasm and points out what she sees as his shortcomings, and though he ignores her, she doesn’t stop.

As you can imagine, this makes for an intensely uncomfortable time for my husband and me, to the point where we no longer want to socialize with them as a couple.

My husband thinks we should just continue to ignore her venting. I want to tell her either that we now charge for couple’s therapy or that if she’s going to continue in that vein, she’ll have to go home (or we will, if we’re out together).

I’d like to get your thoughts about how to handle this.

— At a Loss for Words

At a Loss for Words: This social dynamic sounds like your own unfortunate staging of a living room production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” so I’m going to refer to this couple as “Martha” and “George.”