Carolyn Hax, 26 Jan 2015:

Dear Carolyn: Our daughter is divorcing after a 25-year marriage and wants us to divorce our son-in-law, too. We have known him since the two were teenagers, and we love him as a son. Our daughter is alleging that he has been abusive to her, but we have never seen any evidence of this. He has always been highly reactive with a full range of emotional expression, while she tends to be passive-aggressive, withholding and stubborn. We have never sensed that she is dominated by him, and she has pursued every goal or desire that he did not share or support. She has never described any specific incidents of abuse. We support her in her decision to end the marriage since she is not happy, but we can’t bring ourselves to end our relationship with our son-in-law on the basis of allegations that we simply don’t believe. As a consequence, she is cold and uncommunicative with us. What are we missing here? Anonymous

Dear Anonymous,

The only thing you’re missing here is the forwarding address of the certified saint your dopey daughter is about to divorce!

If there’s one thing that happens way too often in this topsy-turvy world, it’s people believing abuse survivors when they come forward. Please don’t make the terrible mistake of trusting your daughter, especially not when her soon-to-be ex is “highly reactive with a full range of emotional expression,” which 100% permanently, completely and without doubt removes him from the possibility of ever being an abuser. Other people, especially foolish little lady daughters, are often confused about how their own relationships and lives work, so it’s up to objective observers–like yourselves–who don’t suffer from the burden of having too much information about, for example, your daughter’s marriage, to be able to see both sides, here. Everything you need to know about anything that has ever happened between your daughter and her husband has definitely happened right in front of your face, because people always act always the same all the time no matter who they are around forever.

And anyway, abuse looks like what you say it looks like, and since your daughter’s situation doesn’t look, to you, like what you say abuse looks like, it’s not abuse! Bam. We just solved the problem of other people thinking they get to define the terms on which they live their lives, as if they’re allowed to do so if it means you experience literally any inconveniences whatsoever.

It’s strange and disappointing that your daughter has decided to become “cold and uncommunicative” toward her parents, when all you did was inform her that she’s a lying liar whose entire life is a sham and that you prefer the company of the man she says has abused her for the entirety of her adult life so far to entertaining the possibility that your mean old daughter isn’t just trolling everyone she knows for fun, but who knows why an apple would fall from a rotten, crumbling tree and then try to get the everloving fuck away from said rotten, crumbling tree, gravity is a huge mystery and no one knows how it works.