Baggage Check: The Winner for Most Annoying Friend Is...

GOT ISSUES? Dr. Andrea Bonior will help you sort them out.

I have a friend who is always so competitive with me. It is never on the up-and-up, but under the surface. When she likes an outfit, she has to find out how much I paid so she can decide whether I got a deal. She is always asking me questions about my boyfriends so she can decide whether she should be jealous. Don't even get me started about college and work. She has a "plan" about where she wants to be by the time she's 30 and she talks about it all the time. Is there any way this friendship can be saved? — Tired of This

I don't know. Is there any way that ant-covered Twix on the sidewalk is edible?

Sorry — I'm just a bit incredulous that you're asking whether the friendship can be saved rather than whether that's something you'd want to do. You don't give any indication that this is a recent change — if it were, I'd wonder about newfound anxieties, emotional problems or financial difficulties for your friend. Instead, it seems like you might be dealing with someone whose outlook on life consists of figuring out whose head would make the best step stool. She might simply be incapable of being a true friend, at least at this point in her life.

There's also the possibility that you two have some sort of one-upping dyad going in which you are egging her on, unconsciously or consciously. Sometimes certain people bring out the worst in us, in which case some self-exploration might be necessary. I'd order it with a side of cost-benefit analysis; the positives of this relationship remain mysterious to me.

I just took a cruise with my soon-to-be in-laws so they could get to know me better (we had met only once before this). I found my boyfriend's father (I do not like the word "fiance") to be very creepy. He didn't do anything totally out of line, but he just always seemed to be gawking at women by the pool, making digs at my boyfriend's mother and just generally being obnoxious in how he treated waitresses and comments he made. My boyfriend had always warned me that his dad is a "character," but I really wanted to never see him again by the end of the cruise. — Skeeved Out

Wow — and I thought all icky cruise stories involved the norovirus!

Let's assume that you and your soon-to-be-husband (OK, I won't use the French, either) are going to be blessed with long lives together. You'll face many challenges over that time — navigating finances, meshing your emotional lives, choosing whether to merge toothpastes — and the earlier you can learn to communicate respectfully, honestly and patiently, the happier your marriage will be.

Very few families come totally free from (How should I put this?) social fungus. And if they did, I'd be out of a job. Certainly, speak up when you find your boyfriend's father saying something out-and-out degrading. But in the interest of for better or for worse, some of the more general obnoxiousness — assuming that his parents won't be living next door to you — might need to be swallowed.

Art by Eric Reece for Express