DEAR MISS MANNERS: My close friend, Celeste, is a wonderful cook and hostess who frequently invites me, and mutual friends, over to her home for meals.

While I love Celeste dearly, her fiance makes me incredibly uncomfortable. She has told me stories in which his behavior is emotionally abusive and controlling. I have also had interactions with him at group events and at her dinner parties that have left me feeling more than unsettled.

I have tried approaching dinner party and other invitations with, “Is this a couples’ party or a girl’s night?” and similar lines to assess whether or not he will be joining. I have since learned that he keeps hidden cameras throughout the home, and watches them when he is not there. He also tracks her whereabouts.

Due to this, I have determined that I will not accept any invitations at her home, and his tracking of her has prevented me from inviting her to my home, so we only meet at public places.

Celeste and I have already had a conversation about his abusiveness; however, I am wondering if there is proper etiquette for discussing my hesitation to accept invitations to her home.

I do not want to lose her as a friend, but I believe consistently declining invitations to her home, while accepting invitations to meet at restaurants and coffee shops, may be turning out to be more offensive.

GENTLE READER: Being supportive of your friends does not, Miss Manners assures you, require you to relinquish your own privacy. “You know that I have concerns about your relationship, but as your friend, I will follow your lead. However, I will not be videotaped, or tracked in my own home. So while you are in this relationship, I will have to insist on the two of us meeting in public spaces.”

Your friend will have to make her own decision about the situation, but perhaps the insanity of it can be properly conveyed by seeing it from your perspective. And the accompanying panic in your voice.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend and I have a shared interest in true crime and art. When she recently asked me if I wanted a collage/painting she had made, I said yes, but I was unpleasantly surprised when I received it.

It turned out to be just a canvas with pictures of a murderer on it, and red paint splattered on it to look like blood. It’s honestly creepy; it looks like a shrine to the killer. I’m interested in the psychology behind crime, and have no positive feelings towards killers themselves.

Currently, the canvas is taking up space in my bedroom, not hung up. Would it be terribly rude to get rid of it? One of the things that bothers me most about it is that clearly, very little effort went into it, and it feels like she was just pawning it off on me.

GENTLE READER: Unfortunately, effort is not the only criterion when it comes to evaluating art -- and your friend probably would not take kindly to being accused of lacking it. Miss Manners suggests that you keep the strange painting, displaying it only when your strange friend comes to visit. It might be useful as evidence.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: When my husband and I invite one of our out-of-town friends for dinner, which we do two or three times a year, we always use cloth napkins that go with the tablecloth. Our friend always arrives wearing a thick layer of very bright red lipstick. By the end of dinner, her napkin is covered in lipstick, which is hard to clean. Should we give everyone at the table paper napkins, buy black napkins, or just accept the time spent scrubbing out the lipstick? My husband thinks I am being whiny, but he doesn’t scrub the napkins, although he does a lot of the cooking.

GENTLE READER: There is a reason that restaurants and catering businesses generally use white cloth napkins: They are easier to clean and sanitize with bleach. Miss Manners is not the household hints department, but that sounds reasonable to her.

Paper napkins are flimsy, and black napkins would look strange in contrast to a light-colored tablecloth. They also betray your obvious contempt for a brightly colored lip.

However, if you find yourself still scrubbing and your husband won’t help, it is far better form to accept the loss of the napkin over that of the friend.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: A friend calls at odd hours when I’m not home (but she thinks I am), and does not leave a message. She knows that I can look at my caller ID and see that she called.

When I don’t call her back, she is offended, and thinks I was at home and just didn’t answer her call. I think that since she did not leave a message, then that means she did not need or want to be called back. Am I in the wrong, or should she be leaving a message?

GENTLE READER: Your friend’s method has a one-sided efficiency: requesting a callback without the bothersome task of stating why.

Both parties must agree to this system for it to be effective. In negotiating this agreement, Miss Manners recommends that you warn your friend that without a message, you will not be able to determine the relative urgency of her calls -- and will therefore be forced to assume that they are all low.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have two very dear friends who do not know each other, but they both have the very annoying habit of correcting my “mistakes,” such as how I pronounce the name of a foreign city, official or other word.

We have all had at least 16 years of education in this country, in distinctly different areas of study, and yet they are the grammar and culture experts, it seems.

Neither is the kind of person who does this to undermine or to show off, but I am annoyed and offended by their compulsion to correct me. I would never do this to them, but on occasion they have been incorrect in what they said.

Do you have a polite and inoffensive way I could convey my displeasure with their behavior without “correcting” them?

GENTLE READER: Blame a third party. “Funny, I have never heard it pronounced bru-shetta, but I am sure you must be right. Let’s have our waiter settle it. He’s Italian.”

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I just had surgery, and my boyfriend wants to leave for the weekend with his friend. I feel very hurt. Is it just me?

GENTLE READER: One of the duties of a boyfriend (a girlfriend, too) is to demonstrate a more-than-passing interest in the object of his affections.

Miss Manners uses the word “demonstrate” advisedly. She has no objection to his feelings also being genuine; that is merely outside of the realm of etiquette. But no matter how deep his love, you cannot reasonably be expected to appreciate it while he is away skiing and you are eating applesauce through a straw.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I am fed up with my fiance’s parenting skills of his 20-year-old son. This son lives with us in the home we bought together, as do my two children, ages 11 and 14. His son makes over $30,000 a year, does not contribute to one bill in our home, and does not have one chore to do.

I am a clean freak and I keep my home actually spotless, and his son is a complete pig with his room. He has been told a million times not to eat upstairs, as we just replaced the carpet, and he still continues to bring food upstairs.

I know it’s his room, but it is still my house, and he shows no respect as to the rules of the home. He comes and goes as he pleases, and never asks if he can help with anything. He won’t even take his own garbage out, nor does my fiance tell him to. We are even paying for his son’s cable that is in his bedroom.

My fiance is a wonderful man, and I don’t want to jeopardize what we have over this adult kid, who hopefully will be moving out soon. His other children are not speaking to him, and I feel that he does not want to make his son mad by giving him chores or making him pay a bill.

So, before I lose my mind, can you please tell me how I can close my eyes to all of this and live happily in this home with my fiance while his son resides there?

GENTLE READER: Second families face challenges that first families are spared, but one hopes that second family members also have the benefit of having learned something the first time around.

Your stepson’s age is both an asset and a liability: an asset because he will most likely be moving out soon, a liability because his interactions with his father are long ingrained.

Miss Manners can offer two starting points. First, identify some areas in which you are willing to recognize your stepson’s autonomy: perhaps at the door to his bedroom. Second, discuss the situation with your fiance, explaining that, as his son’s primary parent, he may have to be more active than in the past -- while also recognizing the effective limits of your own authority to make change directly.

(Please send your questions to Miss Manners at her website, www.missmanners.com; to her email, dearmissmanners@gmail.com; or through postal mail to Miss Manners, Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106.)