Social quandary: Boyfriend behaving badly

Have you found yourself in an awkward situation? Has someone irked you and you’re not sure how best to proceed? If so, you’re not alone! Every week, we’ll be featuring a reader-submitted quandary so that you can help weigh in and give your input. What would you do in their situation? Please comment below and help this reader with your feedback! If you’d like to submit your own quandary, click here.

Quandary this week:

My good friend has been with the same boyfriend for five years. From the beginning, when she first introduced him to our group of friends, he was disrespectful, drunk, boorish and rude. Over the years, he's made disparaging comments about her in front of us and just goes out of his way to offend anybody. We tried to talk to her about his behaviour and whether she was happy with him — but she always deflected our attempts at intervention. We used to think he was acting so badly because he wanted her to break up with him, but that wasn't the case. As a whole, they seem happy together, but our circle of friends really dislike his company. The problem is that she always brings him out even though she knows how we feel about him. How do we spend time with her without having her ridiculous boyfriend tag along?