My sister-in-law is nearly 40 but cannot handle losing at board games. What can I do?

A game is not a moral exemption to your usual self. Sometimes the best way to puncture ‘it’s just a game’ is to show people that you’re judging them in reality

My sister-in-law is nearly 40 but cannot handle losing at board games. No matter how high or low the stakes, she has to win. When she doesn’t, she becomes explosive with rage, and often upends the game, sweeps dice off the table, or storms off in a rage. She is otherwise a normal and lovely person, with whom I get on very well. Seeing this side of her makes me deeply uncomfortable and it feels really childish and inappropriate. Will she behave that way with me if I say or do something she doesn’t like?

I think in an effort to smooth the tension, my husband’s family always laughs and teases her about her reaction. It’s like her “special little characteristic” that everyone pretends to love. I wish there was a way to address it but everyone seems to just sweep it under the rug. My husband is aware of how I feel about this.

Recently, she’s started dating a new partner, who is absolutely lovely. When she has a big reaction after board games I can also sense him tensing up, so I know this is affecting more than just me. Ultimately, I’m worried for my sister-in-law that if she continues this behaviour, and the family continues to indulge it, she will suffer personal and professional consequences. I also don’t enjoy being around the dynamic, and think it is likely we’ll spend less time with her as a result. What can I do?

Eleanor says: I know someone who ended a relationship because their partner too gleefully teamed up with an ex to lie in a game of wink murder. I know someone who decided not to have kids with their then partner because when he played with kids, he got a kick out of really scaring them. I know someone whose friendship never recovered after one shouted the c-word in a card game.

Often it’s in the fictional that we most see the real.

It’s not that the way you behave in a game is a straightforward guide to the kind of person you are. The whole reason games are fun is that that isn’t true. Games let you experiment with being a different kind of person; they let you explore different kinds of agency. They are fun and absorbing precisely because you focus on a single goal or way of reasoning. A game is a vacation from the rules and goals of normal life, and an excursion into new ones.

But games aren’t meant to be a moral exemption to your usual self. They’re meant to let you play with and develop your usual self by putting it in unusual circumstances. Treating games as a forum for exorcising the worst parts of yourself with the petulant excuse “it’s just a game” misunderstands the whole enterprise.

So what can you do about your sister in law doing exactly that?

You’re astute to notice that the family going along with it doesn’t help. And you’re astute to notice that their laughter might be a bid to make things less awkward – not a sign that they actually enjoy it. Like how we laugh after an off-colour comment, hoping to social magic it into counting as a joke. They might hope that if they applaud, make this “her thing”, that transforms her behaviour into a fun bit – not just an adult having a tantrum.

Their approach might make things less awkward, but it doesn’t give the disruptive person evidence of how disruptive they are. As always, the more you paper over the cracks someone’s created, the less you can be surprised when they don’t notice them.

Sometimes the best way to puncture “it’s just a game” is to show people that you’re judging them in reality.

You don’t have to say “don’t do that” or “why are you so mad” while they’re heated. (In fact, if it’s a real anger management thing, it’s better not to). You can just let your sincere attitude show in a moment they presumed would be structured by the fiction. A long look without a smile or a laugh. Silence. A hint of the ick it’s giving you in real life. In the same way that laughing along is a bid to turn a tantrum into a joke, reacting as you would in other circumstances can be a bid to separate her behaviour from the game.

Awkward, yes; socially costly, yes. But as with all things, if you want her to know you’d prefer she stopped this, you have to endure the discomfort of her learning how you feel.

The boyfriend who lied in wink murder, the man who scared the kids and the friend who shouted in the card game didn’t realise that the way they acted in games would affect how people saw them in real life, until it was too late. A long look across the table now – or even a quiet word from a relative once she’s calmed down – is a much kinder way for her to find out.