Well I'll tell you what, its the strangest thing. The person's spouse, who is a really nice person, for some reason will not confront the problem. I think that they are the one who should. I guess you would call them the enabler? I keep trying to find ways to make my wife tell her father (the one who is the enabler) to do something about it, but she insists that she has tried and he just brushes it off.

On the one hand, I don't want to get too directly involved, as it is not my family. On the other hand, I can so clearly recognize there is a problem, and I hate to let this happen to another person. It sucks, more or less a feeling of helplessness. I also come from a very close family, and I had just the best parents in the world, and I find it makes it hard for me to relate to their problems. But I can still see the problem there.

I'm not sure what to do, I guess I just wanted to pick all your brains to see what condition(s) she could possibly have, so that I could talk to my wife and hopefully her father, and see about getting this thing resolved. They all recognize the problem, but I think they've all lived with it so long that they've learned to work around it, and they don't talk to each other about it.

Sorry, this is probably hard to explain to people not directly observing the issue. I've slowly watched the condition get worse and worse for the better part of 9 years. Its frustrating, and I really wish I could do more to help them....