guest aggravation

Good grief! This is the second time in recent memory that I have had a guest who had too much to drink get belligerent and obnoxious to another guest. The first time was in a discussion with my son in law, Mike, who was opining on a perfectly legitimate topic regarding end of life decisions and got clobbered verbally by a friend who took offense and took Mike’s opinion personally. Poor Mike – not only was he taken aback by the vitriol, but as far as I was concerned he was correct in his views. The other day’s fiasco concerned health care reform and a friend, who is pretty opinionated, not backing off on his views when it was clear that the other guest had one that was opposite to his. Arghh! I thought fisticuffs would result!
When I select guests I always want to choose an interesting mix of characters, but how to make sure they will all get along? It doesn’t do to invite people who are known to clash with other dinner guests or cause heated debates. No one wants tension at a dinner party. But how to predict this? I want my dinner parties to be lively, stress-free events, and invite guests who are good conversationalists, especially those who are known to bring along their sense of humor. But how to predict? We often have folks who disagree with our politics, and we simply do not get into debates with them, knowing that they hold opinions that we won’t change – nor do we want to. That seems to work well. When we get close to a topic that seems touchy, we simply change it. Although I don’t know why we can’t have a reasoned discussion about controversial topics, it just does not work most of the time.
So, I now know that I won’t invite those two folks with others, as once is one time too much as far as I am concerned. They now go on the short left side of my guest list that is reserved for people to have by themselves to dinner. Oh well, live and learn.