Carolyn Hax Quotes
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The most reliable ways to make oneself miserable are attempting to change people and not attempting to change circumstances.
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Live in the moment, this moment, your moment. That is by far and without meaningful rival The Best Position to put yourself in to discover and delight in who your children turn out to be, whoever they turn out to be.
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Apparently you have ample proof from experience that you're not going to stop world evil by debating your in-laws into submission, so it's okay to choose not to try.
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One helpful thing to keep in mind as a retort-stopper is that you won't "win," you won't change anyone's mind, you won't change any votes, you won't make the atmosphere in the room any better, YOU won't feel any better.
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I think a person who arranges the event and orders the food also picks up the check - even the birthday person, even when people at the table insist on paying for the birthday person.
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You can't make people like you under the best of circumstances, and you certainly can't make them like you while you're actively badgering them on what you perceive to be their failures of conscience.
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And if you're a parent who thinks you're okay because your kid doesn't have a phone or iPod yet, and/or you've used all the parent controls to filter out explicit material, you're not okay. The filters are tissue paper and your kid without a phone is on a school bus or in a locker room or at a public park with phone-equipped kids every day. And they're like all kids in exploring - by whatever means available to them - exactly what their parents are treating as too embarrassing or taboo to talk about.
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I realize that people fly with small children all the time, and that babies are easier in some ways because all they do is sit/lie around anyway, but damn it's hard to keep a baby comfortable on any flight, much less a long one, particularly amid the looks of horror they will get from fellow passengers as it dawns on them that their 10- to 13-hour flight might come with a soundtrack of screaming baby.
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People who make babies surrender their right to behave like them.
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Your parents' views are, by current standards, out there. Getting in their faces about it would be needlessly disrespectful, but there's no reason for you to tiptoe through their delusional little terrarium as if you can't bend even one blade of grass.
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No matter what else comes, your courage will be your companion for life.
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You don't want to be with someone who is already not getting from you what he needs emotionally.
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I think we'd all hate to be the one who gets declared undateable by one's entire grad-school population based on a couple of told and retold stories.
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I'm sure there are people who can toggle quickly from all-in caregiving to structured socializing, but I can't think of any offhand.
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A lot of support gets withheld out of fear of awkwardness and misspeaking.
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Minimizing exposure to miserable people is nothing short of a life strategy.
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When in doubt, respond to what you witness, not what you hear secondhand.
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Instead of talking at each other about the non-business-related contact, talk to each other about your concerns about marriage. Listen a lot, too.
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I'm not a big fan of the white lie.
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There's nothing wrong with being happy somewhere, even if it's the little pond you grew up in, as long as you are in fact comfortable vs. bored.
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Sometimes the pain outweighs the good things.
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There has been, for some reason (or more likely an unfortunate accumulation of reasons) a trend over the past several decades for parents to do the work of parenting in the isolation of their own homes - and not only that, this trend has overlapped with the other trend of much deeper parent involvement in raising kids. That you also represent trend No. 3, more people raising kids solo, has only exacerbated a close-to-no-win situation.
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If the guests want to wrest the check away from the host, because the host is also the guest of honor, then the guest who volunteers has to cover the whole thing. A guest can't volunteer -all- of the guests to pay for the host/honoree.
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I actually recommend as little actual counting as possible in a life partnership. But, when there's a sense of injustice brewing between you, some counting is inevitable, and so my advice is to count using as broad a scope as possible. It's not just hours worked or chores done, either, and it's not even just about the household - it's a system of Whole Marriage Thinking. It's about hours worked, chores done, goals supported, emotional needs met, everything. What it all takes out of you, what it all gives back. It all factors in.