Waiting for someone to propose to you only passes the "Really, it's tradition!" sniff test when both of you think it's the man's job to propose and both of you think that's awesome.

The sudden death of a partner while expecting a child is so universally understood as awful that I don't think anyone with any other weight to carry is going to get to same kind of sympathy - except perhaps people who lose a child.

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.

One way to make tough decisions is to take incremental steps that don't commit you to anything yet.

When you are stuck in a group of people who merely trade turns at talking about themselves instead of actually conversing, it could be a matter of their not really knowing how to converse as opposed to being too small-minded or excessively Facebooked.

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.

There is a difference between your parents' not reporting to you everything they do and keeping secrets from you.