There is a connection between environment and stress on both ends, with excessive clutter and excessive attention to detail both holding the power to distract us from our ability to love fully, work productively and relax effectively. So, what makes sense to me is for each of us to think this through on a few fronts: what constitutes a comfortable environment for us, how much effort we're willing to put into it relative to other priorities, and how well-matched we need our partners' preferences to be to ours.

I'm not a big fan of the white lie.

A lot of support gets withheld out of fear of awkwardness and misspeaking.

Make sure you have legal cover for what you're doing.

People who make babies surrender their right to behave like them.

Being negative is easy. There will always be a downside to everything good, a hurdle to everything desirable, a con to every pro. The real courage is in finding the good in what you have, the opportunities in every hurdle, the pros in every con.

The topic of sexual education makes me nuts, because kids are certainly not now and have rarely ever been "clueless" about what adults do and delude themselves about keeping from their kids. Especially now that so many of them are carrying the entire internet around in their pockets.