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.

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.

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

No matter what else comes, your courage will be your companion for life.

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.

It's hard to send your baby off on a plane without you, though that's less reasonable, because sending him off in a car is statistically a bigger risk.

You don't want to be with someone who is already not getting from you what he needs emotionally.