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.

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.

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.

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.

You can't make someone agree with you, not even when you're 100 percent sure you're right.

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.

Being highly invested and preoccupied by an emotionally consuming mission tends to steal resources from other aspects of your emotional life.