Interfering, judgmental, and disrespectful mothers-in-law are common complaints.

I know this is awkward, but when you laugh after almost everything you say, it ends up undermining you.

I hate a messy kitchen and my more casual husband has come to recognize it's more pleasant for him to clean up after himself rather than deal with me hating a messy kitchen.

The sadness from reading letters that you know you can't help because it's a person who's in extremis and their problems are not soluble by an advice column.

Never loan money to friends or family that you are not able to write off entirely.

The world's full of victims and the world's full of terrible perpetrators and I want them identified and caught.

The biggest problem is that people want to tell the whole story, and they write letters that are way longer than anything I could possibly run.