If you are being shuffled around, then you should feel shuffled around.
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.
Sometimes the pain outweighs the good things.
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.
Once given, a gift is yours to use, store or dispose of as you see fit.
I believe in innocence until there's proof of guilt and all that.
Unfortunately, I think the expectation is that birthday girls don't pay.
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.
Separating is not divorcing. Please keep that in mind. It is, instead, the second step in seeing if there's a better way to manage your family.
For me, the greatest source of frustration was trying to work with a willful child when there was something else I wanted - say, to get the child to go to bed so I could have my own time. Just the promise of the time, and feeling that promise slip away, was enough to introduce a whole other element of stress into the encounter.
There is a difference between your parents' not reporting to you everything they do and keeping secrets from you.
Some people can work amid chaos or conversations, and some can't - and while there's no doubt an element of brain wiring to it, there's also the possibility of acquiring skills that improve your focus.
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.
I have no quarrel with people who lack the skill or temperament to care for small children.
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.
When people get more frustrated by their indecision than by the situation that prompted it, clarity often follows.
First group impressions can mask a lot of individual variations in the members.
You don't want to be with someone who is already not getting from you what he needs emotionally.
I'm not a big fan of the white lie.
Being highly invested and preoccupied by an emotionally consuming mission tends to steal resources from other aspects of your emotional life.
Don't freight your answers with any notions of what you're "supposed" to do, and just see where your feelings point you. It can feel weird to be so formal about it, but if you're not used to doing it, then there's no shame in retraining yourself.
There's nothing like a good family when you're really up a tree.
