Breakfast Club Rules
DO NEWSPAPERS AND CEREAL MIX, PLUS SHOULD YOU CONFRONT REGIFTERS?
Please settle a debate. My husband likes to read the newspaper at our breakfast table. He also saw nothing wrong with bringing the paper to the breakfast table at a resort we visited recently. I say it is poor manners to bring the paper to any table anytime unless you are dining alone. Who is correct?
J.R. in Waltham
I would say you're both wrong. There, now you can be united in disdain of that awful Miss Conduct and marital harmony can be restored! (I'm convinced this is the secret technique of many marriage therapists: Give the warring couple a common enemy.)
It's not nice to force people to be social in the morning before they're ready to be. Some people's mental operating system takes longer to boot up than others' do, and they should be allowed to ease into the day at their own pace. Whether your husband was rude or not at the resort isn't a cut-and-dried issue but depends on the layout of the dining room (was it arranged to encourage privacy or social interaction?), the number of other people present, and how well you knew anyone else. I wasn't there, so I can't make the call, though I suspect some of the other slow-booting guests were relieved that there was at least one person whom they didn't have to talk to.
For your husband's part, it's not nice to do things that make your spouse unhappy or to behave in public in a way that causes embarrassment to aforementioned spouse. The behavior of one-half of a couple reflects on the other half, and both halves should be sensitive to that fact. When your beloved nudges you in public and mutters, "Honey, stop it. That's rude," then you need to stop it, honey, right then and there, no matter how ridiculous the request seems. The debate about "who's right" can take place in private, later.
But I prefer to avoid "who's right" debates, anyway. Do they ever really solve anything? When it comes to newspaper reading at home, I doubt you're off ended because you believe your husband is breaking some rule of etiquette. Perhaps his behavior makes you feel neglected or as though you're being treated like a waffle-house waitress. Figure this out and discuss it with him, then find a compromise that works for both of you.
Two years ago, my husband and I bought my sister's new son a distinctive sleeper from a store that does not exist anymore. Recently, when we had a son, she gave the same sleeper back to us as a gift. I was shocked but pretended I didn't recognize it and even sent a thank you note. My husband thinks I shouldn't have thanked her for a gift I actually bought. I'm sure she doesn't remember that we had given her son the sleeper. Should we have said something?
S.K. in Winchester
Whether or not your sister deserves thanks for the hand-me-down sleeper, she certainly deserves thanks for giving you a good laugh - at least, I hope you had the sense to laugh - and for providing a vivid lesson in just what two years of sleep deprivation and life with an infant/toddler can do to a person's memory. Now you know what you have to look forward to, S.K.
Your husband seems to be - and I'm guessing here - fixated on rules and who-owes-whom-what-for-what. I don't think that's exactly the point in this case. The problem is, she's your sister, not mine, so I can't tell you with great authority what, exactly, the point of the case is. For whatever reason, you assumed that the regifting was unintentional and chose to play the situation as though you did not recognize the sleeper. What would happen now if Sis were flipping through her baby-shower pictures and realized that the sleeper was from you? Would she be mortified? Or amused? Would she think you hadn't noticed, or would she assume you had? If the latter, would she be angry with you for allowing her mistake to go uncorrected? Or would she think it was funny or sweet that you had chosen to play along?
Or what if it turned out that she knew all along it was from you, and figured, hey, you obviously like these kinds of sleepers, and they aren't available anymore, so here you go? In this case, she might be wondering if you've forgotten that you were the original giver, and feeling guilty about deceiving you when it was never her intention to do so.
For a relatively trivial problem, this is becoming twistier than a Robert Ludlum novel (The Onesie Deception). So throw out ideas about etiquette rules, stop listening to your husband, and go with your instincts. If you and your sister have a close relationship and like to laugh at your own and each other's foibles, tell her. If you're more into politesse and saving face, keep the deception going. If you're seriously into denial and enabling, wait until she has a second child and give the sleeper back to her. Whatever you decide, do it with an eye toward the long-term health of your sisterly relationship and nothing else.
My Word!
Decades ago, Emily Post wrote, "Do not expose your private affairs, feelings or innermost thoughts in public. You are knocking down the walls of your house when you do." This was excellent advice well expressed then, and it is even more so now in the age of cellphones.
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Miss Conduct is Robin Abrahams, a Cambridge-based writer with a PhD in psychology.
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