Family dynamics are always tough, even in the best of circumstances… Parenting teenagers is difficult enough when they're your own flesh and blood or they're otherwise your sole charge and are obligated to follow your direction. It gets infinitely more difficult when you have another adult who is influential in your life—especially one of their parents who is undermining you and just generally poisoning the well and encouraging them to be toxic towards you at every possible chance. You'd think…

Entitlement runs deep.

When we're young, we assume that our parents and other adults in authority are infallible, generally taking them at their word and assuming that all adults conduct themselves in mature, non-biased, morally upright, and ethical ways. You come to find, as you age, that even the paragons of your youth are, in fact, fallible, imperfect people. This realization will often first cause you to feel resentment before you eventually come to accept as you age further that they were nothing more than peopl…

Supporting family in times of need is something you do out of love and a sense of familial obligation to that person—but even that has its limits. Although the person being supported might be in a hard place, it's still on them not to make their host too hard done by; you can't just go around making demands and being wildly entitled about everything in someone else's home. As someone who has uniquely been in this situation and forced to stay with family in a similar situation after a flooded ho…

This sounds harsh, but it's one of those lessons where the sooner you learn it in life, the better off you'll be. Success takes effort—and sustained effort at that. At a certain point, a certain amount of sustained effort is going to be an essential factor and determinant of whether you have an income that can support your continued existence and survival. That's not to say that it's the only thing that matters, but for most of us, it's an important starting point. Thus, this lesson holds value…

How do divorced couples who are co-parenting handle disagreements?

Every adult has had a friend whose selfish behavior needs to be called out. Perhaps you don't have the guts to be the person to call an intervention, but you know the clock is ticking and someone is going to give this friend a piece of their mind at some point soon. Here, we have a Redditor who knew one of their friends named Sarah had an ongoing habit of conveniently “forgetting” her wallet when it was time to pay the bill at the end of a group dinner. She also had a habit of “forgetting” to p…

This family is having a major argument over what to eat for a holiday meal ! Each family has their own unique traditions and menus for their holidays. For many people, the meat depends on the holiday: for some, ham is reserved for Easter, while cooking a big turkey is reserved for Thanksgiving and Christmas. You've got to have a lot of side dishes too: many people eat mashed potatoes, green beans, cornbread, cranberry sauce, collard greens, sweet yams, beans, or myriad other dishes. That way, e…

Try as he might, this boss isn't going to get his former employee to budge an inch. It's not like he has much leverage: he wants her to work for free! Up next, read about the outrageous reasons people divorced their spouses, like one person who “divorced his wife… because she would sleep with a nightlight .”

In every scenario, there can be more than one way to do things correctly, especially when it comes to work. Not everyone, even if they have the same role, does everything in the exact same way, and that is completely reasonable. Every employee finds their own rhythm and methods to do their job, and as long as the job gets done well, there shouldn't be any problems. When a new hire comes in, it makes sense that they would turn to their coworkers for guidance, but it is not a necessity. If they f…

When you're planning the biggest event of your life, what is possibly a once-in-a-lifetime event, it's important to make sure you actually get to the planning part of it and not just leave essential parts to chance… this, coming from someone who is notoriously poor at planning beyond the end of the week. If you want to go on a trip that is going to require you to take time off work, you should probably make sure you request the time off work first so that you're not stuck with an already booked…

There's nothing better than being in your own home and experiencing what it feels like to be utterly and completely alone, with no one around to perceive you, judge you, or otherwise consider your existence and what you might happen to be doing. Hanging out enjoying a peaceful afternoon doing some home maintenance outside, and suddenly your ears are bombarded by an infernal whirring outside as if 10,000 angry bees have suddenly descended upon the peace you were enjoying, and looking up, you see…

There is a big difference between living with roommates and having a landlord and living with your landlord as a roommate. Nobody wants to do the latter, for starters. Having roommates is hard enough, imagine how unbearable it would be to have your landlord as a roommate, watching over your every move. If you are a landlord, and you are looking for roommates, I would definitely recommend telling them what they are walking into, because they deserve to know. That is what I would tell the girl in…

Growing up and embracing maturity is hard—and especially hard for some. Accepting that your age and responsibility means that you need to leave some behaviors behind can be tough. This is usually associated with things like realizing that you can't walk away from crashing your mountain bike into a tree like you used to. Not only that, there's a chance that you might even seriously injure yourself gardening, which will take weeks or months to recover from. But this applies to social interactions…

We all get a little weird and crazy about our pets; that's part of what you sign up for when you devote a significant portion of your time, energy, and financial resources to a fluffy little ball of chaos living with you in your home. I'd argue that, in fact, the entire concept is a little bit crazy, and if you weren't already when you decided to get a furry friend, I promise you that you will soon be driven so. Still, no matter how much we consider our pets members of our families, even the mo…

Anyone who has ever lived with another person had to deal with some kind of drama related to food. It is simply unavoidable. We are all so specific about our food, what, when, where, and how we eat, so when someone else gets thrown into the mix, chaos is bound to ensue. There are a few different approaches when it comes to food in a shared space. You can either buy everything together and split the costs, you can share nothing and have each of you buy their own food and keep it completely separ…