68+ Carolyn Hax Quotes On Relationships, Marriage And Friendship

Carolyn Hax is an American advice columnist, author, and radio host. She is best known for her syndicated advice column "Tell Me About It," which appears in The Washington Post and other publications. She is also the host of a weekly call-in radio show on Sirius XM Satellite Radio. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Carolyn Hax on relationships, marriage, friendship.

Top 10 Carolyn Hax Quotes

1. I do crosswords when I have time to kill somewhere, and am 100 percent successful on filling in the spots I get stuck on - after I close up, do something else, and then go back to it.
2. Minimizing exposure to miserable people is nothing short of a life strategy.
3. It's hard to send your baby off on a plane without you, though that's less reasonable, because sending him off in a car is statistically a bigger risk.
4. You don't want someone who can't tell the difference between having a different opinion and dismissing your opinion.
5. When people get more frustrated by their indecision than by the situation that prompted it, clarity often follows.
6. When in doubt, respond to what you witness, not what you hear secondhand.
7. 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.
8. I'm sure there are people who can toggle quickly from all-in caregiving to structured socializing, but I can't think of any offhand.
9. Apparently you have ample proof from experience that you're not going to stop world evil by debating your in-laws into submission, so it's okay to choose not to try.
10. We all make deals with ourselves when it comes to the difficult people in our lives.

Carolyn Hax Short Quotes

• You can't make someone agree with you, not even when you're 100 percent sure you're right.
• Sometimes the pain outweighs the good things.
• It's okay to forgive yourself immediately and for good.
• No matter what else comes, your courage will be your companion for life.
• A lot of support gets withheld out of fear of awkwardness and misspeaking.
• If you are being shuffled around, then you should feel shuffled around.
• I'm not a big fan of the white lie.
• I have no quarrel with people who lack the skill or temperament to care for small children.
• First group impressions can mask a lot of individual variations in the members.
• One way to make tough decisions is to take incremental steps that don't commit you to anything yet.

Carolyn Hax Famous Quotes And Sayings

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. — Carolyn Hax

Your job is to be you, which includes being the chief beneficiary of all things you do right, the chief victim of all you do wrong, and the one person on Earth who has to live with every choice you make. As gatekeeper to your life, you’re it. — Carolyn Hax

Your parents' views are, by current standards, out there. Getting in their faces about it would be needlessly disrespectful, but there's no reason for you to tiptoe through their delusional little terrarium as if you can't bend even one blade of grass. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

Your friends will need you, too, someday. Maybe not in the same way, maybe not in cash and shelter, but they'll need you - to listen without judging, to invite them over when they're lonely, to show up for their events, to register in whatever way matters to them that they matter to you. Be on the lookout for these opportunities to give back, and do whatever is in your power not to miss many of them. — Carolyn Hax

You can't make people like you under the best of circumstances, and you certainly can't make them like you while you're actively badgering them on what you perceive to be their failures of conscience. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

Plan your own vacations when you want to, and plan a suitable combined vacation with this other family when you want to. If they freak out at your planning your own vacations as you see fit, then let them. Bowing to unreasonable demands because someone will make you pay emotionally if you don't is not a healthy option. — Carolyn Hax

I think a person who arranges the event and orders the food also picks up the check - even the birthday person, even when people at the table insist on paying for the birthday person. — Carolyn Hax

Moving is hard. Staying is easy. Logistically speaking, at least. And this is true whether you're doing or undoing something. — Carolyn Hax

If you take the time to listen to an upset child's story with empathy, and guide the child toward figuring out the root of the problem, then the result is often that the child not only calms down, but also in the future is less likely to get so upset. — Carolyn Hax

Unfortunately, I think the expectation is that birthday girls don't pay. — Carolyn Hax

Of course the thoughts and awareness are there, but it's all incomplete and often fanciful - kids know there's something to know, and they fill in a bunch of the blanks with their imaginations if their parents haven't had the conversations and/or established themselves as sources of information. It's rare that the kids know nothing at all, and the somethings they do know are often only partially right or flat-out wrong. — Carolyn Hax

If you're not sure what you want, then hold back from making plans or responding to invitations until you have a chance to think about it. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

I believe in innocence until there's proof of guilt and all that. — Carolyn Hax

The topic of sexual education makes me nuts, because kids are certainly not now and have rarely ever been "clueless" about what adults do and delude themselves about keeping from their kids. Especially now that so many of them are carrying the entire internet around in their pockets. — Carolyn Hax

For some people, the better route for finding like-minded parents is just to get out of your house with your baby and frequent baby-friendly places. — Carolyn Hax

Live in the moment, this moment, your moment. That is by far and without meaningful rival The Best Position to put yourself in to discover and delight in who your children turn out to be, whoever they turn out to be. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

Attractions are things we all should be good at saying no to, because our Department of Attraction is arguably the least reliable and productive office in our entire brain. — Carolyn Hax

One helpful thing to keep in mind as a retort-stopper is that you won't "win," you won't change anyone's mind, you won't change any votes, you won't make the atmosphere in the room any better, YOU won't feel any better. — Carolyn Hax

Bodies and minds need breaks or the work suffers, this has been proven and reproven to the point where we don't even need to post links to support it. — Carolyn Hax

There's nothing like a good family when you're really up a tree. — Carolyn Hax

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

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. — Carolyn Hax

Almost no one can take on an entire future in one step, much less while reeling emotionally. — Carolyn Hax

You need to make plans for your future, so plan your own future. — Carolyn Hax

All of us assign different values to things, and not all of those values are going to line up with others'. — Carolyn Hax

There is a difference between your parents' not reporting to you everything they do and keeping secrets from you. — Carolyn Hax

It takes awareness that it's not only not a bad thing to let others do things their own way, it is in fact an improvement. It makes life richer and more interesting. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

Awkwardness is when there's a risk of a perception gap between what you mean and what you appear to mean. — Carolyn Hax

If the guests want to wrest the check away from the host, because the host is also the guest of honor, then the guest who volunteers has to cover the whole thing. A guest can't volunteer -all- of the guests to pay for the host/honoree. — Carolyn Hax

There has been, for some reason (or more likely an unfortunate accumulation of reasons) a trend over the past several decades for parents to do the work of parenting in the isolation of their own homes - and not only that, this trend has overlapped with the other trend of much deeper parent involvement in raising kids. That you also represent trend No. 3, more people raising kids solo, has only exacerbated a close-to-no-win situation. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

Separation is where you see if it works better with the adults in two different homes. — Carolyn Hax

When you fail to see something, that doesn't mean I'm hiding it. — Carolyn Hax

Once given, a gift is yours to use, store or dispose of as you see fit. — Carolyn Hax

Make sure you have legal cover for what you're doing. — Carolyn Hax

It's probably good for your body and brain to get moving occasionally. — Carolyn Hax

The most reliable ways to make oneself miserable are attempting to change people and not attempting to change circumstances. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

Relationships are complicated, but happiness in a relationship isn't: It's just wanting exactly what you have. Wanting something else is dispiriting. — Carolyn Hax

People who make babies surrender their right to behave like them. — Carolyn Hax

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. — Carolyn Hax

You don't want to be with someone who is already not getting from you what he needs emotionally. — Carolyn Hax

Life Lessons by Carolyn Hax

1. Carolyn Hax teaches us to be honest with ourselves and those around us, to take responsibility for our own actions, and to be mindful of how our words and behavior affect others.
2. She encourages us to be self-aware and to think critically about our decisions, while also recognizing that life is unpredictable and that we can't always control the outcome.
3. Lastly, she reminds us to be kind and understanding to ourselves and others, and to always strive to find balance and peace in our lives.