It will be hard enough to change 17-year-old habits without also assuming (or, perhaps, acknowledging) any ill intent on the part of your husband.

He used the bathroom across the hall and then barged into my room without knocking. GENTLE READER: The good news, Miss Manners will say - as one does when about to give worse news - is that your problem is not, at its core, with your mother-in-law. In addition, one day I was lying down in my room behind a closed door. In one day, he stopped by three times and drove by four additional times. Your rank lacked the authority to issue orders. Your rank lacked the authority to issue orders to the staff. What would you think if you had received a present and afterwards, whether or not you had gotten around to writing, received a letter from the donor expressing her joy in giving it to you?ĭEAR MISS MANNERS: We have a friend who has taken to dropping by unannounced. GENTLE READER: No but not because Miss Manners approves of flip-flops at funerals. It is the guests’ duty to thank the hosts, and reversing this will only make them feel that you are prompting them to do more. But unaccustomed as Miss Manners is to discouraging letters of thanks, she begs you to refrain from writing. Miss Manners would have thought that the era of counting the boy-girl ratio at social events, with all the damage it does to partnerless people, had ended. GENTLE READER: So tell them that when they thank you. I realize that it seems a bit backward to thank someone for merely entering my front door, but that is how I feel. I honestly feel that each and every one of them has graced and honored my home by doing so.

Gentle reader miss manners