ArcaMax

Your friends made a potentially dangerous choice; as it turned out, everyone got lucky and no one got sick. You conveyed your educated and legitimate concern, and you know your friends heard you because they resorted to taunting you for taking your position.

I hope that what you describe as “taunting” was a milder teasing.

You certainly have the right to bring your own food to these gatherings, but you aren’t being honest about your reason (and “eating later” doesn’t necessarily make sense). And – every time you do this you revive the original issue, which is that you don’t trust your friends to offer a safely prepared meal.

In my opinion, you should make a choice to trust your friends’ food prep, but this would require you to relax about an issue you obviously take extremely seriously.

You might flip this issue on its side if you more or less dove into the heart of it. Have some T-shirts made for the group: “Fun Guys Forage Fungi.”

Dear Amy: My spouse and I have been in a committed partnership for over 30 years.

It was only after many years together that marriage became legally available to us.

As the reality of confirming our long-standing commitment was now a possibility, it still took some time to consider how we see ourselves, our lifetimes of shared experiences, and our intertwined families.

Marriage is not only a celebration and beginning; it is a personal acknowledgement of our long lives together.

When someone sees a ring on my finger, they will sometimes question how long we have been married. That’s when our definition of our lives together comes up against what some people allow to be true.

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