This is something else that people need to remember. I have a school reunion next weekend, and had I gone to my school formal, which I didn't want to do, I would have probably said to my mother, "Okay, we'll describe what I want and the first tuxedo I try on that fits me okay will do. Then, okay, a cummerbund and bow tie in a colour I like, and that's it." Then, on the night of it, just said to my mother, "Okay, a haircut, a shave, a shower, brush my teeth, and that'll do." Not because I was a typical male, I wasn't, but I wasn't particularly keen on going, so I didn't want to make a great deal of effort. If, however, during the holidays of that year, and I went to school in Australia, so our June holidays were only two weeks, a friend of mine had said, "Let's go to the museum!" I would have made more of an effort.

One of the most ridiculous pieces of advice I ever got from my mother was, that I should watch some football to be able to talk to other kids about it. If ever I have watched football, I only ever did forensically and assumed a character a bit like William Holden in Bridge On River Kwai. I was more, "Wait, stop! Let's view that again. No, wait, stop! Not sure about that angle." And showed no emotion. Football isn't a social justice issue for me. Get me to talk about something I'm passionate about, and I'm totally different.

When I was growing up, I often wondered why my maternal grandfather was living with us, yet months, and in some cases, a year would go by between visits to my paternal grandparents. Okay, if my father had been an immigrant from interstate or overseas, I'd have understood, as if they were overseas, we might have had an arrangement that on alternate years, they came to Australia to visit us, and we went to visit them, and the same if interstate, but my grandparents were only an hour and a half away and then 45 minutes away, and the real reason was, my mother kept my father's parents and siblings at arm's length, and there were times when Dad would ask Mum if she wanted to go out there and she'd give a half-hearted yes, and my grandmother also kept all the siblings apart.

What I would say to your spouse, however, is, there's a world of difference between, for example, a German male immigrant to Australia who married an Australian woman, who didn't get on with her in-laws, but her husband wanted her to spend biennial Christmases with his parents in Germany and an extroverted spouse expecting their introverted spouse to host or attend dinner parties on alternate weekends.