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Carolyn Hax: New in-law loves down payment gift, but not all the house opinions

Dear Carolyn: My mother-in-law generously gave us a large monetary gift toward a down payment on a new house. We live together in a condo that I bought before we got married, but we would really like to own something together. We were thankful and promised to put it to use right away.

However, the housing market where we live is very tight, and we have not found the perfect place after a few months of looking. My mother-in-law regularly finds houses she thinks are “perfect” for us, but they are in neighborhoods we wouldn’t want to live in or are set up in ways that don’t fit our lifestyle. Her opinions are suffocating and unwelcome and are not making it easier to house-shop in a difficult market.

I want to give her money back, which will limit our options further. My husband thinks we should keep the money and just ignore her opinions, which feels wrong and is not the way I want to start off a fairly new in-law relationship. What do you think?

— Too Many Cooks

Carolyn’s been writing her advice column for two decades. Explore the archives below.

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Introducing Say More, a new advice column from the Washington Post.

Say More will tackle your questions about relationships of all types: romantic, platonic, familial. Here’s a preview of one of the first columns:

Am I having too much sex?

Dear Say More: After separating from and ultimately divorcing my husband, I’ve started to explore dating again. It’s been scary to try to do so in my early 50s, but I also realized through the process that (a) I am still hot — yay!, (b) I really missed sex when things started to go south in my marriage, and (c) I can enthusiastically consent to sex as much now as I could back in my single days.

My problem is with the dating apps and my ample free time, I can have as much sex as I want, which is a LOT (!), maybe too much (?)… I have no desire to get into a relationship again at the moment, so I’m just having casual fun, which is great until it’s not, I guess. The men are into it, I’m into it, everybody’s being safe about it, no one’s getting hurt, we’re all adults, so what’s the problem?

To be honest, the searching and the messaging and the dating take up most of my free time these days. How do I keep this newfound hobby from consuming my life, to the detriment of other areas of my life I want to develop and pursue with my newfound freedom?

— Too Much?