‘At a time when Russia is trying to spread gloom and darkness … it is important to create something beautiful,’ says combat medic Tetiana as she weds army captain Oleksandr
In the bright early afternoon sun of Kramatorsk’s central and now ironically named Peace Square, Tetiana, in her bridal dress, and Oleksandr, in his military uniform, are holding up their phones at the ready. It is a public holiday, 35 years since Ukraine’s declaration of independence, and a popular day for a wedding, though the open-air location is not obviously ideal.
Three days earlier, Kramatorsk, perhaps Vladimir Putin’s principal target, was formally designated part of the combat zone, the front inching towards the city as Russia closes in on the parts of the Donetsk region it does not control. It is quiet at 2pm though; the ceremony brief. There are no guests other than the Guardian team.
Tetiana and Oleksandr pose for a wedding photo on Mount Karachun, near Sloviansk, the scene of fierce fighting in 2014.
I need to buy a smart television big enough to read ransom notes – and I’m taking no prisoners
Fourteen years ago, I received a text from my eldest son claiming he’d just found the TV face down on the sitting room floor, destroyed. I didn’t entirely buy his theory about the dogs being responsible – I discovered a football lying suspiciously near the crime scene – but it was a problem I needed to solve before my wife returned from a business trip.
That was the last time I bought a new television. It still works, but it’s small by today’s standards, to the extent that it’s impossible to read the contents of a ransom note held by a detective in a drama. As TVs have expanded, the ransom notes have got smaller; I often have to pause the programme, get up and put my nose to the screen.
Editor’s note, August 23, 8 am ET: We’re bringing you some of our best-loved Your Mileage May Vary columns while Sigal Samuel is on parental leave. The one below was originally published in February.
This unconventional advice column offers you a unique framework for thinking through moral dilemmas. It’s based on value pluralism: the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Submit your own question here.
I’m a woman in my 30s and I think I want to have a child, but I have a health condition that makes it harder (not impossible) to get pregnant than for most women. It would also make pregnancy more uncomfortable and physically disfiguring than it is for many pregnant people. It wouldn’t be permanently disabling, but the physical effects would be bad enough that I really don’t want to be pregnant.
I’m fortunate enough that I can probably afford to get a surrogate through a reputable agency. But surrogacy is frowned upon and often considered unethical. Long ago, I knew someone who said she loved the idea of being pregnant and providing gestation as a service to other people, so maybe in theory, it is possible for someone to freely choose to be a surrogate without being coerced by financial need? But even if it could be done ethically, there’s such a stigma around it and I fear being judged by friends and family. There seems to be a sense that there’s something wrong, unnatural, selfish, or unwomanly in wanting to have a biological child but not wanting your own body to be the vessel for it.
Plus, it’s not like I’m the only person in the world for whom pregnancy would suck. I think my experience probably would be worse than average, but pregnancy is just an unpleasant thing overall so I don’t think I can claim it would be so uniquely bad for me that I’m justified in wanting to pay to use someone else’s body. I’d love your help with this.
Dear Really Don’t Want To Be Pregnant,
There are some ethical questions about surrogacy that it’s genuinely worth asking, and some that I don’t want you to devote another second to — so let’s start there.
As you said, there’s a cultural stigma around not wanting to turn your body into a vessel for childbearing — it’s deemed “wrong” or “unwomanly.” But that idea is pure garbage. The idea that there’s some “proper” way to be a woman is a patriarchal construct; anyone who tells you you’re “unwomanly” for not wanting to gestate is reflecting sexist expectations that women’s bodies should be available for reproductive labor.
So to the extent that your fear of being judged is about that, please don’t give it another thought. But of course, there are real moral questions that surrogacy brings up.
I’ll tell you right off the bat that I do think surrogacy can be ethically justifiable in some situations. First, it helps that surrogacy is not one monolithic thing. There’s a big distinction between commercial surrogacy (where you pay someone to carry a baby) and altruistic surrogacy (the unpaid version, where the surrogate carries the baby as a literal labor of love). It’s not easy to find an altruistic surrogate — after all, pregnancy is dangerous business — but I agree with your intuition that if you’re lucky enough to know someone willing to volunteer for the role, opting for that is a good way to avoid most concerns about commodification or exploitation.
Key takeaways
Unethical surrogacy industries are booming in places like Georgia, Ukraine, and Cyprus. But there’s a moral difference between hiring a surrogate there versus in the US.
When someone can get pregnant but doesn’t want to for psychological reasons, their case is often deemed “elective.” But a mental health need can also be a medical need.
“Epistemic injustice” refers to a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower. People who say they know they have a mental health need that makes pregnancy too risky often aren’t taken seriously, but that’s starting to change.
Within commercial surrogacy, a second distinction has to do with where the surrogate lives. There’s a moral difference between hiring a surrogate in a developing country and hiring one in, say, the US. In countries like Georgia, for example, surrogacy agencies have been known to recruit at domestic violence shelters — some women see surrogacy as the only way to win financial freedom from an abusive spouse. Ukraine, Cyprus, and several others are also known to have ethically problematic surrogacy industries.
But American surrogates are typically not low-income; they’re usually middle-classwhite women with husbands and kids of their own, and they have other economic opportunities available to them. The better surrogacy agencies screen out poor women, who are at risk of coercion. That empirical context means there’s less (though not zero) potential for exploitation in the US, compared with international surrogacy.
Another reason I think surrogacy can be ethically justifiable is that for many, many people, the urge to have kids — including ones who are biologically related to them — feels like a need and not just a want.
Many opponents of surrogacy argue that nobody has a “right” to a biological child, so if you can’t or don’t want to be pregnant, too bad. And those opponents are right that nobody has an absolute right to have a baby — otherwise, the state would be obligated to ensure surrogates, egg donors, and sperm donors were made available regardless of their own willingness to participate! But people may still have a qualified right — the kind of right that we generally honor but that can be restricted to protect the interests of others.
When it comes to people who are physically unable to create a biological child — when they have what doctors call a “medical indication” — I think the qualified right to have a kid means that surrogacy can be ethical, provided it meets certain criteria like informed consent.
But your situation is trickier because it’s not impossible for you to get pregnant — it’s more that, for certain reasons, you don’t want to. Typically, your case would be referred to as “elective surrogacy.” Some professionals will refuse to arrange surrogacy if they deem it elective rather than medically indicated.
And yet, doctors are increasingly recognizing that the line between “medically indicated” and “elective” is not so tidy.
While elective surrogacy is often associated with vanity — it brings to mind a celebrity who doesn’t want to be pregnant because she doesn’t want to “mess up” her figure — it’s not like everyone in the elective camp is there for cosmetic reasons.
What about someone who could get pregnant but is deathly afraid of giving birth because she had a traumatic experience — like, say, her best friend dying in childbirth? Or what about someone who’s trans and who physically could carry a pregnancy, but who knows it would cause such gender dysphoria that there’s a risk of serious psychological harm? Shouldn’t a mental health need be considered a type of medical need?
These are not hypothetical experiences — real people have testified to them — but they often haven’t been taken seriously as medical needs. I suspect that these people have endured what the contemporary philosopher Miranda Fricker calls “epistemic injustice.”
Epistemic injustice refers to “a wrong done to someone specifically in their capacity as a knower.” When society denies someone the credibility to assess their own life experience, or discounts an important part of that experience because of a gap in our collective interpretive resources, that can be an example of epistemic injustice. I think people who fall in between medical categories are too often at risk of being wronged in this way, and I don’t want to see that happen to you.
So I want to acknowledge that I don’t know what health condition you’re referring to when you say you have a condition that would “make pregnancy more uncomfortable and physically disfiguring than it is for many pregnant people.” Since I don’t know the details, I’d encourage you to ask yourself: How much more uncomfortable? How much more disfiguring? And how heavy and lasting a toll would that discomfort or disfigurement take on your overall well-being?
Only you can really try to answer that last question, because the same effects can land differently for different people, depending on how well-resourced we are financially, socially, psychologically, and even spiritually.
Once you’ve thought about how big and enduring the risk of harm is to you, try asking yourself this: Is the risk to you so much greater than the risk to a woman of average health that you feel comfortable transferring the risk of pregnancy and childbirth onto her?
Some people will tell you that question is irrelevant. They will say that the only value that matters here is autonomy — yours and the potential surrogate’s — and if you and she both consent to a surrogacy contract, and she is not coerced into it by financial desperation, then that’s that!
But there may be another important value at stake here: justice.
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As far as I can tell, your case is in a gray area — surrogacy is neither obviously “medically indicated” nor obviously “elective” based on the information you shared. If you ask yourself, “Do I think there’s a significant risk that carrying a child would significantly harm me?” and you answer “Yes!” — then some doctors would say surrogacy is medically indicated. But if the answer you feel bubbling up is, “Well…no, not really,” then you may be closer to the “elective” side of the spectrum. And then I think it becomes reasonable to inquire whether it feels fair to ask another woman to take on the considerable risks of pregnancy and childbirth.
You wrote of pregnancy, “I don’t think I can claim it would be so uniquely bad for me that I’m justified in wanting to pay to use someone else’s body.” That suggests that you currently see yourself as more in the elective camp. I urge you to give yourself the space to really interrogate that with an equal measure of honesty and self-compassion. If honesty compels you to say you don’t feel justified in putting someone else’s body in harm’s way in a situation where she otherwise wouldn’t be, then maybe you’ve got your answer.
But if you’re discounting the risk of psychological harm to yourself because you don’t think that “counts” as real need, please know that mental health is just as medically legitimate as physical health. And if you talk to a medical professional about the option of surrogacy, please talk to more than one so you’re less at risk of getting boxed into a category that doesn’t capture you right.
At the end of the day, perhaps none of us can be a perfect interpreter even of ourselves. But you get to be the interpreter-in-chief — with both the power and responsibility that implies.
Bonus: What I’m reading
This horrifying New York Times Magazine story about the global fertility industry captures why I do think it’s unethical to work with a surrogacy agency in a country like Georgia. These surrogates are not in a position to give informed consent.
“Is Cognitive Dissonance Actually a Thing?” asked Shayla Love in the New Yorker recently. I now feel cognitive dissonance about all the times I thought I was feeling cognitive dissonance!
Don’t miss “I’m Kenyan. I Don’t Write Like ChatGPT. ChatGPT Writes Like Me.” This essay by Marcus Olang’, explaining why his writing is often mistaken for AI slop, is both surprising and maddening. Turns out it’s really hard to not write in the Queen’s English when an entire colonial legacy has drilled that style into you from birth.
Make the victim feel safe and able to talk at their own pace, and consider any danger the perpetrator currently presents to younger members of the family
A young adult woman in our family has recently shared that her older male cousin once touched her inappropriately when she was aged six and he was aged 12. This happened 18 years ago. Then a second incident allegedly occurred eight years later.
She shared the story with her parents this year and the information was then shared with her cousin and other family members. He stated that he cannot recall either incident.
It’s the act that’s defined a generation, an experience so common it’s become memeified: canceling plans. Bailing is a litmus test of sorts; who and what events you back out of says a lot about you as a person. Are you the type who commits and only bails when absolutely necessary? Or are you a frequent flake looking to change their ways? (No judgment here: The occasional canceling of plans is acceptable, and you shouldn’t feel guilty about it.)
Call it a byproduct of overscheduling, a facet of introversion, or a condition of mild social anxiety, but bailing is a popular tool in our social arsenal. Regularly deployed mere hours ahead of a previously scheduled engagement we’ve come to dread, canceling was once considered a get-out-of-obligation-free card. In recent years, though, general consensus around bowing out has seemed to shift, perhaps spurred by the growing attention paid to the dangers of social isolation or simply because being consistently bailed on feels like garbage. All of which is to say, canceling requires much more tact than simply rattling off a text 30 minutes before you’re supposed to meet up with a friend.
There are, of course, valid reasons to skip a movie night (you’re sick, for instance) and very few excuses good enough to justify not showing up to a wedding you RSVP’d to. But rather than giving in to the impulse to flake when the urge hits, it’s important to make a more considered choice based not on how much you think you’ll enjoy a social event but on the consequences of skipping.
Consider this your canceling checklist, a bailing thought experiment, a toolkit for bowing out. Taken together, the following five questions will help inform your decision on whether to skip a social engagement.
Who are you bailing on?
Before flaking, take your audience into consideration — namely, whether this is a person you’d be comfortable inconveniencing. Because we’ve already invested significant time and energy into close relationships with family and friends, we’re more likely to want to preserve those relationships by upholding plans. This past history can influence how comfortable we are with bailing.
“How important is this person?” Julian Givi, an associate professor of marketing at West Virginia University, tells Vox. “Do I value this person’s friendship, or are they someone that I’m okay with canceling on? Have they canceled on me?”
Close friends are complicated. In a study, William Chopik, an associate professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, found that participants reported being most upset when a best friend canceled on them, compared with when a good friend or acquaintance canceled. Ironically, though, that closeness gives us latitude. People also tend to be more forgiving when close friends cancel on them, Chopik says. By virtue of knowing someone so intimately, we understand the constraints on their time and can intuit they’d only cancel for a good reason. It’s also safe to assume we’ll likely see them again soon, too.
We may feel less obligated to those we don’t know well. The participants in Chopik’s study said they’d only be “a little” upset if an acquaintance canceled plans. So, if this is someone you don’t know very well, and don’t necessarily plan to, you might feel more comfortable ditching them.
It’s okay to bail if…
It’s a casual event…
…With someone who won’t mind (i.e., someone you know super well or not that well at all).
You offer an honest excuse.
You don’t cancel last minute.
You or your kid is sick.
A genuine conflict arises.
And you reschedule the plans.
What’s the occasion?
A monthly game night and a funeral don’t carry the same significance. You can probably guess which one is acceptable to skip. The formality of the event will give you a signal on whether it’s alright to bail. “People are more likely to cancel informal things,” Chopik says.
It’s fine to bail on a coffee hang, but think twice before ditching a wedding, funeral, retirement party, or other event of importance where someone might’ve paid money for you to be there, even if you don’t necessarily deem it a monumental occasion. “If it’s super important to this person, I’ll go, I’ll move mountains, I’ll traverse seas, I’ll travel as much as possible or inconvenience myself a lot,” Chopik says. “But then if it’s more informal or you don’t know them very well and the burden to get there is high, those things are the things that’ll lead you to likely cancel.”
While it may seem acceptable to ghost on a group occasion — who would notice you’re missing anyway? — your absence might alter the vibe. Take a bachelor or bachelorette party: If five of seven invitees back out, the celebration has shifted from a group affair into an intimate gathering. “Those last two left are in such a weird situation where it’s like, now I don’t want to go as much because it’s a smaller bachelor party,” Givi says. Your bailing signals to the stragglers that the event isn’t fun enough for everyone to attend.
How annoying is it for you to attend?
How often do we schedule a hangout only to remember later how much of a burden it’ll be to get there? The costs — financial, logistical, and energetic — all factor heavily into which plans we see through. A long and expensive commute for a short, casual hang when you’re already exhausted may not seem worth it.
The problem is, we’re bad at predicting how much fun we’ll have. We tend to overestimate the costs and underestimate how enjoyable the event might be, which leads us to cancel plans. In reality, our worst fears almost never materialize. “If you’re really anxious about it, it’s probably not going to be as bad as you expect. And that’s a pretty consistent finding,” Ella Moeck, a lecturer at Adelaide University in South Australia, tells Vox.
Everyone’s bar for what constitutes “too far” or “too much effort” varies, though. Your canceling over a 15-minute drive across town runs the risk of pissing off a friend who doesn’t consider that a hassle at all.
Concerning money, when people have already paid up front, they’re more likely to stick with plans. In that case, canceling would create more problems instead of quelling them. “That’s why anytime I’m planning anything, especially if it involves money, I make people Venmo me weeks in advance,” Givi says, for, say, a show or concert.
Don’t even think about canceling if…
It’s an important event, like a wedding, funeral, baby shower, or other event of importance.
Everyone else is bailing.
Something better came up.
You’re lying to get out of it.
You (or the host) paid for you to be there.
You think you’re going to have a bad time.
What’s your excuse?
In his study on canceling plans, Chopik found the most reasonable excuses for canceling were being sick, dealing with a family emergency or childcare issue, or having a work obligation. The worst justifications were mentioning something better came up, not being interested in the activity, and straight-up lying.
Surprisingly, participants weren’t sympathetic when someone canceled because of financial constraints. Chopik suspects the framing matters more than anything else: “I bet if you communicated that ‘I would’ve loved to go to this concert and spend time with you…but I just really can’t squeeze this right now,’ that’s a way more understanding excuse than being like, ‘That’s too expensive. I’m not going,’” he says.
The excuses themselves carry weight, but what they signal is also crucial. By telling a friend you’re bailing on them because you’d rather hang out with someone else, you’re communicating that they might not matter to you. But if you provide clarity about why you can’t make it and try to reschedule, that’s a sign you value the relationship. “If it’s just like, ‘I’m tired,’ come on, you committed already,” Givi says.
What are the consequences?
Canceling plans comes with potential fallout. Bowing out of a recurring group event isn’t likely to ruffle many feathers, but sending a “Sorry, can’t make it!” text minutes before a dinner reservation with out-of-town family members might not fly. Think about the position you’d leave the other party in, Givi says. “You could imagine it’s probably more acceptable the more time that there is before the event, the less meaningful the event, the less it’s putting them in a bind,” he says.
But recent research suggests these social consequences may be overblown. In an unpublished study, researchers found cancelers tend to overestimate how upset others are when they back out and underestimate how much canceling impacted others. “Realizing that canceled-on persons are more understanding than expected can reduce social stress,” the authors write.
However, this isn’t permission to back out of events with abandon. If you do leave people in a tough spot — they need to cover your concert ticket, they’re scrambling to find another way to get to an event you said you’d drive to — be prepared for scorned parties to share some choice words about you behind your back. “There’s this social penalty, too, that sometimes if you bail, people aren’t crazy about that,” Givi says.
Being in a relationship with someone — friends, family, romantic partners — requires us to honor our commitments. To be there. If we fail to uphold that simple promise, the invites will inevitably dry up. Who wants to keep making plans with someone who seemingly doesn’t value them? How can a friendship blossom when you don’t see one another?
“If you want a friendship, you have to honor those commitments and show up,” Chopik says. “You have to honor the non-important stuff.”
If you’ve found yourself living communally at one point or another, you know that sharing space comes with its quirks and potential headaches. Who gets to use the only bathroom first in the morning? Who’s responsible for taking out the trash? Do you actually need to be friends with your roommates?
Being a better roommate or family member isn’t just about minimizing daily annoyance — it’s about transforming your relationships and overall well-being. According to the 2025 World Happiness Report, a household of about four members is predictive of higher happiness levels and better relationships. Older adults who cohabitate are more satisfied living with others, and have higher well-being and happiness than those who live alone, research suggests.
Whether you live with a romantic partner, roommates, parents, grandparents, or other family members, experts (including therapists, authors, friendship experts, and researchers) — who have firsthand experience of their own — have concrete tips for how to communicate, declutter, and split finances with the people you share space with.
Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.
Communicate, communicate, communicate
“I will live and die on the hill of communication being the most important aspect of successfully living with other adults. That comes from my experience living with my parents in adulthood, and from working on my anthology about communal living and interdependence. If good communication can ultimately lead to progress, any challenges that come up around logistics, habits, preferences — the things people tend to think are most important to consider when sharing space with others — can be addressed. Understanding that living with other adults doesn’t require perfect compatibility, but rather a shared willingness to work at it, opens up so many doors.”
Accept everyone’s unique (and probably wrong) ways of doing chores
“How someone loads the dishwasher is the biggest differing personalities button-pusher ever. Know this. And accept it.”
—Lauren Palmer Jansen, communications coordinator for L’Arche GWDC, a community where people with and without intellectual disabilities live and work together
Get regular meetings on the calendar
“I always recommend having a designated time — weekly, monthly — for house meetings. It feels odd initially because we believe that everything with friends should happen organically. But when you’re sharing something as sacred as a home, you have to be aligned on what creates a safe and joyful experience. This also helps with any anxiety you might feel about bringing up hard topics, like washing the dishes or inviting guests over, because you have the security of knowing that there’s dedicated time to check in.”
“In a shared home, peace isn’t about square footage, but it’s often helped by each person having one space that’s truly their own. That single boundary, like a door you can close, is often what makes the togetherness feel like a choice you’re happy to continue making.”
—Juli Ford, multigenerational living expert and founder of Home After 50
Discuss decluttering
“Clutter is a common household stressor, and our research suggests one reason why is that people living together buy things independently but hesitate to get rid of things independently, often over-involving each other in disposal decisions. Our proposed fix: Set disposal rules up front, the same way you might set buying rules. Let each person freely toss items only they use, or create a ‘staging area’ where items sit briefly before leaving the house. People can weigh in if they want, without letting clutter linger indefinitely.”
—Peggy Liu, professor of marketing at the University of Pittsburgh School of Business, and Theresa Kwon, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Hong Kong Business School
Agree to the “uncomfortable rule”
“Roommates who want to get along will find a way to get along. The second you stop wanting to get along, the dynamics shift. Agree to the uncomfortable rule. The uncomfortable rule says that if anyone is uncomfortable, you all agree to talk about the problem and listen. This way no one needs to hide the truth when uncomfortable situations come up. This also makes it easier to have conversations instead of confrontations.”
“Don’t divide housework equally, divide it explicitly and equitably. In an intergenerational home, people have different amounts of time, energy, and physical capacity, so the goal isn’t identical workloads but a shared agreement everyone considers fair. Use a shared system to make the work visible. Track what gets done and by whom, then check in regularly before invisible labor turns into resentment.”
—Peter Askjær Drejer, founder of Tody, a chore managing app
Get clear about money up front
“From a financial therapist perspective, one of the biggest sources of conflict in shared living situations is the meaning people attach to money, fairness, and responsibility. Talk about expectations from the very beginning. You want to reduce the possibility of resentment forming, which can often happen if there were no conversations early on discussing what is or is not acceptable behavior and what is expected of everyone within the shared space. Most often people will wait until they’re already frustrated to discuss sharing finances or household responsibilities. But it is highly unproductive to engage in a conversation when it starts emotionally charged. Instead, schedule regular check-in conversations where you discuss not only who pays for what, but also whether the current arrangement still feels fair.”
—Kiki Jacobson, licensed mental health counselor specializing in financial therapy
Find the good in tough situations
“My best advice is to see good intentions everywhere, even if you’re experiencing bad outcomes. For the most part, no one wants to be a bad roommate, so if someone is acting in a way that’s driving you insane, you want to approach the situation as if both of you want to fix the situation. Offer help rather than accusations. And, importantly, sometimes you can help teach others how to show up to a conversation by modeling good behavior. Sometimes people just don’t know how to have a mature, helpful conversation because they’ve never done it before. Staying regulated goes a long way.”
“Every recurring argument is an invitation to redesign the system rather than blame the person. Stop asking who’s right and start asking, How could we make this easier? The happiest households aren’t conflict-free — they’re creative. They develop rhythms, rituals, and agreements that work for the people actually living there rather than trying to squeeze themselves into someone else’s idea of how a household should function. One person cooks while the other cleans. Mornings become a quiet zone. Everyone gets an hour alone before reconnecting. Creativity is often a far better relationship skill than compromise.”
—Jane Garnett, licensed marriage and family therapist
Invest in a white noise machine
“Get an industrial strength white noise-maker. The app on your phone won’t cut it. It needs to be the kind you find in therapy offices so you can drown out at least some of the annoying sounds around you. Keep it on all day, not just for sleeping. Buy two if needed.”
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