(Nick Galifianakis for The Post) | Carolyn Hax is away. The following is from Jan. 13, 2008. Dear Carolyn: I've been married almost 10 years. Just before Christmas I got really sick — flat-on-my-back, fever, taking-antibiotics sick. I was pretty much down for the count for more than a week. My husband had emailed some work associates a week before and suggested that a bunch of people get together at a bar downtown for New Year's Eve. No RSVP, no idea who would or wouldn't show up, just a general, "Hey, let's all get together and party" kind of thing. By 5 on New Year's Eve, I still wasn't well enough to contemplate going. I told him he'd have to go without me (never thinking he'd actually go) — although I couldn't see why it would be so important to him, considering he had no idea whether anyone he knew would even show up at that bar that night. He went anyway, saying, "I don't want to be known as the guy who suggested everyone get together and then didn't show up myself." Essentially, he wants people to be able to take him at his word. So off he went, and I stayed home on the couch with old movie reruns. He never saw the irony of "being true to his word" when it came to staying home with me. Is it too much to ask that he choose to stay home with me rather than run off to a bar just in case some of his friends from work showed up? — Irritated |