have your cake and eat it

querer la chancha y los veinte, todo a la vez

• You can't have your cake and eat it — pick the freedom OR the salary.
• She wants to travel constantly but also have a stable home life. You can't have your cake and eat it.
• He was upset about the long hours but also didn't want to lose his high-paying job. It's a classic case of wanting to have your cake and eat it.

This idiom is used to describe situations where someone wants to enjoy two mutually exclusive benefits, like having advantages without facing the usual drawbacks. It is common in colloquial speech and in discussions about personal decisions.

Spanish speakers might incorrectly say 'wanting to have your cake and eat it' as 'wanting to have your pig and the twenty', which is not English. They should be aware that English speakers use the cake metaphor, not the pig metaphor.

• burn (your) bridges
  quemar las naves, cerrar puertas
• preaching to the choir
  predicar a los conversos
• the best-laid plans of mice and men
  el hombre propone y Dios dispone
• in the thick of it
  en plena vorágine, en lo más intenso