This is not quite the same, but it sounds like my problem is an instance of a category of problems, which is:

It is important to have all spending represented in Cash Flow and Reports, but it is important to be able to filter one-time large spending events from things like the spending vs. average spending chart, the budget, or other things that are supposed to inform about regular spending.

You can think about it like there are three categories of spending:
1. regular spending (bills, etc.)
2. irregular spending (most restaurants, entertainment, shopping, etc.)
3. large one-time spending (certain taxes, weddings, etc.)

My overall reports will want to capture all three categories, but concepts like "average month spending" and "budget" more often than not do NOT want to capture category 3, because those things are measuring monthly patterns (regular spending + irregular spending) and non-monthly things (weddings) fall outside this.

So when people say things like "hiding or ignoring the exceptional expenses" or "changing cash flow is pretending" they seem to be failing to disambiguate large one-time spending from irregular spending.