SAVAGE LOVE

BY DAN SAVAGE

DEAR SOT: I’d like to speak to your boyfriend, SOT, so I could ask him the obvious followup question (OFUQ): Why does it feel awkward?

Assuming your boyfriend is into you and wants to keep seeing you, his answer to the OFUQ could go something like this: “We’ve been seeing each other for less than a year, and to me it feels like it’s too soon to be spending the holidays with each other’s families — it’s also too soon for us to be calling each other ‘partner.’ So let’s take a deep breath, stay calm and keep being wonderful to each other. If we’re still together this time next year then, yeah, we’ll do Thanksgiving with your folks or mine.”

It’s also a possibility — possibility ≠ certainty — that your boyfriend doesn’t want to keep seeing you and is operating/dating under the mistaken-but-alltoo-common belief that it’s kinder to string someone along through the holidays. He may not want to spend Thanksgiving/Xmess/NYE with your folks because doing so will be held up as evidence of his lying jerkiness after he dumps you on Nov. 27 or Dec. 26 or Jan. 2.

My advice: Take “it’s awkward” for an answer, tell him you’d like to have dinner on Saturday, and don’t make a big deal out of his reluctance to spend Thursday at your mom’s and Friday at your dad’s. It could mean nothing at all, SOT, or it could mean something dire. You’ll just have to wait and see.

This question originally appeared on Nov. 24, 2015.