Sarah,

Considering that I’m non-religious and if I were to be religious, I’d be Jewish, Christmas isn’t usually an issue. However, this year, I’m having a problem. I asked my boyfriend if we were going to spend Christmas together. Rather than answering me, he was evasive and just said something about having to speak to his mother. That was last week. Since then, I’ve accepted an invitation to join a friend and his family for Christmas dinner. Now all of a sudden, I’m invited to my boyfriend’s Christmas dinner and he is adamant that I attend.

Here’s my dilemma: I have plenty of time to tell my friend thank you, but I’m unable to attend his family’s dinner, but truthfully I don’t want to.I love my boyfriend, I was hurt that he didn’t invite me to his house sooner, but I’ve already said yes to my friend and I would like to go. I offered to meet up with my boyfriend later in the afternoon, but he says that he will be hurt and angry if I go to my other friend’s house. I don’t know if I’m being stubborn, or if he’s just being jealous in insisting I go with him. What do you think?

Thanks,
Christmas Spiritless

Dear Spiritless,

Your boyfriend is hurt and angry, when he dicked around for days before getting back to you about where you should plan to spend Christmas dinner?Whatever.One of my exes use to pull this constantly – not including me until the last minute, then pouting when I’d gone ahead with other plans – and you shouldn’t reward his inconsiderate behavior by caving.

Explain to your boyfriend, pointedly, that you would love to have spent Christmas with him, but you’ve already accepted another invitation, and you hope that in the future he’ll plan ahead better.If he keeps up with the hurt-and-angry business, remind him that you didn’t exactly appreciate having to wait a week for him to confer upon you the “great honor” of attending his family’s shindig.Not to make a huge deal of it, but his bratty and belated insistence that you drop an invitation you’ve already accepted is rude – worse, it suggests that he doesn’t count you as an automatic priority, but expects you to count him as one.If y’all haven’t dated for long, he’s got no reason to get his panties in a wad over this, and if you have, he should have invited you to dinner as a matter of course.

Short answer?You’ll meet him in the afternoon or not at all, and if he doesn’t like it, he can go suck a sugar plum.

[12/21/00]

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