Thanksgiving can be great as a couple. . .IF you're ready.

It’s the middle of October, there’s a chill in the air, and the fiscally responsible are starting to scope out plane tickets to go home for Thanksgiving before prices skyrocket. Meanwhile, the bunned up among us are wondering whether we should bring that special someone along for the ride, the turkey, and the intimate moments with family.   If your relationship is new, here are five reasons not to:

 1.  If there is any question in your mind that you will still be together in one month and eleven days.  

Maybe means no.  Do what you need to do to make sure (“where is this going?” conversation, a quick cell phone check, whatever), but make sure that you won’t be sharing pumpkin pie with some guy or girl you used to date. .. for three months . . . a month ago and are “still great friends with” (yeah, right).  The holiday could end up awkward at best, and more than likely miserable. And of course (because this is just the way things work out), Former Significant Other and your mother would probably hit it off and ask you for updates about each other for the next six years.

 2.  If your family is dramatically crazier or less pleasant than you are.

  Everyone has a crazy uncle, but I have a crazy uncle who thinks WWF wrestling is real and has called the police when it gets too rough.  Some people don’t get along with their siblings, but I have a brother who spews hate in the way only someone who dabbles in the Nation of Islam and simultaneously agrees with Rush Limbaugh (and extracts the worst elements of both) could.  Frankly, I would not wish a dinner with him on my worst enemy, let alone a new boyfriend.  If you have similar characters around the table, you’d be advised to wait until Christmas. . .or maybe after your wedding to let them show their true colors.  

3.  If you don’t have non-awkward sleeping arrangements 100% figured out.

 Thanksgiving eve is not the time to be negotiating the awkward terrain of co-sleeping under your parents’ roof.  Your date should be able to walk in your front door knowing exactly in which pre-approved room he may put his bags without setting off a To Catch A Predator-like confrontation with your dad.

 4.  If he or she is a non-outgoing or non-confident vegetarian.

 You have to have a great personality to be a vegetarian in someone else’s home without coming off as rude, stuck up, or unappreciative.  If your vegetarian (or worse, vegan) date isn’t ready to be charming and self-deprecating, laugh off comments about needing some meat on her bones, and rave endlessly about the yams, don’t bring her.  Everyone will suffer and whoever prepared the food will hate her.

 5.  If you’re still in the super cute phase.

 Thanksgiving has a lot to do with being uncomfortably full and lazy.  If you’re not cool with being these things around him or her, wait ‘till Christmas to hang out.  Try a couple of hungover mornings between now and then.  You’ll get there.

Weigh in: Add your own reasons for traveling home solo. . .

In The Conversation, Hill Harper calls it “crossing the color line.”  Recently, a couple of my girlfriends have done it.  Some with a spirit of bitterness (“I am DONE with black men.  DONE! DONE! DONE!”)  and others just with openness and a sense of adventure (“I’ll take love in whatever package it comes”), they’ve put non-black men explicitly on the table as dating options, defying longstanding statistics.

Interestingly, their biggest challenge hasn’t come in the form of cultural differences, racially uncomfortable moments, or judgment from family and friends, but in the communication of attraction itself.  I keep hearing the same refrain: “It’s so hard to tell when a white guy is attracted to me.  I just can’t read them!”

These guys are chatting at parties all night, but not asking for phone numbers or even sending facebook friend requests.  When they do call, they’re making smalltalk instead of asking for dates.  When they do go on quasi-dates, they’re not making any physical moves or explicitly expressing interest.  This is a little underwhelming to women who are used to getting “Pretty smile!” and “Hey, beautiful” and “Dinner?” from approximately 45 black men per week.

As a result, I’ve observed that the Something New plan has often been pretty anticlimactic.

Everyone knows black women are waaaayy more committed to dating black men than any other group is to dating within their race.  The familiar refrain is that it’s because we love and are committed to black men and the black community, but could it really just be that we’re clueless when it comes to interpreting the more subtle ways other men express interest? Maybe someone could cash in teaching a Hitch-like course, but specifically focused on approaching black women? Or is there something else going on?