‘Tis the season for not being awkward around your future in-laws, thanks to these five guidelines — Meeting your partner’s family for the first time can be nerve-wracking — especially during the holiday season. It’s the time of year when loved ones gather in the spirit of peace and joy, and you definitely don’t want to be the guy who ruins it with an inappropriate joke or…

Breaking up is hard to do. Here’s how to handle it with dignity. — I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but no matter how in love you are, there’s an expiration date on your relationship. Being with someone forever is a myth, a unicorn, the kind of thing you always hear about but will never see because one of two things…

A co-parenting cautionary tale — I will never understand why people willingly choose to broadcast their drama to the world on social media, but by now we should all be used to DaBaby delivering chaos and bullshit to the masses. The rapper, still reeling from a controversy of his own making this summer, started the…

How the Hollywood power couple’s unorthodox style of love helped me embrace my own — In a recent interview with GQ, Will Smith confirmed long-standing rumors that he and his wife Jada Pinkett Smith were in an open, or ethically nonmonogamous (ENM), relationship. There are many nuances to ENM, and Will didn’t go into many specifics. But for anyone unfamiliar, an ENM relationship is one…

Seven ways to tell if your relationship is primarily financial — Congratulations! You’ve been dating a wonderful woman for some time now. You really like her! Things have been going well and you’ve become increasingly generous with her. Naturally, you pay for date nights and date days. On special occasions, your Amex does the electric slide in exchange for designer purses…

Giving “full mast” a whole new meaning — Sex is a love language. Carnal conversation. How you operate in the bedroom can say a lot about who you are in other respects. So… how’s your native tongue? You may not realize the coital cues you’re giving and how they might be interpreted. But, I assure you, women’s antennae…

Forget sleeping on the couch — sometimes you just need your own space — For countless relationships, casual dating eventually turns into cohabitation. A percentage of those couples find themselves married, perhaps with kids — and decades of being stuck with each other when all you really want sometimes is space and time alone. Unfortunately, modern convention dictates that couples should sleep in the…

Navigating my first throuple — Gwinnett County, Georgia, has a name that’s fun to say aloud — but it’s not as much of a fun place to live if you’re queer. Being raised in those Atlanta outskirts, I was told not to have pride for being queer. “Keep that gay stuff to yourself,” was actually…