Look for a new man in the new year

DOM SAYS:

Oh dear. This is all a little bit sad, and precisely what you don’t need in the run-up to Christmas. I think the first thing to say is that you haven’t been together that long. eight months, while not a trifle, is not exactly long-term. Yet. So you might want to cut your chap a little bit of slack.

It’s perfectly understandable that he’s intending to spend Christmas day with his family. But it’s also perfectly understandable that you’d like him to visit yours the next day!

Is he outgoing and sociable, or is he very shy? If he’s quiet, then I can see how coming to your family for Christmas might be a little daunting. a slightly lame excuse, perhaps, but it is daunting nonetheless.

also, you don’t say how old he is, and I wonder if he — or his family and friends — might be a little set in their ways.

Plenty of people have Christmas traditions which stretch back decades, and woe betide the son/ brother/ uncle who disrupts the festive family apple cart. That said, I think it’s fair to say that the thunderbolt probably hasn’t struck for him.

If he was head- over- heels, he’d be delighted to be invited to your mother’s house — terrified, perhaps, but still delighted.

The first Christmas Steph and I were together, three months after we met, I flew out to Brussels to spend the whole thing with my prospective in-laws despite having just had my appendix removed.

Wild horses wouldn’t have kept me away, because I wanted to make Steph happy.

So, I would be slightly wary if I were you. I’m not sure he’s making quite enough effort. however, there’s nothing to say that a slow-burn romance can’t work out just as well in the end. This chap may well see the error of his ways in time.

What you mustn’t do is overreact and dump him now, slap-bang in the middle of it all.

I’ve been there, too — and it was ghastly.

a few years before I met Steph, I drove about two hours to see my then girlfriend on Christmas eve, only for her to chuck me almost as soon as I arrived. That was a miserable drive home.

Far better to grin and bear it until January. his reluctance to spend the 31st with you also rings alarm bells, but you never know, he may simply not realise it’s important to you.

Be cool, be calm — and keep your eye out for a new man in the new year!