Home for the holidays can be a diarrhea-stressful time for anyone, even more so if you're at your boyfriend's home for the first time. Ever since Pocahontas showed up to John Smith's Thanksgiving with a tub of undercooked buffalo stew and a cheap box of white wine, we have seen it happen: rolling up to your partner's holiday dinner mentally unprepared and looking like a fool.

Our own families drive us crazy, but we've had a lifetime of experience and therapy to figure out a way to get through it. It's a world of crazy, but it's your world of crazy, and you've mastered a way to navigate it - enter through back door 40 minutes late, don't hug Uncle Jerry 'The Perv',compliment sensitive Cousin Ruthy or be prepared to hear about it for the next six months.

With dating comes the territory of familial expansion; and if you've lost this years game of rock-paper-scissor you're going to his place for Thanksgiving. With zero practice! And while yes, there isn't the history emotional scarring and family expectations, like in your own tribe, rest assured there IS reason for panic.

Does his family greet each other with a kiss on the cheek, both cheeks, or even... the lips?! Do they throw their jackets on the nearest couch like you guys, or are they to be neatly hung up? Maybe you're supposed to bring your jacket up to Uncle Eddies room - the eerily musty one that hasn't changed since he went off to Vietnam in '71?

And what do you bring? Seasonal wine? Expensive Scotch? Is his Dad a recovering alcoholic? Do you bring a pumpkin pie only to find out that your treading on his mother's traditional dish? What happens before dinner? Are they straight up Americana - Macy's Day parade types? Do they chug beer and talk football? Maybe they have their own traditions you should be prepared for: round robin skeet shooting and competitive venison slicing. I'm just saying, Be-ware.

And during the actual meal... Are they a bunch of fancy lads and each use 5 Spoons and 3 forks? How does your table etiquette compare? Will they roll their eyes if you inadvertently slurp your cauliflower soup? Are any adults deaf or blind? Any grandparent missing a leg or have Tourettes? Find out! Are they Right Wing zealots? Off the grid Left-wingers? Do they discuss Brad Paisley's lyrics and CMA gossip or do they wrestle the finer points of Proust's: Le Temps Retrouve?

These are questions that must, must be answered before getting within 50 miles of your Thanksgiving meal. Know these things before hand. Will you offer to do the dishes or is that tacky? Will you sit on your fat ass and doze off or will this be seen as ungrateful and sluggish?

How 'bout after dinner events? Does everyone sit around the leather sectional and watch TBS? Do they pull out a banjo and whip through a Peter, Paul and Mary song book? Is charades in the cards? Or prepared monologues?

I implore you to spend these next few days, doing your homework. Take your boyfriend by the face, and interrogate him on the do's don'ts, must's, and no's of the day. Get quizzed in the car. Rehearse. Treat it like a social obstacle course, because that's what it is. Find out the 101 to their world, and worry about having fun next year. There should be one turkey at that dinner, and now, it ain't gonna be you.