If You & Your Partner Disagree On Easter Or Passover Plans, Here's How To Cope

This year, I'll be spending Easter with my boyfriend, John Cadbury. Just lying! John Cadbury is the founder of Cadbury's and he died May 11, 1889. I'll only be spending Easter with my bearded British bae in that I will be pounding a bag of Mini Eggs on April 1. At the risk of sounding like Augustus Gloop, chocolate is the only part of Easter that I celebrate. If, like me, you're not all that religious, but if, unlike me, you have an actual living, breathing, real partner who is religious, you might be considering celebrating Easter with your boyfriend's family this year.

If you're dating someone Jewish, Passover begins on March 30, so you're not off the hook either. A traditional 15-step Seder is a time commitment, and spending that much time with your partner's family can be intimidating, especially in a new relationship. Alternatively, if you are religious, you might want to invite your partner to your Seder — or to your egg hunt celebrating Jesus' resurrection from the dead. (Yes, I had to look that up.)

If you're internally debating if you and your partner are ready to celebrate these holidays together, do your best to be honest with each other. Of course it's nice that your partner wants to spend a holiday with you, but it's also perfectly fine not to be ready to do that.

Let's start with the most important consideration: have you met each others' families yet? In high school, meeting someone's parents was a necessary step to being able to take them to the mall in your car, but as adults who date, meeting the parents is major. It takes planning! I feel like you can date as an adult for a year without meeting your partner's parents for the simple fact that life is busy. And it's especially tricky if they live out of town.

If you haven't met each others' parents yet and are considering going home with your partner for Easter or Passover, you're going to be meeting a whole family. Aunts, cousins, grandparents, who knows. This is an adorable sign of how serious your partner feels about your relationship, but make sure things aren't moving too fast for you.

If meeting the entire extended family at once doesn't concern you because you have one of those effusive and easy-going personas that allows you to talk to anyone, maybe heading home with your partner for Easter or Passover means traveling with them for the first time.

Traveling together is another major milestone. Traveling brings out our "rising" personalities — travel-me and regular-me are two different people. I love to explore and stay active when I travel, but I've traveled with friends who would be happy to watch Netflix in bed — we don't travel together anymore. Obviously, a new romantic relationship has even higher stakes.

If traveling together for the first time is your worry, I'd consider a few things: how far are you going? A two-hour flight is actually a lot more manageable than a six-hour road trip — plus you can each listen your own podcasts. Are you worried about where you can go number two? This is always a matter of concern when traveling with someone you're attracted to, but I promise you'll figure it out. (Hotel lobby bathrooms!)

And if travel feels too burdensome for whatever reason (maybe it'll cost too much or you're not ready to take that step in your relationship yet, for example), tell your partner. "I don't think I can make this trip happen," is a completely appropriate response.

Another worry you might have could revolve around the fact that you're never celebrated Easter and/or Passover before. As one who has attended celebrations for both, I can promise you that if your partner gives you a brief rundown and if you were truly invited by the family, no one is going to give you a hard time when you don't know beyond the blessing over the wine.

At the end of the day, if you're really worried about how to celebrate or not celebrate Easter or Passover with your partner, you're feeling one of these two things: You're nervous because it's always nerve-wracking to meet a family you want to impress and maybe you're just a bit slow to take the big relationship steps because of your past. Or you're not sure you want to take things so seriously with your partner, and are feeling uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating a holiday together.

It's OK to take things slow! It's also OK to go to an Easter dinner and not know what Easter is about and mess up the crossing of the hands over the heart thing! (Or not do it at all.) When it comes big steps in a relationship, listen to your gut, because it's always right.