How To Ruin Relations With Your Girlfriend’s Siblings (in one weekend)

1) When you arrive in Seattle on a Thursday night in late September, four months into chemotherapy treatment, go out to a college bar during karaoke night with your girlfriend, her brother, and his two former frat brothers. Once there, when a drunken undergrad is singing the Nine Inch Nails “Closer” as if she was the hottest woman alive, ready to bang two guys in the nearest available toilet stall (I want to fuck you like an animal), stalk over to the bar without saying a word to your girlfriend and knock back a shot and brood after it becomes apparent that her brother and his friends don’t want to leave this bar (months later, you realize you should never drink when you’re upset; drinking has never made a bad situation better).

2) Once you do leave and hit up a bar that is much more to your liking (i.e. not a place where you have to worry about the Girls Gone Wild crew showing up), drink excessively even though you really shouldn’t be drinking while undergoing chemotherapy.

3) When you’re leaving the bar and your stomach feels uh-oh-queasy, step between two parked cars and vomit, with some of it splattering on the sides of your Chuck Taylor shoes. When the brother’s annoying friend guffaws and says, “Oh dude, you drunk too much!” keep your mouth shut and allow that anger to boil inside of you instead of telling him, “I have cancer and I’m doing chemo—and my body can’t handle alcohol like it usually does.” You don’t tell him this because your girlfriend, during the flight, asked you for one thing—not to mention to her siblings that you have cancer (even though, you will find out later, after you break up, that they knew then because your girlfriend’s mother had told them, but her siblings never spoke to you or your girlfriend about it).

4) On the way over to a convenience store—your girlfriend in the passenger seat, her brother driving—smack the back of her seat after she says something trivial, which allows the brother's friends to jokingly chide her. Smack the back of her seat in an entirely passive-aggressive way and say, "Yeah, what were you thinking!" Look away when the brother whips his head back to glare at you.

5) In the convenience store parking lot, after checking your wallet for change, walk off to the Air & Water machine to see if it runs for free in Washington so that you can rinse the vomit off of your shoes. When it isn’t, since it requires fifty cents, stalk back to the car where your girlfriend and her brother are sitting. When she asks, “Were you trying to get it to work?” respond: “What does it fucking look like I was trying to do?”

6) The next day, apologize to your girlfriend but fail to apologize, that entire weekend, to her brother. Fail to recognize, until you break up that following Monday, how it must have felt for him to see his sister’s boyfriend do and say those things. Fail to see how much of an asshole you must have come across to him. Fail to understand how you would have been steaming pissed at yourself if you were in his position. Fail to understand the ramifications of all this for your relationship.

7) Even after you understand this, do not send him an e-mail apologizing for your actions until seven months later when your relationship is finally mending from that initial breakup, moving past those difficulties you had during those first months. Send that e-mail only after your girlfriend’s sister visits and you can tell she really, really dislikes you because she won’t even look at you when you’re trying to converse with her. Send that e-mail to your girlfriend’s brother and sister after you can’t find the time or place to apologize to her in person on the one night you’re hanging out together. Send those e-mails after your girlfriend’s sister and mother both yell and criticize your girlfriend for being with you, which makes her really upset, putting her in a terrible bind, straining your relationship. Send those apologies when it is much too late. By then, even though it is sincere, full of regret, your apology to her brother seems hollow—and you can’t blame him for thinking that.