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" As it turns out you can go home again, especially when it&amp;#039;s ninety degrees in New York City in June. But if you&amp;#039;ll be piling onto the Metro North to play weekend house guest with the new gentleman you&amp;#039;ve been toting around town, you&amp;#039;ll first need to consider: will you be sleeping in separate bedrooms? History\u2014in polite circles up and down the Harlem and New Haven lines\u2014suggests that a man and woman should never share a bed until they are married and that to behave otherwise risks an indelible blight on the reputation of both the woman and those that are closely related to her. As a Manhattanite who once shared a 350-square-foot studio apartment with her then-boyfriend (sorry, Mom!), I can&amp;#039;t pretend to agree. In this city and in this economy it isn&amp;#039;t sensible to throw away thousands of dollars per month on a second apartment just to maintain appearances. That said, I was raised in a household in which male guests were invited into the first floor, only. My husband (see &amp;quot;then-boyfriend&amp;quot; above) never saw my childhood bedroom until the day he asked my parents for my hand in marriage. My point: the pressures of practicality regularly challenge our values, but the values persist. And when possible, etiquette requires us to respect them. As an overnight guest with companion in tow, we have certain obligations. The first is to honor the hospitality of our hosts. And in order to honor that hospitality, we must also honor their values. If sleeping in the same room as your boyfriend would make your parents&amp;#039; blood boil, sleep separately, even if you otherwise live together. If there is only one bedroom available, expect your male companion to sleep on the sofa in the living room or in whatever area they have prepared for him in your ancestral home. If you are visiting the home of a distant relative or a friend and you aren&amp;#039;t sure of their preferences, remember this: never enter a home with presumptions about where you&amp;#039;ll stay or what you&amp;#039;ll do. Don&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;make yourself at home.&amp;quot; A polite guest will wait to be instructed (and a polite host will make sure to take the lead). The shared bedroom conundrum becomes extra tricky when many members of the family gather at a hotel for an event like a wedding or a reunion. Even if they are not hosting you overnight, you should find a way to be practical and to respect your elders at the same time. Talk to your parents in advance to understand their expectations. As proud as they are of you and your accomplishments, they still might feel that your willingness to share a room with your boyfriend reflects poorly on them. Especially since in this scenario, your choices (and the presumption that your parents know and approve of them) will soon be plainly apparent to a whole host of their friends and family. Explain your side of the story, too, emphasizing that with the cost of travel it doesn&amp;#039;t make sense to pay for two hotel rooms when your relationship and commitment to your boyfriend are things that you&amp;#039;re proud of. If your parents offer a reasonable alternative like paying for a second hotel room, accommodate them. If they counter with an alternative that doesn&amp;#039;t respect your status as an independent adult, like sleeping on a cot in their room, you have my permission to respectfully and sympathetically decline.  The feisty among you might reject the idea of abiding by your parents&amp;#039; wishes to split the two of you on the basis that a whole segment of our population has been denied the right to marry, and thus, will be forever stranded in a limbo of separate bedrooms. I hear you. Heterosexual couples do face challenges when it comes to getting the elders to accommodate to changing mores. But gay couples face difficulties of another order of magnitude. Their predicament extends beyond the realm of etiquette and into larger questions of ethics and rights. (Heterosexual couples: it&amp;#039;s in bad taste to use this unfortunate fact to advance your own goals. Of the many reasons you might put forward in the hopes of sharing a bed with your boyfriend or girlfriend, advancing tolerance of homosexuality is not one.) A word for a visitor who is gay: whether alone or accompanied by a partner, you are not obliged to accommodate a host opposed to gayness. As a matter of etiquette, be as polite about confronting your hosts&amp;#039; limited view point as possible. If a potential host makes you feel unwelcome (an egregious etiquette error on his or her part), feel free to politely decline the invitation. But don&amp;#039;t let love become a source of contention. Love is meant to be shared, even when a bedroom is not available. It is meant to be shared with our partners, our friends, even with (or at least in the presence of) our adversaries.  *Annie Dean is the founder and author of AnnieDean.com, a blog that celebrates etiquette, entertaining and everyday glamour. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/travel-guide/a1081/summer-house-guest/>