Getting through the holidays as a couple without it escalating

During the holidays couples don’t argue more than usual because they like each other less. They argue more because three things come together at once: too little space, too many expectations and two families with different ideas about how it should all go. Most of it can be sorted out in November, not on the evening itself.

Why now of all times

You are around each other too much. Normally there is work, errands, hours apart. On days off all of that falls away, and every bit of tension runs straight into the next.

The expectations are too high. It’s supposed to be lovely. That sentence is the real trigger. The bigger the expectation, the smaller the deviation needs to be to cause disappointment.

Two family cultures meet. When do you eat, how long do you stay, who do you visit, how much do you give as presents, do you talk about politics. Every family has unwritten rules about this, and nobody has ever said them out loud, because they seem obvious to everyone.

Old roles come back. In their own parents’ house almost everyone becomes a bit of a child again. That applies to you, and it applies to him. If you know this, you take a lot of things less personally.

The three questions you sort out beforehand

Take twenty minutes for this, sometime in the next few weeks. Not the day before.

1. Where will you be when, and for how long?

The most important part is “for how long”. Most conflicts don’t arise on the way there but while you are staying. Set a time when you will leave, and do it beforehand, together, both of you.

2. Who talks to whom?

If there is tension in your family, you talk to your family. If there is tension in his family, he talks to his.

This rule is the most effective one in this whole text. The most common path to escalation during the holidays is a daughter-in-law sorting something out that the son should have sorted out.

3. What matters more than harmony this year?

Usually nothing, and that is completely fine. Then you have a shared line: this year we let things go.

If there is something after all, name it now. Then everyone knows what matters, and nobody gets caught off guard.

One sentence that does more than any agreement

Agree on a sign.

A word, a gesture, a touch on the arm. It means: this is getting too much for me, let’s step out for a moment.

Then you both go together to get bread, or out into the fresh air, or into the kitchen. Ten minutes.

That sounds like very little and prevents more arguments than any preparation, because it makes you a team getting through the same evening, instead of two people enduring it separately.

What you don’t sort out at the table

Nothing.

That is the whole rule. Not the issue with his mother, not the issue with your sister, not your own issue from December.

Anything sorted out at the festive table is sorted out worse than on any other day, and everyone is sitting there.

If you notice something coming up, use the sign you agreed on. If that isn’t possible, then this sentence:

“Let’s not do this today.”

If it has tipped over anyway

For some of you it will tip over. Three things for that.

Don’t sort it out in the car on the way home. The car is the worst possible place: both exhausted, nobody can leave, neither of you can look the other in the face.

Come back to it the next day, not in January. One sentence is enough: “Yesterday was difficult. Let’s talk about it briefly later.”

And stay with what happened between the two of you. Not with what his mother said. What happened between you, you can sort out. The rest you can’t.

When the holidays are hard because someone is missing

For some people this time is not hard because of arguments, but because someone is no longer there, because a wish for a child has not been fulfilled, or because a family has fallen apart.

Then no agreement helps; the only thing that helps is your partner knowing what is coming for you. Tell him beforehand, even if it feels over the top:

“The afternoon is going to be hard for me. I’m telling you so you can understand it if I go quiet.”

And if this time of year weighs on you heavily: if you are in Germany, the TelefonSeelsorge helpline is available around the clock on all holidays too, free of charge and anonymously, on 0800 1110111.

Where harmony is not the goal

If someone in the family regularly puts you down, “this year we let it go” is not a good strategy. Then you need to agree beforehand on how your partner will react when it happens.

What I’d like you to take with you

The couples for whom it goes well rarely do anything special. They have simply talked three times for twenty minutes beforehand, and they know when they are going home.

Don’t set out for it to be lovely. Set out to get through it as a team. The lovely part usually happens along the way.