How Can I Help My Marriage Survive Another Holiday Season? Advice From a Los Angeles Couples Therapist
While holidays are usually a time of celebration and reflection over the year’s closing, tension and discord in a partnership can be an additional source of stress. How can seeking out a couples therapist or scheduling sessions with an online couples therapist help navigate tensions in a partnership?
By identifying aspects of the holiday season that can often cause discord, we can proactively consider how seasonal tension may have sabotaged our relationships and sense of contentment in previous years and work to ensure that the holidays this year may offer new traditions—ones filled with harmony, understanding, clear communication, and connection.
Let’s look at some of the most common holiday triggers and how we can avoid them as a potential source of tension.
Holiday Triggers That May Cause Tension in Your Relationship
Heightened expectations
Emotions run high during the holidays. Nostalgic traditions interweave with new adventures. Often wanting to observe yearly rituals and practices can take a toll, especially when there is an imbalance in labor. Often partners put undue pressure on themselves or others to make sure that everything is just so. Consider all of the elements that go into making the holidays a special time. Decorating and shopping pressures, travel plans, and cooking elaborate meals. The company parties, social obligations, and interacting with extended family. Taking holiday photos, new wardrobes, cleaning, volunteering, and organizing. These are all a few factors that have an impact on holiday stress.
Talking through divisions of labor and having a plan to ensure each partner is on the same page is a crucial point of discussion with a couples therapist. By communicating clearly and looking out for each other, tensions of years past may turn into new understanding and greater connection as a couple.
Conflicting family rituals
Navigating family dynamics can be a challenge. But this is especially true at the holidays. Maybe Aunt Olive is insisting everyone attend the Nutcracker together while the cousins are vying for a holiday with more downtime. Religious practices and routines can often come into conflict. Especially when there is heightened emotion surrounding the event. Accommodating young children, aging parents, or the infirm can also mean an adjustment for family traditions.
While it may not be possible to reason with extended family, ensuring that your partnership is on an even keel—and that you both are supporting each other—can make all of the difference in the holiday season. Strategizing with a couples therapist about how to deal with Uncle Mike’s political diatribes or your sister’s penchant for inappropriate and offensive gifts can make all of the difference in creating harmony versus strife.
Financial strain
Along with the pressure of holiday expectations comes a shift in finances. Sticking to a budget can be particularly difficult, especially when there are so many factors to consider. Hotels and flights can be a financial burden, as can fees for mailing packages long distance or shopping for copious gifts for family, friends, and co-workers. Cooking large and elaborate meals can get expensive. As can decorating and paying the electric bill after keeping the holiday lights on for the season. And then there are charitable donations, social obligations, and family expectations around when and how to spend.
The pressure to create the ideal holiday experience often leads to financial strain, which can unfortunately drive a wedge between partners. Questions like, "Are we hiding charges?" "Are we overspending as an emotional outlet?" and "Are we purchasing out of obligation?" can indicate underlying issues. Seeking financial couples therapy provides a safe space to explore these patterns with a therapist. This can be incredibly effective in ensuring that we don’t fall back into old habits or let money become a point of contention during what should be a joyful time.
Grieving loved ones or closed chapters
Because the holidays are such a time of reflection and filled with memory and ritual, it can also be a time that feels like the antithesis of celebration. It may be the first holiday season as empty nesters. Family members may be grieving over the first holiday without a loved one, especially if that person was often the nucleus of holiday events and planning. There may be a sense of loneliness and nostalgia for holidays of years past and acceptance of new circumstances, careers, relationships, or job relocation. While it is essential to be sensitive and aware of your partner’s feelings about the holiday, often our tendency can be to bottle up emotion or tell ourselves we just have to get through the holiday.
However, opening up with a couples therapist and coming up with a plan together to ensure each other’s peace can be transformational for your marriage. For example, if one partner is grieving the loss of a parent, maybe each of you agrees to skip Mass and instead visit the cemetery together to put flowers on that parent’s headstone. Maybe if one partner is feeling overwhelmed because they are out of work, the other partner can plan new holiday traditions that are not expensive—a snow-filled adventure at the park, making hot chocolate, or curling up to read together as a family. Often, when we are grieving others or past chapters of our lives, simple acts of kind attentiveness can make all of the difference in establishing new and loving memories.
Denying self-care
Often, in our quest to create holiday magic, we overschedule ourselves, sometimes despite our best efforts not to. Blocking out windows of downtime is essential not only to personal mental and physical health but also to harmony within your partnership and family. It is okay to voice your needs, create boundaries, and ask for help. Maybe the cookie-baking tradition this year scales back from a myriad of cookie flavors to just one or two. Maybe volunteer service is just for one night versus a whole weekend.
Working with your partner in couples therapy ensures that each of you works together to protect the downtime of the other. Maybe your partner does the traditional holiday brunch prep while you go out for a run. Maybe you both commit to leaving the company party early to just take a walk under the stars and have quiet away from the chaos. By understanding and communicating one another’s needs in therapy, each of you will be able to come up with a plan to support one another. Thereby thwarting tension before it can anchor itself and cause a holiday blow-up.
Get Through The Holidays With Your Partner
It is possible to get through a holiday season with ease, grace, and connection. The best way to ensure a sense of comfort and joy—and well-being—is to be proactive in seeking out an online couples therapist.
Couples therapy during the holidays provides a valuable opportunity for partners to strengthen their relationship, enhance communication, and build resilience. By addressing challenges head-on and fostering a deeper understanding of each other's needs, partners can approach the holiday season with a sense of unity and connection, setting the stage for a healthier and more fulfilling relationship in the coming year.
Looking to Start Couples Therapy or Marriage Counseling in Los Angeles, CA?
Feeling the strain in your relationship during the holidays? Embrace the joy of togetherness again by seeking the guidance and support of online couples therapy at Therapy for Adults. Let this season be a time of reconnection and understanding as you navigate through your relationship challenges together—take the step towards a happier, stronger bond this holiday season. Follow these three simple steps to get started:
Contact Steven today for a free consultation to see if couples therapy or marriage counseling is right for your relationship
Navigate the holidays with a healthy relationship!
Other Counseling Services I Offer in Los Angeles
At Therapy for Adults, I offer support for anyone experiencing relationship issues, not just couples. In addition to helping couples strengthen their relationship and solve their relationship issues. I also help highly sensitive people process their uniqueness and appreciate their surroundings and rich internal life. For more posts like this, check out my Blog!
