On It's Not Always Merry: Questions to Ask Your Partner When Visiting Family & Friends for the Holidays
The holiday season can be complicated and stressful for endless reasons and can be especially challenging to navigate when partnered. Often times, there is a coming together of people with varying political views, religious practices, cultures, traditions, and greatly differing views on how to connect with others. A misalignment in communication styles, boundaries, and values can trigger anxiety, grief, stress, etc—its not always merry.
In our relationships, misalignment of communication styles, boundaries, and values can lead to more disagreements, isolation, an uneven sharing of workload, feeling dismissed, and an overall lack of attunement to your partner(s.) But wait, there’s hope! There are ways that you and your partner(s) can navigate the holiday celebrations while also staying emotionally connected. After all, feeling heard, respected, and getting your needs met makes the holiday cheer a bit easier to enjoy! Consider the below questions to help you be more connected when planning for the holidays with your partner(s):
1. What relationships do we want to prioritize?
Consider making a list of people that you want to see during the winter holidays and explore the ways that you can see them throughout the season. Perhaps there are family members or friends that would be open to meeting on non-holiday days and this can alleviate centralized stress. Once you have an idea of who you want to prioritize seeing this season, you can make a more detailed plan of dates & times to do so. Maybe even consider having a detail-oriented partner use this strength to create a holiday itinerary to help you feel organized and lessen any overwhelm that may arise around scheduling.
2. What is our budget?
Lets be real, this is a season where corporate America is grasping for your money. Creating a budget and system for accountability can help you to set a goal together and stick with it. If you are wanting to save money, consider: cost effective recipes, recycled ways to wrap gifts, carpooling, and/or saying “no” to spendy asks from relatives. Maybe there is a partner who can use their creative brain to come up with ways to make the most of your resources?
3. What do you need?
Spend time talking with your partner(s) about their emotional needs around their family or friends. They may be needing someone to advocate for them, someone to offer reassurance, or even someone who can check in with them when they’re around people who can be triggering. Stay curious about your partner(s)’ needs and try asking open-ended questions that will help you to get more information about what they’re needing and what will help them better feel supported. For example, How do you want me to show up for you? What is something I can do to help you to feel safe?
4. Who is doing what?
Part of the holiday magic is just how fast time flies during this time of year. Creating a list of tasks and assigning them to different partners can help to even the workload. Consider: How much energy do you have? What each partner(s)’ strengths are? What tasks would each of us enjoy doing? What are you feeling avoidant or fearful of? Remember, compromise is your friend and there may be a need for more flexibility or boundary setting here. Work towards what is in the best interest of all parties in your relationship and embrace tackling a challenge together!
5. What happens if…?
Use your knowledge of your family, friends and partner(s) to help prepare for expected challenges. Talk with your partner(s) about how you would like for them to intervene if a certain situation happens. It can be helpful to think about relationship patterns and what support you may be needing if the worst case scenario does become a reality.
I encourage you to try out some of these conversation starters to help you to feel more connected to your partner(s) so that all of you can try to find more merriment this season. Holidays can be challenging, but this doesn’t mean that you have to do it alone. There can be so much room for vulnerability, attunement, and warmth—sometimes we just need to lean in with the right tools!
Dani Marrufo is Latinx, lesbian woman who is passionate about supporting Latinx, BIPOC, and LGBTQIA+ folks. She is constantly navigating the intersections of my queer identity & religion/spirituality and very excited about helping poly and queer-identified partners to feel more secure in their relationships, communicate effectively and compassionately, and bridge any relevant cultural differences to have increased curiosity and enjoyment in their partnership.
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