Dealing With Family During the Holidays

Dealing With Family During the Holidays

Whether you are meeting your significant other’s extended family for the first time, have to come face-to-face with your dreaded in-laws again, or have to deal with your own “colorful” family, the holidays will be stressful at some point no matter who you are. Prepare yourself to deal with drama.

You may be hosting a sit-down holiday dinner for the family and worrying about the goose and all of the fixin’s, or attending a cocktail party at an aunt’s home and can’t decide which wine to bring. But no matter what’s on the menu, or behind the bar, getting your head around the idea that someone, quite possibly numerous people, are going to get under your skin and on your nerves in the next few weeks is the mission.

Relax and laugh
Once you accept the idea and the chill that runs up your spine subsides you can begin, as a couple, to get in a humorous mood. Laughter is said to be wonderful medicine. It also happens to be great for defusing drama. Agree with your mate that you will laugh about the usual nonsense that comes up. This will lighten both of your moods and help develop a conscious plan for what to do when the drama drops.

We all have relatives that love to make themselves feel better by pointing out the inadequacies of others. If one, or both, of you must contend with this, laughing about the issue stops the perpetrator in their track. Remember to laugh about the subject, not at the person. Laughing at the person is rude and two rudes don’t make a right.

Wonder-Twin Powers – Activate!
Working as a couple is an advantage because much like a linebacker in a football game, if one person is getting rushed, the other can come in to a throw a block. It is the holidays and you both have been working so hard. It is your time to enjoy – together. So, why not hold hands at the party, sit next to each other at dinners, and kiss under the mistletoe.

If you work the crowd as a couple you will be there for each other in case offenders are afoot. When someone senses that the drama is about to hit the fan, one person may be able to get the other out of the immediate area before it pops off. If one person laughs when there is tension in the air that person may be looked at as odd, but if two people are laughing, the person who is causing the drama will be outnumbered and others will laugh too. People love laughing–it’s contagious.

Responding to family tension with a mindset of good humor is a great strategy. It can bring a couple closer since they are working as a team on being fun-loving during the holidays. Normally stress-inducing members of the family will not be as successful in their efforts this year, and new people who have joined the extended family will meet a couple who seems cohesive and united.

However, keep in mind that these people are all members of your family tree and are extremely valuable to you. So, treat them as such. That simple acknowledgement should be a catalyst in why people should lighten up around the holidays. It is one of the few times of year that we are surrounded by our extended families. Embracing everyone’s eccentricities and loving them no matter how they live their lives is a wonderful gift to give this holiday season.

Leftovers
Everyone comes home with all kinds of once-a-year foods wrapped in all manner of aluminum foil, plastic wrap, or Tupper Ware. It’ll last a few days before we tire of it and toss it in the trash. The same should be true of any hard feelings that may linger past the holiday event. The thing that should last forever is the part about working as a couple to laugh over issues that are not life threatening. Lightening up as a couple and learning to look out for one another in stressful situations–and to remind your partner not to get wrapped up in the angst or drama–is a gift that can last the rest of your lives.

Giving up the idea that stress must be met with stress and drama with more drama can be life saving. Doing it during the holidays gives a couple a few weeks of practice and allows them to be good at it by the time New Year's Eve rolls around.

If a couple can walk hand-in-hand into the New Year with a new attitude on how to respond to stress with laughter they can look forward to new ways of seeing everyday things. Going to the mall together may become a joy. Doing projects around the house, as a team, may finally be as fun as those do-it-yourself TV shows look. Taking long drives and, when they veer off-course, learning to laugh and improvize together, will help them enjoy the destination even more–even if it wasn't the original destination they were planning on.

Because, as we all know but sometimes need to be reminded, it is the journey that needs to be enjoyed, we are never guaranteed that we will reach our final destination.