Mismatched Holiday Emotions

What do you do when your partner and you have different expectations of holidays (such as valentine’s day) or has a different way of cataloguing important events (“it’s the three month anniversary of the first time we kissed!”)? Are there anyways to find a compromise?

I think it’s important to communicate what you want out of holidays. I know some couples in which one person wants to go all out with a card, present, nice night out, while the other only wants to spend time with the person (without any card, present etc.). I think it’s important to realize what each person in a relationship wants out of the holiday as well as the relationship and strive to make each other happy.

Sometimes you just have to be blunt about it and say something like, “Hey, our anniversary is coming up, please get me a card and a present.” It may not be the ideal for the person who wants to be romanced by a surprise his/her partner presents but at least the person isn’t completely disappointed when not receiving anything.

While I normally hate gender-based stereotypes, I gotta agree with you, Marce: sometimes you really need to come out and just say something. I’ve had many conversations with friends who can’t understand why their boyfriends or husbands don’t “pick up on clues” (plus, of course, I’ve missed more than a few myself). I always just say “forget clues. TELL THEM. Then tell them AGAIN. Then, when they forget, REMIND THEM. And hope for the best next year.”

I think that how people celebrate is something a couple can explore during the early part of dating. As holidays or special occasions come up, ask your partner, “how did your family celebrate this holiday when you were growing up” a good follow up is to ask if that is something you want to continue doing.

My partner’s family doesn’t make a big deal out of birthdays, but to me they are important. Not so much the number, but the fact that a person feels special. We talked about this difference early in our relationship which helped us plan how we would go about celebrating his and my birthdays.

I’m coming up on my first series of holidays when I will be without a partner or my kids in the house for them. I’m not looking forward to it - I suspect it will be quite depressing - but I will be near friends and some family that should take some of the edge off. I wonder, though, if family is such a good idea - for example, seeing my sister with her husband and kids, happy as clams, will both make me happy for her and also feel a bit like the odd man out for what I no longer have.

I guess the point I’m making is that it’s better to have a partner to be awkward about holidays with than to just go through the holidays with no one to gripe at.

I feel for you Gray, I can remember many holidays with no partner and no children. I have to say that the first holiday by myself was the hardest because I was trying to fit the ‘old’ way of doing holiday celebrations into my new situation (as a single). Naturally I was very sad and sometimes felt a little envious of others. It took me a while to realize what I was doing to get in my own way of happiness.

Slowly I began to develop new ways to celebrate. Once I looked at the holidays differently I was able to let go of the past and develop new traditions. Sometimes this meant hosting, sometimes it meant spending some time alone and sometimes it meant redefining traditions.