Every holiday, all over social media, I see snarky posts about the yearly tradition of holiday arguments. Maybe it is no surprise then that right after New Year’s Day, couples therapist offices like mine are flooded with new clients seeking help for issues that came up over the holidays. This year, I thought I’d offer an ounce of prevention and put it out when you might be needing it most.

1. Spend Time With Each Other First

My little secret for Thanksgiving bliss is that I don’t work past 12pm on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Thursday. This allows me time to unwind before the all-day cooking and family events of Thanksgiving Day. Sometimes I go for a walk or take my wife out for a cup of coffee on a mini-date. This allows us a few minutes to remember and appreciate our relationship before we turn our attention to using that relationship to be generative to others. Then, amid the stress of the days off, we can look at each other in the eye and smile and remember that the chaos of a holiday moment is a part of the joy of being in a relationship with each other.

2. Check-in

Taking that time to connect before the big holiday events also allows us to understand what we’re each bringing from the hustle-and-bustle of the rest of our lives. The point is that when we know what kinds of stressors we’re each carrying it becomes easier to not personalize a moment of snapping or criticism. You give yourself the opportunity instead to remember, “Oh, right, she just got off of the phone with work and maybe she’s still worried about that report that is due the Tuesday after she returns to work” instead of, “What’s her problem? I only asked about the time of the party on Saturday.”

3. Have Sex

During orgasm oxytocin, a bond-forming hormone, is released. Since you have some downtime, why not use it to reinforce your bond in a fun, invigorating, and prevent holiday arguments? Maybe if you start off the holiday on the right foot, you will have fewer holiday arguments and end up having even more sex as the days off continue!

4. Take Time Before Events to Plan

Make sure that you know the plans, including who is doing what and on which days. Make sure that you give each other permission to shake up some traditions lest “the way we always do it” become a prison that breeds resentments. Maybe this year she’s feeling too overwhelmed to be in charge of a traditional aspect of the season. Maybe he wants to spend a little less time driving this year than usual because of his back problems. By reviewing, adapting, and reaffirming the plans, you can prevent one of the biggest sources of anger, violated expectations.

5. Learn From Past Holiday Arguments

Remember how every year when your partner is making their famous nog, they yell at someone who is clearing the table? Why is that? Well, if they’re like me, when they are working in the kitchen, they need the freedom to concentrate. So, maybe this year you find a place to store the dirty dishes until your sweet-heart is done with making the nog. Similarly, maybe your partner frequently takes on too many responsibilities so you get mad at them feeling overwhelmed. Maybe this year for the first time the two of you can have a supportive conversation about how to prevent the triggers that seem like a predictable pattern.

6. Don’t Let Family Conflicts Become Your Conflicts

When we spend time with the family, old holiday arguments often arise. Talk ahead of time about the known conflicts either of you has with the family members you will be seeing. Acknowledge the fact that the tensions exist and validate your partner’s reasons for having them. Then figure out how the two of you can be a united team in facing the challenge so that the two of you don’t start a fight with one person defending the family member against the other partner’s attack.

7. Less is More

In our success-fueled culture, there’s often a perception that more is better. A bigger feast, more tradition, more presents, a bigger party, more visits, more food, and more alcohol. But with each of these things comes consequences that can be hard to see if you only focus on the idealized vision. A bigger feast is more time cooking. More traditions may mean more time preparing, more time shopping, or a tighter schedule. More presents means more stress about money. A bigger party is more clean-up time. More food is more time prepping and more indigestion. More alcohol is less time attentive and sharp to the needs of partner, family, and yourself. All of that “more” means less sleep and more irritability. Try less. Create a rotating schedule and bake only one of your three pies each of the next three years. Instead of a party, invite only friends closest to you. You will leave yourself more time for enjoying and savoring the experiences that you create if you make fewer of them.

8. Go to Couples Therapy

Often, the reason for holiday arguments is that the things you’ve been avoiding start bubbling to the surface. Get into couples therapy now while you are thinking about it. Going to couples therapy can give you a container for working through the challenges and create a pressure valve so that you don’t start dealing with it over the holiday feast. I have space available in my practice, contact me.

Related Posts:

Befriending the Dragon

How to Get Over Resentments

Types of Anger Problems in Relationships

Relationship Boundaries

5 Sentences to End Arguments

Of Mountains and Mole Hills

In attempting to help clients figure out how to decrease relationship reactivity during their relationships, I’ve come up with a metaphor that helps people begin practicing a more confident and peaceful responses. Before I get to that, I’ll describe high reactivity through the same metaphor. Imagine that your partner has started a conversation with a bit of a barb in it. Maybe they walk into the kitchen while you are about your business and say, “Why are you doing that?” The extra emphasis on “that” belies contempt for the way you are doing it beneath the seemingly innocuous question. Maybe just to add a bit of flair to this description, we can even imagine that your partner has added that particular quirk to their head that you know suggests a degree of insult to the question. This partner of yours, having lobbed the opening salvo has just breathed fire in your direction and you are the armor-clad knight in the line of fire.

High Reactivity: Fighting the Dragon

Some people will take the dragon’s singeing assault as an invitation to begin the conflict and reply with an equally snide, “What do you mean, what am I doing? I’m making dinner! If you don’t like the way I’m doing it, you can do it yourself!” Maybe your reactivity isn’t that extreme. Maybe you just reply in a tight clipped tone, “I’m making dinner. Why?” The dragon, being in their own mind a knight just like you, hears that defensive “why?” as your first flaming breath weapon and this sets them on defense. Maybe the conflict escalates from there by small measures until, by the time you are eating the dinner and she asks how your mother is doing, the conflict opens up into full scale competitive volcanic eruptions.

High Reactivity: Running Away from the Dragon

The fair knight so burned, retreats from the field of battle. Maybe after your partner asks you why you are doing it “that” way you avoid the conflict by internalizing the criticism you hear. The wound is just another of those small wounds that leaves you seething beneath the surface. You might think to yourself, “What would I say back to the them anyway?” and your thoughts might continue, “They’re always going on like that.” So you decide that there’s nothing I can do about them. you’ll just nurse these third-degree emotional burns for later passive-aggressive eye-rolling at a later date. Even though you didn’t openly create a conflict, you have engaged in high reactivity. You withdrew and fostered resentments [LINK] which decrease intimacy and increase the risk for future conflict

How to Befriend the Dragon

There are two steps to befriending the dragon, protecting yourself with a fire-proof tower shield and asking to be friends with the dragon.

Lower Reactivity: Fire-Proof Shield

That first moment of criticism, blame, or dismissal must be met with some method of protecting one’s self from the flame. Here are a couple of my favorites with a specific example of how it would apply in the example of the partner who comes into the kitchen asking about why you are doing it like “that”.

• Confidence in your good nature: Your internal dialogue might deflect the implied criticism by just reminding yourself, “I’m doing good work here and I’m pretty sure that I know how to do it.”
• Confidence in your partner’s good nature: You might deflect your partner’s irritating tone by reminding yourself that “They love me and that whatever the source of that tone, it probably isn’t my kitchen skills.”
• Contextualizing this issue in a larger frame of reference: Sometimes, especially if fire-breathing is rare in your relationship, you can remember that in the grand scheme of your lives together this moment of criticism is relatively minor and infrequent.

One way or another, if you can avoid personalizing the criticism and demonizing your partner, you can keep cool despite the fire breathing dragon and then ask for a parley.

Lower Reactivity: Asking to be Friends

So, your partner breathed fire at you for a second. Your next response helps determine whether the nascent conflict escalates or deescalates. Here are some of my favorite ways to make friends out of dragons, again with illustrative examples from the kitchen:

• Curiosity: With a gentle tone you reply, “Just making dinner. Why do you ask?”
• Empathy: With a gentle tone you reply, “I’m just making dinner. What’s going on for you?”
• Naming the Challenge: With a gentle tone, “I’m just making dinner. Is there something wrong? It sounded like you might be critical of something I’m doing?”
• Take off your armor: Without anger but with vulnerability you say, “Hey, I’m a little vulnerable today and I’m not sure if you meant to but it sounded like you were being critical of me. Can you be gentle with me?”
• Name the burn: Gently you say, “I’m trying to make dinner but when you come in and use that tone, I feel deflated because my need for encouragement isn’t met. Can you say that again a little softer?” [Bonus points to you dear reader if you recognize this as an example of non-violent communication]
• Identify the impulse to fight: Gently you say, “When you come in and ask me what I’m doing with that tone, I find myself inclined to be defensive or to fight back. I don’t want to fight because I love you. Could you ask that question in a way that helps me be more gentle with you in response?”
• Do over: Playfully you say, :That tone was a little heated. Want a do over?”

There are probably an infinite number of other ways to befriend the dragon and sometimes using the metaphor helps you find a new. So rather than simply ending this entry I’m going to leave you with some work. Below is a bullet list of concepts from within the metaphor, try to imagine yourself what that metaphor might look like if applied to real life:

• Bring the dragon flowers.
• We all know dragons can’t breath fire when they laugh  or smile right? How could you make your dragon smile?
• Give the dragon a glass of water to douse the flames.
• Remove a thorn from the dragon’s paw.

If this tool is compelling, check out my book for men about consent, relationships, and hotter sex.

Increasing expressions of appreciation in a relationship can help them repair old hurts and to create new connections. But especially in long-term relationships, a simple thank-you can sometimes fall flat. This post describes a simple way of expressing appreciation and three ways to deepen the practice.

Appreciation for Behavior

• “Thank you for doing the dishes.”
• “I noticed that you paid the bills. I bet that took you a while.”
• “Thanks for being on time.”

There’s nothing wrong with appreciations like those above. If you aren’t expressing this kind of appreciation for your partner, try starting with simple acknowledgements like those above.

There is a limitation to appreciations of this type. They don’t point beyond the behavior. You might say these same things to someone you had hired to do the task. If you really want to foster intimacy in the relationship, you need to point beyond the behavior to your partner, to yourself, or to the relationship.

Self-Based Appreciation

• “When you did the dishes, I felt such a relief. I was dreading them, and it meant a lot to me that you took that on tonight. Thank you.”
• “I noticed that you paid the bills. It really took a lot of my stress away to see that you had them, because I’ve been worried about them. Now I can relax about that. Thanks.”
• “It meant so much to me that you got here on time. Now that we’re together, I can really begin to enjoy your presence and let the rest of the day go. Thank you.”

Take note in the above examples of the feelingsof  relief, dread, stress, worry, and enjoyment. Note also the needs that are stated or implied: cleanliness, financial security, meaning, and connection. Sharing the feelings that your partner’s work created or soothed inside of you lets them know that they can be and have been effective in the relationship. By sharing your internal experience, you not only share that their effort helped you to feel closer to them, but you also invite them to feel closer to you.

Partner-Based Appreciation

• “When you were doing the dishes, I could see how dedicated you are to me and to our family. Thank you.”
• “I bet that you are exhausted from paying the bills and figuring all of that out. I really appreciate the way you put in all that hard work today. Thank you.”
• “Thanks for getting here on time. I hope it wasn’t exhausting or stressful for you to do so. I know that it can be challenging through all of the traffic. Thanks.”

In this type of appreciation, you are identifying qualities (dedication, hard worker), feelings (exhaustion, stress), or experiences (challenged) that your partner may have exhibited in the process of doing the things that you are identifying. This helps your partner know that you saw them, not just what they did; that you appreciate them as a partner, not just as someone to do things for you.

Relationship-Based Appreciation

• “When you did the dishes, I was so grateful for your companionship in my life.”
• “I know you are tired of paying the bills, but I want you to know that it meant so much to me to not be alone in the challenges of money management.”
• “Woo hoo! Go Team ‘Us’! Your on-time arrival is helping our team win the day.”

This kind of appreciation refocuses attention from the behaviors to the two of you and your continuing dedication to one another. Explicitly express appreciation for your partner’s dedication to your relationship, thank them for supporting the relationship, which is so important to both of you, or point out that together you can accomplish things that you can’t do alone.

While most people like to have their efforts and work acknowledged, most of us like it even more to hear about the good aspects of our character, the joy we brought our partner with our work, or how our work is supporting something bigger than us, like our relationship. So the next time you see your partner, take your appreciation to the next level.