How to stress-proof your relationship this holiday season
The added stress can create tension and highlight relationship difficulties. The added stress can create tension and highlight relationship difficulties.
Having a plan can help you and your partner stress-proof your relationship and spend more time enjoying the holiday season.
How to Handle Holiday Stress as a Couple
The holiday season can leave a partner feeling unappreciated or resentful for doing all the shopping and cooking, or it can lead to another partner feeling pressured into doing things their partner’s way. The holidays are the perfect time to create balance and work together. This template will help you to stress-proof your relationship during the holiday season. List the urgent tasks and responsibilities you need to attend to. This gives you an objective view for determining responsibilities.
2. Add three columns: one each for you, your partner and both of you. Then, read the list together. Discuss how you each perceive how the holiday responsibilities have been handled in the past, and how you’d like to handle them this year. Choose who will be responsible for the tasks that are easiest to assign (you, your partner or both) and go through them. Select the correct task and partner from the list and put aside those that can wait. This is a learning opportunity. This is a learning opportunity.
Managing stress during the holiday season can be challenging, but small gestures of appreciation go a long way in strengthening your relationship.
Strengthen Your Relationship During the Holiday Season
After both partners feel understood, determine how you’d like to proceed this year and compromise when needed so both of you feel comfortable with your plans.
The goal here is to find win-win solutions that put your partner’s needs on par with your own. Together, find solutions that meet both of your needs. Then decide who is responsible, assign the task, and note the date that it needs to be completed.
Now you have a better idea of who does what and when, which should already relieve a great deal of stress. The research of Dr. John Gottman shows that an equal division of tasks between partners is not necessary (keeping score could lead to resentment). It’s important for each partner to feel that their responsibilities are equally distributed. If your partner feels overwhelmed or flooded, see if you can help out by taking on some of their tasks. Take on their tasks if your partner is feeling overwhelmed.
