Deal making is a wonderful tool to have in a marriage. This is a great time to use it. Here’s how.
Don’t moralize on his feelings. In other words, don’t criticize him for being crazy, overly sensitive, or wrong for not wanting to be around your ex-boyfriend at your family’s reunions. Instead, tell him you understand his feelings, and you hope that he understands yours, that it’s very important for you to spend the holidays with your family. Since your feelings are at odds, but are equally important, it’s time to split the difference and make a deal so you both get some of what you want.
Here are some suggestions for deals that might work: Consider blending your holiday celebration with his extended family. What would happen if it weren’t just your family that you were visiting at the holidays, but if his parents and relatives (including his stepsons, etc.) were invited, too? Or, what if you split the holidays the way many families of divorce with joint custody do, so that Christmas Eve is spent with your family and Christmas Day is spent with his — or some variation. You could have Thanksgiving the way he wants it, and Christmas the way you want it, as another suggestion. Or, maybe there’s some trip he wants to take that you’ve been begging off of or some tool or car or television he wants that you’ve said no to, or even some sexual favor that he’s wanted and you haven’t agreed to, that you can now agree to in exchange for Christmas at your relatives’ homes this year. Or maybe it’s the home setting that is the compromise, so that instead of seeing your family at their home, you all get together at a parade, or a restaurant, or some other venue that gives you the opportunity to spend time with your relatives at the holiday, but gives him the feeling that he hasn’t “lost” but is getting something that is for him in the deal, too.
So break the cycle of fighting, and starting insisting on a compromise that will partially satisfy both of you.
I hope that helps.
Let me know how things go.
