If you and your spouse struggle to face the holidays together, here are five ways to navigate the season hand-in-hand.
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When it comes to the joy and the stress of the holidays, how do you and your spouse approach it? As a united team? Or do tinsel, gift giving, and extended family get-togethers turn you against each other?
If you and your spouse are struggling to face the holidays together, here are five ways you can navigate the season hand-in-hand rather than back-to-back.
5 Ways to Face the Holidays Together
1. Set Expectations Together
As a couple, what do you want this holiday season to be like?
It could be you prefer relaxed and simple. Or perhaps you enjoy lots of traditions and activity.
Take the time to talk about this in advance and determine together what your holiday expectations are as a couple. This can include how much you’ll spend on gifts, where you’ll celebrate, and even what’s on the menu. For some husbands and wives, it may be easy to agree. For others though, it’ll mean being willing to compromise in order to find a happy medium.
2. Spend Dedicated Time Together
In the craziness of the holidays, don’t forfeit time with each other. Schedule date nights in advance and then stick to them. Be committed to them just like you would an office party or an extended family dinner.
Time together will make sure that you stay connected in the hustle and bustle of the season.
3. Serve Others Together
The holidays offer a lot of opportunities to pour your energy and resources into others.
Whether it’s serving food at a shelter, caroling at a nursing home, volunteering at a church service, or shopping for gifts for Angel Tree or Toys for Tots, determine to do so together.
Spending time hand-in-hand giving to others not only benefits your community, but creates life-long shared memories.
4. Dream Together
Like I talk about in my book Team Us, dreaming together allows you to create a shared narrative. To continue to pen together your story.
The holidays, even prior to New Year’s Day, are a perfect time to sip hot chocolate or eggnog and brainstorm together about what’s next for you as a couple. Talk about what long-held dreams you want to accomplish or items you could check off your shared bucket list.
Dreaming together helps you not lose sight of the big picture in the midst of holiday stress.
5. Face Conflict Together
Holidays can be breeding grounds for conflict. Whether it’s disagreements between the two of your or conflict among extended family.
Make a choice to approach conflict with an “us against the problem” attitude rather than a “me vs. you” mentality. Determine to face conflict with the long-term health of your relationship as the goal.
Enjoy the Holidays as a Team
This holiday season, choose to approach the tinsel, gift giving, and extended family get-togethers as a united team. You may just discover it truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
About Team Us
The best marriages have a teamwork mentality. Spouses serve each other, support each other, and celebrate each other. They tackle life as a unit, and when one slips, the other gives grace. They can be vulnerable together because they know they rise and fall as one.
Do you want a marriage like this? Team Us: The Unifying Power of Grace, Commitment, and Cooperation in Marriage. will help you and your spouse cultivate a teamwork mentality. Ashleigh Slater shares observations from her marriage while offering practical, realistic ideas for unifying yours.
Even if just one of you reads, your marriage can grow in intimacy and joy, providing momentum for the changes you long to see.
Team Us is available for order at Amazon and through Moody Publishers.
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