Holiday Recovery For Young Married Couples
And you thought you only married your spouse.
One evening about a year ago my wife and I attended a young-married program at the home of some friends.
The preplanned discussion for the evening was about the challenges when retuning home to spend holiday time with parents and important past friends.
Of course, now the wrinkle for them was they were returning home with a spouse — often an “outsider” unfamiliar with the inside-family idiosyncrasies.
Unless prepared, the spouse who is the family member can regress into behaving, not as the husband or wife, but as the child returning home. Unspoken obligations to be the dutiful child begin to express themselves. This risks weakening the marital bond.
Here was a list of some of their concerns that evening:
How do you not revert to your childhood-self which then leaves the spouse outside the old family or friend circles?
How do you equitably balance time between in-laws? If they live nearby, perhaps you are having to split time in some equitable way. Or if they live a long distance apart you are having to decide who to visit and not to visit?
How do you stay connected with your spouse when most time is taken up in family activities? Even if the spouse is included it is not a quiet vacation with much alone-together time.
How do you stay at inner peace knowing expectations run high and nothing goes as planned?
Rather than giving you my unsolicited answers, let me instead make a few broad observations.
In a nutshell — Play the long game.
• When things don’t (or didn’t) go well, remember this isn’t the end.
• Allow things to play out over many years.
• Address hurt feelings as they occur with your spouse privately, but understand it is impossible to never hurt another’s feelings — especially with those closest to you and who you care for the most.
• People change and learn to adapt with time (including you and your spouse).
• When situations are new, understand that tensions can be high because most people want to please and receive approval. [Note however, we are never able to control another’s feelings or perceptions.]
Recalling back to when I was married at their age, I acknowledge that lowering expectations when it came to the actions of family members was difficult. But still, it is absolutely necessary if you want to live a peaceful productive life regardless the behavior of anyone else.
Conclusion:
Holidays with families as a newly formed family yourself is a blessing both because it is intended to be fun and inclusive and also because it is a necessary part of spiritual growth — figuring out how to love others well without being emotionally drained in the process.
A note to parents and grandparents. When the kids come over, enjoy them while they are with you and release them at the end of your time together, not with any complaints if it didn’t work out as you had hoped, but with gratitude that they chose to visit.
Bless and release.
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
Genesis 2:24 (ESV)
[Jesus] answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”