4 Challenges Couples Face During the Holidays 🎅 (and how to overcome them)

In this episode, Kate & Eric talk about navigating holiday stressors as a couple to create a meaningful and connected season.

Topics:
➡️ Financial stress during the holidays and how to manage it with budgets and intentional gift-giving.
➡️ Maintaining intimacy and connection amidst the hustle and bustle of holiday planning.
➡️ Coping with grief and loss during the holidays and supporting your partner through tough emotions.
➡️ Managing unrealistic expectations and aligning holiday plans with shared values.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Eric MacDougall
Today, we're talking about kind of a holiday themed episode, but this

Speaker 1
song, yeah, just kidding, right? Just hear those jingling. You know, for me,

Eric MacDougall
when I was like, thinking about these challenges that couples face during the holidays, I think these are challenges people face, like in general, throughout the year. Yes, but the holidays put them front and

Kate MacDougall
say, like, punch you in the face during the holidays. You're like, we can avoid those, but, but now, now I, like, straight in my face. Yeah,

Eric MacDougall
exactly. And so we're going to talk about some of these stressors. There's four of them that we came up with that are pretty common, yeah. And we're going to talk about kind of how you can navigate them, what we think works so you can have a fucking kick ass holiday, or just, like, improve your life,

Kate MacDougall
yeah. And especially, like, how can you navigate them together? Right? Because that's often a big stress stressor in marriage, and I know, like the first one, for example, we're going to talk about, it's something that you carry a lot of on your own back. So we're going to talk about how we can, you know, make this work together, so that it's not just one spouse carrying all this stress and figuring it all out and both people are carrying an equal load. Yeah,

Eric MacDougall
so the first one is the financial stress. Yes, of course, everyone's

Kate MacDougall
like, No way, that's a stress at Christmas time. No, you're wrong. Yeah.

Eric MacDougall
Obviously, you know, we live in a consumerism culture. We love spending money. People are spending money. It's too easy to spend money on Amazon now, like so people are spending a lot of money. And that's just like fact, right? If you look at the stats, typically around Christmas time, people are typically spend a lot more money. But only is there more sales on things, but people are emotional buyers. That's something we know we buy because of our emotions. So we get really excited, and we buy everybody gifts,

Kate MacDougall
yeah, and we there's also this like pressure of buying everybody gifts, right? It's like, well, I can't show up at work without buying my boss a gift if they buy me a gift. Now I look like an idiot coming home coming back without a gift for them. Like that would really suck. And and I have to buy my brother and my sister and my aunts and my uncles and everybody I'm gonna see a gift. So it can get very stressful to try and keep up with the Joneses and try to get gifts for absolutely everybody. And then you put a lot of pressure on yourself. I know, like, for myself, like, I remember putting a lot of pressure on myself to be like, well, if they buy me $100 gift, I better be buying them $100 gift. Like, I can't show up with, like, a $20 gift, or has to be handmade gift if they're gonna, like, spend $100 on me. So that was a mentality that took a lot of time for me to get out of Yeah,

Eric MacDougall
and so I think for us, the way that we've dealt with it, we've gotten pretty creative about it, to be honest. Yeah, the first thing is, probably the most boring thing is have a budget for what you want to spend. Yeah? I mean, very obvious, yeah. But like, even it doesn't have to be like, diligent, like, hey, what exactly, but it's like, hey, you know, as the Christmas comes through, you know, I think when you include all the gifts and all this stuff and the way that we're gonna go out and have fun with all this thing, I really want to try to keep it at whatever number is for you, whether it's $1,000 $10,000 $100 doesn't matter. Yeah. Like, pick a figure that feels good to you.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah. And I think it's so easy to get carried away and buying all those little extra stocking stuffers and a chocolate here and a soap there. Like, yeah, it's $2 $5 $3 here and there. But those add up very quickly. So keeping a tally of what you are spending and how much you've spent on each person or each family or whatever, however it works for you, but keeping track of it can sometimes be a little surprising, like, Oh my gosh. Like, I only have stocking stuffers, and I've already spent like, $800 like, better, slow down on the stock and stuffers and start focusing on, like, you know, the big gifts, yeah. So have

Eric MacDougall
an idea. Talk to your spouse like, hey, ideally this I like spend. How much would you like spend? And again, it might be a tough conversation. Maybe your partner's like, I don't want to be restricted. I just want to spend whatever I want.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah. And I know for us, it was very difficult, because we grew up with two very different Christmases. I grew up with a very elaborate like, the tree was like, buried in gifts on Christmas morning, like Santa goes by and like, there's gifts from Santa, gifts from family, gifts from friends, gifts from everyone. And my tree, like, you couldn't even see the Christmas tree. It was like, piled so high with gifts. Whereas you grew up in a home where you know your gifts came from the Salvation Army, yeah, they were limited. They were used. They were used. They were limited, and you had very, very little gifts under the tree when you woke up in the morning. But despite those two Christmases being absolutely, completely different. From each other. We both had and grew up with amazing memories at Christmas, that's

Eric MacDougall
right. And neither of those Christmas is better than the other exactly,

Kate MacDougall
I think, when you're really just what you're used to, right? So when we started having kids, and we started talking about, you know, how we would gift things to our kids, I had in my mind that like, well, I want my tree to be buried in gifts. And Eric was like, Well, I don't necessarily think our kids need that many gifts. And that was a hard conversation for us to have to be like, Okay, how can we take both our traditions and make it, you know, our own, where we're not completely dismissing catesbury tree and we're not completely dismissing Eric's, you know, very simple, very beautiful, but simple Christmas, right? So there was a lot of conversation. There was a lot of like, you know, I don't agree with you. I want this and I want that. So we did have to find a happy medium where, you know, we're when it comes to Christmas, we kind of found the little, what you want, what you need, which something to wear, something to read, and we've kind of stuck to that for years, and the tree isn't buried in gifts. But our our kids are happy. They're, you know, they're fulfilled at the end of Christmas, and it's really, really easy on the wallet for us. Yeah, and I think this

Eric MacDougall
is really important, because it brings me to my second point around the switches, to be very intentional with your gift giving, right? Let's be real. People probably want to hear this. Could we just stop it with the shitty gifts? And what I mean by that is like, don't buy the random person something just because you feel bad and you're like, I need to get a gift. Please stop that. And let's be real, that person does not appreciate that. Yeah? Like, it would be better for you to write a handwritten card of appreciation to that person. I think that person that would be more meaningful to them than a box of sugar cookies that you bought at the store on your way out. Yeah?

Kate MacDougall
It's like, I don't need another sweater. If I have if I want a sweater, I'm gonna buy myself a sweater. Like, yeah,

Eric MacDougall
and so again, I don't want to, like, Judge, listen, if that's your thing, feel free. But again, if we're talking about a way to, yeah, cut down on some of the spending, you can actually create. You know, get creative. Find an intentional gift. Put a little bit of effort. I'm gonna say you have to make the gift. But like, one intentional gift will have way more of an impact than 10 gifts that are just like whatever I still have gifts that I received from your parents, from you, from friends, from my parents, from family that were pretty simple and were very impactful because they had meaning. Because when the person gave me the gift, they're like, Hey, I was traveling. I thought about you. This is why I'm giving you this gift. I was like, wow, that is something. And then I have, you know, the things that were bought for me that I'm like, I'm gonna,

Kate MacDougall
well, you don't have them anymore because you very kindly donate them, yeah? And that's why they're people who need them, right?

Eric MacDougall
And so really thinking about being more intentional with your gift giving and get creative, right? Think about for, like, take five minutes and think about the person you're planning to buy a gift. Do you know anything about them? What are they like? What are they not like? Can you text somebody to say, hey, plan on buying a gift for this person. Love to know a few things about them, right?

Kate MacDougall
Yeah. And I think a very important thing when it comes to finances is, you know, swallow your pride sometimes. And we all go through it. Everybody has gone through it. And if you haven't gone through it, you know, you will. But sometimes finances can be difficult, and it can bring up a lot of stress. It can put a lot of stress on a family. It can put a lot of stress on loved ones. And so you know, if you're in a situation where this is causing a lot of stress for you. It's causing a lot of stress on your marriage, on your family. Swallow your pride and say, like, Hey guys, like, can we do, you know, donate gifts, or can we make gifts this year? Like that. Would that would mean a lot to me, because we could really use a break financially right now. And I think that that is a very vulnerable thing to do, a very like, intimate thing to do. But I think that these are the people you love. Usually, when you're gifting something to somebody, you love them enough that you these are the conversations that you should be able to have with them that are important for you to have with them. There's nothing that would make me feel worse than knowing that somebody went into debt trying to buy gifts for me and my kids. Yeah,

Eric MacDougall
and I think as we're kind of wrapping up this point, because we saw three more points to go, I think that you hit on a really important point there, which is, like, I would hate to know that somebody put themselves further into debt, put themselves further into a financial struggle to buy a bunch of gifts, instead of just saying, like, hey, could we find a creative way to give gifts? Or, Hey, I'm not getting you gifts this year. You know, I'd be like, 100% that's totally cool. To be honest, I don't really need anything. I'm an adult.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah, absolutely. And my kids don't eat no. That's right, if you want to, if you want to get something for my gifts and my kids, you know, take them sliding on a weekend, just you and them. They'll love that. They will love that. So that's definitely, there's definitely ways around that financial stress and working together, having important conversations with your spouse, with your loved ones, that is the top priority there. The second

Eric MacDougall
one is this loss of intimate connection, right? So

Kate MacDougall
we can get so so busy during the holidays with the planning and the buying and the hustle and bustle of the preparing, the stress, right, the lack of sleep, all that kind of stuff. So oftentimes, unfortunately, our most intimate connection, our most our closest connection, the one with our spouse, is the first thing that we knock off our list of things to do because we take for granted. It'll be there after Christmas and but it can be very difficult to be the spouse who's kind of left behind, who's trying to prioritize, who's trying to make plans like, Hey, okay, I understand we have all these things to do. You can't get away from it. There's a lot to do during the holidays, but there are beautiful ways that you can still find time to connect. And you know, just the other day, you and I took some time to go Christmas shopping together the kids. We got the kids watched. We took some time just me and you to go to the shopping mall. And you know, we walked hand in hand. We went in different stores. Yes, we were Christmas shopping. Yes, we were getting things done, checking our to do list, but we were doing it in a very intentional way, where we were also browsing and looking around and talking about the things we were seeing and, you know, really taking the time to be together while we were shopping. And I found it very connecting. I found it very nice to be able to do that together, sharing ideas, seeing what your ideas for the kids were, seeing what my ideas for the kids were. It was a very beautiful moment for us to connect, despite being extremely successful in finishing our Christmas shopping, yeah,

Eric MacDougall
and again, like this is another way where you might have to get a bit of, you know, get creative. I know, for Kate and I, were very busy seasons like book ending, our days are very important, right? Having me, like, five minutes in the morning, just to, like you and I connect, have a cup of coffee, tea, just hang out together, and then, like in the evening, right? What happens if we're having a small bedtime ritual at night, whatever that's for you. You know, I know couples that they go out and they do the hustle and bustle of the day and run around. They're connecting. They're drinking, eating all that stuff, and at the end of the day they decide, hey, we're going to clean up, we're going to shower together, we're gonna go to bed together, and that's gonna be kind of our ritual to connect at night, right? And so whatever it is for you, you know, if you're traveling and you're at family, at a family members, and you're staying there, or maybe you have people coming over to stay with you, right? Ask them say, Hey, you cool. If you know, you can hang out with the kids for, you know, the next 20 minutes, my wife and I was gonna go walk around the block, just two of us take a breath. How does that feel? Right? And so really, starting to get creative about these small pockets of Connect. Pockets of connection doesn't have to be four hours,

Speaker 1
yeah, it's quality versus quantity. You don't have to make it a long, you know, thought out, you know, complicated situation. It can just be like a 10 minute walk, a five minute lay down in a bed and holding hands. And I even say

Eric MacDougall
sometimes, like, at parties, you know, one thing that we do really well is we have parties and stuff, and then, like, we'll just hang out together and hold each other's hand. We'll just squeeze each other's hands, and we'll just come close, even just like, looking each other in the eye for a moment and just giving a kiss. And instead of being like, a quick kiss and look each other, okay, I gotta keep talking here. It's like, Hey, I'm gonna slow down. I'm gonna just give you a kiss right here, right? Everyone's around, yeah, I'll check in. I'll look in the eye. How you doing good? How are you awesome? Enjoying yourself, yep. And then you keep moving, and that is like an intimate moment. That can be a little bit of that deposit that you need, which I think is really, really important. The third one, yeah,

Kate MacDougall
it's a really tough one. It's coping with grief or loss. So many of us, that comes up during the holidays. We've lost a parent. Law for loved ones, children, like so many people, have gone through through so much, and coping with that can be very difficult. And the hard thing with grief and loss is each person grieves differently, yeah, and sometimes it can be something you suppress forever, and you seem very fine, you know, you lost your parent, and you seem like, great. All year, everything went fine, and all of a sudden Christmas hits, and it just hits you like a ton of bricks. And you're like, Whoa. Like so. And sometimes it can, it can impact you in the most random times you know, like, and it's difficult when you're the spouse and your loved one is going through that, you know, you're you're looking at your spouse, and you're going, oh my gosh, I don't know how to help you. We gotta go right? We got plans. And you're like, in bed crying, like, I don't know how to help you here. So it can be a very difficult moment as. Especially that's because we live it so differently. Sometimes it's hard to understand why, all of a sudden this hits you, like, why now? Like, we got things to do, like, get over it, and you can't this is not something you can just get over. Grieving is so personal and it's so different, and it's so hard to understand. And so going through that, especially the holidays, can be very challenging,

Eric MacDougall
yeah, and I think you know, really important here is to honor that grief. One thing we don't want to do is say, Hey, why are you doing this? Now, you know you don't invalidate that, yes, but there are ways where you can do both, right? I know that somebody, everybody grieves differently. Sometimes people need to spend time alone, but the reality is that grieving with others you love, trust and accept who accept you is very, very important, right? That is a massive part of what we know about the grieving process. And so as much as it can be hard like to say, Hey, I'm gonna go to this Christmas dinner, even though I'm feeling down and I'm really not feeling Yeah, it'll be the first time without my mom, right? Whatever, it is important to be around people that you want to connect with that you enjoy, right? Whether that's family, friends, etc. And so if you are the partner of somebody who typically agrees during this time, honor that right. Ask them what they need, try to support them in the best way you can, and then encourage them to just even, you know, exist in the space with loved ones. Sometimes it's easy as that you don't have to do anything. You can just sit and enjoy yourself. You don't have to talk. Just be there with us, and that alone will be helpful. And we would like to have your presence, because that's a gift.

Kate MacDougall
Yeah, I want to bring something up here also that kind of falls in the same category of grief and loss. I remember meeting you and because you had such a different experience of Christmas. Sometimes you wouldn't be with your family for Christmas morning, sometimes you would be in foster care or whatever. So for you, Christmas was always like a tough time. It always brought back a lot of difficult memories for you. And I remember going through those Christmases with you, it was especially before we had kids, because now I think you've kind of found this new magic in it. You've kind of found a new sense or a new you know idea behind Christmas. But before having kids, it was very much, you know, about spending time with our family and going out and having dinners and stuff. And so there was a part of me that had to be very sensitive to your past and how Christmas was for you. And oftentimes your grieving would come out as anger. It would come out as like wanting to isolate, wanting to be alone, not wanting to participate in, you know, my big family traditions, because your family was further away, and I really had to find the balance there of pushing you out of your comfort zone being like, No, you're going to come to my family thing, because I know this is going to be good for you, but also being sensitive to the fact that, like you did, go through this, and this is hard, and you are feeling some real feelings here, of you know, these, these memories coming back up, of like, possibly feeling abandoned, possibly feeling lost, possibly feeling like you don't really have a place. And so for me, it was so important to be sensitive to you and to really make you feel like, when we were at my parents house when we were at my family's house, like that, you belong there, that you had a space at that table, and it was so important for you to be there. So yes, there is the grief of losing a member of a family, maybe somebody you loved, maybe a child, God forbid. But there is also the sense of like grieving, you know what Christmas was for you in the past, and trying to get used to this new kind of Christmas when you start sharing your Christmas with another family, it can be difficult. I remember also, there was a year we were much younger. It was the first time I was away from my family for Christmas, and that was difficult, because I spent every Christmas with my family so grieving. Not being with my family like that might be something some couples are going through this year, and it was just being there for your spouse, making sure they know that you're there, holding their hand, being the same space as them, making them feel like this is where they're meant to be, and this is where you want them to be and you really appreciate them being there. That's so, so important in those moments. Yeah,

Eric MacDougall
I love that, and I think it brings us really nicely into our last one, which is, you know, really being realistic about expectations. So I think unrealistic expectations is the challenge that people have, right? I have been having a lot of conversations with people, and I've been hearing a lot about different plans, and as they're talking, you know, even for me, I'm like, that does none of that sounds. It sounds like I don't even know how you can do that, all that stuff. You're going to eight different places on Christmas Day. Obviously, I'm exaggerating it, but it is really important. And to curb some of those unrealistic expectations and kind of ground yourself in reality of like, hey, what's possible? I think for some people, the reality is that if you go from you know, if you go to four different parties on Christmas Day, the realistic thing is you're going to be tired. You're going to be exhausted, you're going to be stressed out. Bringing your kids from one place to the next is going to be tough on them. Yeah, right. So that would be you connecting to reality. Unrealistic expectations would be for you to do that and have your kids totally conform to everything you say and follow along and follow the rules, and everything's gonna be happy, go lucky and perfect, and all the timing is gonna work out, and the weather's gonna come in and so really understanding that, you know, are the expectations that I have of this holiday, first of all, realistic and second of all, actually worth experiencing for me?

Speaker 1
Yeah, and also, like, are these expectations that I'm setting for the holidays? Are they in line with my personal values? Are they in line with my family's values? Are they in line with our couples values? Are they in line with what I live day to day? If we live a simple life, you know, Eric and I, we live a very simple life. We try to not, you know, put too much in. Yeah. We say no, blah, blah, blah. We say no, a lot. We do, but, but, and we like it that way. That's it. Like we've had to learn to do that, and it's been a learning process. But you know, by doing that, we're able to say yes to more things and more things that are in line with our values and in line with our beliefs and in line with, you know, the things we love and enjoy doing. So it's it's so easy to fall into the I must, I should. We need to do this. We need to do that, but really stepping back and thinking like, Is this in line with us? You know, if Eric and I all of a sudden on Christmas Day, decided that we were going to go to four different houses and and then host that evening like we would, we would be completely overwhelmed. Our anxiety levels would be so high, and we probably wouldn't even be present for half of the time that we're spending at anybody's house, because we're just going to be thinking about, like, oh my gosh, like, I have to leave in 30 minutes exactly. Hey, if you're somebody who can go to four different houses on a regular and you do that, you know, once or twice a week, yeah, go for it. And if that's your use your reality part of it exactly go for it. But if this is, like, the only time of year you ever do, this might not be the best idea like, so really stepping back and thinking like, Is this in line with who we are, what we want? Is this going to be healthy for us? Is this healthy for our kids? Is this really the best idea for our family? And being open to saying no to some things,

Eric MacDougall
yeah. And I think that can be so challenging around these holidays, right? Because you

Kate MacDougall
want to please so many people absolutely, and there's so many people.

Eric MacDougall
And I think there's also this other idea of, like, you know, fairness, like, I think a lot of couples, right? If both your your parental units, I live in the same area, it becomes like, we have to see them both and we have to go visit them, when the kids have to give them both presents, and we like, it becomes this kind of thing where it has to be equal, yeah. And I think that can lead to unrealistic expectations of like, well, if we're gonna have dinner at your parents house, that means in the morning we have to go to my parents house. It's like, well, that goes against our values to be at two different places on the same day, and then so now you kind of have to negotiate and figure out what works for each of you based on your values. And so I think sometimes too, like this idea of things being fair, being equal, trying to meet other people's expectations can lead to you setting unrealistic, unrealistic expectations for yourself, for your relationship and for your family, and so these are some of the challenges that you know maybe you're facing now, and you know, just bring a little bit of insight to them, even just having a conversation about them, are gonna be really important. Because, you know, as we were sitting down, financial stressors, loss of intimacy, coping or grief and loss, unrealistic expectations, these are all things that even Kate and I deal with

Kate MacDougall
real challenges, right? And they, they sneak up on us every single year, every single Christmas, and the way we get through it is to have conversations, to gently remind each other. Kate, I know you want to go to these five parties tomorrow, but let's really be realistic about this. Let's talk and let's, let's really plan it out. What does that look like? We wake up, what's happening next? Kate, I know you want to fill the tree up with gifts, but let's look at our finances. Like, is this really the best use of our money? Do our kids really need 20 new Barbies when they've already got like, 2000

Eric MacDougall
Yeah, exactly. And allowing that conversation to happen, right? I'm not coming in there like, bulldozing your ideas.

Kate MacDougall
No, it's very much questioning and curiosity, curiosity and what is it about that that makes you feel so good? Is there another way we can go about doing that that would make you feel just as fulfilled? Yeah,

Eric MacDougall
so use this as a way to open up this conversation with your partner during the holidays and make sure that you're remaining connected, right? This is not about blaming your partner or maybe. Kingdom the bad guy, try to unify yourselves as a team so you can have a great holiday for yourselves and for your family.