Reply to Sick of spending every holiday with the in-laws

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Stop doing Christmas there. You will really regret never having holidays at your own home or on vacation with your kids. Don’t let your in laws monopolize your holidays and force your kids to fit into their adult parties.[/quote]

This is definitely a cultural shift.  I think that most people over many decades would equate holidays to spending time with their families (all of their family), not just a little nuclear family going on vacation for Christmas.  Not that you can't do this, but acknowledge that many people, especially in the older generations, would find this selfish and not in keeping with the meaning of Christmas.[/quote]

One of the biggest differences I've seen in this tradition, though, is that parents of adult children still seem to want to hoard hosting and to still be in charge of everything. We stopped caving to mom & MIL ages ago (who we love, but who also don't need to be calling all the shots), but they still really seem to struggle with not actively parenting/hosting despite us all being middle age or beyond. Small example - we started staying in hotels when visiting in-laws (game changer), and they still try to insist on driving us back & forth for visits to the house instead of "letting" us take ubers. (We take the ubers anyway, but it's a fuss every single time. Insane.)

They see their "shoulds" as universal. It was work to help him see this, but I'm grateful that my DH was able to recognize that we get to make our own shoulds, and we were both glad to be as compassionate as possible while knowing fully that people would be upset when we didn't do their shoulds.

So for people in the OP's shoes - if this is at all relevant, you have to pick who's going to make your decisions for you. I get it - it's a lot harder when you're not on the same page as your spouse. It also seems to be affecting the quality of what you'd like to be a very different experience for holidays and it's also something that you're trying to negotiate that he's just shutting down and that's not fair. Would it be worth it to do a few couples sessions to sort things out so they feel more fair? It would be nice for you not to dread the holidays![/quote]

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