Coping with Xmas Day - help please

FBaby

It isn't that easy to compromise when you become a stepparent. It's completely possible to compromise over xmas. (My DH has just spent several days visiting his family - for various reasons DD and I couldn't go. Unlike with (young) stepchildren that was an easy compromise for both of us.)

Exactly, it is about compromising, but OP is making it clear that she is not happy to do so as doing it every other year to suit both herself and partner is not good enough for them it would seem, hence the original post and people telling her that she doesn't have to compromise at all if she doesn't want to.

bloolagoon

missprice wrote: »

Since when is that what Christmas is about?
Surely its what you want it to be.
I have done family Christmases and they are no great shakes, I have done child centered Xmas, and hopefully will do them again with grandchildren one day, they are my favorite. I have done lonely Christmases with no one at all, and I have done let's be somewhere else/another country/avoid Xmas.

But one thing I have managed to avoid so far is any Xmas day where I had to dress up, starve, spend too much time with people I don't much like, not drink at all to numb the pain, and drive home dead late.
I have done all the above things, just not all in the same day. Sometimes you have to just do these things to please the OH, but all of them?
And then know that in 2 years you will have to do it again.

I'd agree if we knew what her OH wants. It could be he hates christmas without his family and enjoys the formal dinner so it's a bi annual compromise. He could feel all the above in reverse. Sometimes you need to compromise and it's not fair if he never gets what he wants to do.

missprice

bloolagoon wrote: »

I'd agree if we knew what her OH wants. It could be he hates christmas without his family and enjoys the formal dinner so it's a bi annual compromise. He could feel all the above in reverse. Sometimes you need to compromise and it's not fair if he never gets what he wants to do.

I actually agree, compromise must be made. I even said that, sometimes you just have to do what the OH wants.

My point I think was any of those options can be done. Who hasn't been the named driver or if not they had to dress up smart for dinner when all you want to wear is pj, or dinner was late because it all went to pot, or could not drink because someone had to not drink, or eaten a cold/burnt/raw dinner, been bored to tears etc.
But to have to do so many in a day, even I would be moved enough to complain on a forum.
If it was more equal and the OH also had to sit through something similar on the alternate years, then yes I would probably not complain too much, but seems on alternate years they get to do whatever they want at home/somewhere else.
Even probably OH could visit his parents by himself if he chose to on those years.

bloolagoon

missprice wrote: »

I actually agree, compromise must be made. I even said that, sometimes you just have to do what the OH wants.

My point I think was any of those options can be done. Who hasn't been the named driver or if not they had to dress up smart for dinner when all you want to wear is pj, or dinner was late because it all went to pot, or could not drink because someone had to not drink, or eaten a cold/burnt/raw dinner, been bored to tears etc.
But to have to do so many in a day, even I would be moved enough to complain on a forum.
If it was more equal and the OH also had to sit through something similar on the alternate years, then yes I would probably not complain too much, but seems on alternate years they get to do whatever they want at home/somewhere else.
Even probably OH could visit his parents by himself if he chose to on those years.

But her christmas could be equal to his nightmare. What OP describes is my idea of the worst christmas ever. I'd hate no formal roast lunch, no paper hats, no chaos, no drunken aunty Joan on the sherry, no laughter when someone walks in on the throne room as we don't have a lock. Chilling in pyjamas with a bottle of bourbon, watching TV isn't christmas to me. I would do it alternative years and plaster a smile on my face for the sake of my OH but I'd hate it.

Many people are like this, we love cheesy cracker jokes, tipsy old relatives telling the same story over again, dinner never ready on time and after dinner present opening. We don't know what her OH wants but certainly for some OP's idea of christmas would be the opposite of a good Christmas Day.

lostinrates

bloolagoon wrote: »

I'd agree if we knew what her OH wants. It could be he hates christmas without his family and enjoys the formal dinner so it's a bi annual compromise. He could feel all the above in reverse. Sometimes you need to compromise and it's not fair if he never gets what he wants to do.

Sometimes its about more than your partner. DH and I would have loved Christmas alone. We managed it last year. This year my mother would have been on her own and would not have liked it. She pretty much invited her self and after talking with my husband we agreed while our ideal would be to spend it alone a greater ideal is not to be the kind of people who leave someone miserable when its within in our easy control to make it not so. There will be plenty of Christmases in the future to spend alone, and probably several where we throw the door open.

We cannot reasonably go through life doing as we want all the time. Or if we do we cannot expect to be as happy and if we compromise sometimes, but all the time.

meer53

Lily-Rose wrote: »

To be fair, it was probably just as much of a relief for your ex; to not have to be shoved and dragged from pillar to post, and be forced to play happy families with people he flat out didn't want to be with. Nobody should be made to do things they don't want to do, or go places they don't want to be, just to keep their partner happy.

I have been in a couple of relationships when I was much younger (before I met DH) where I was sometimes emotionally blackmailed into hanging around with people I didn't want to be with. It just made me miserable. No matter how much I said I wasn't happy or comfortable, they didn't care, and still went ahead and did things their way.

So have you thought that your ex was as 'miserable' as you, but for a different reason? And that he is probably as relieved that the relationship ended as you are?

My ex may have been an !!!! but he was a grown up !!!!. He was perfectly able to say to me "look, i really don't want to go with you this time" and he could have stayed at home to be a miserable !!!! all by himself. He was never forced to go anywhere or endure anything, I would have been more than happy for him to do this. We would all have been happier.

It's no good playing the martyr saying "but i had to go". He even made the kids miserable with his bloody childish sulking every time. They would be happily playing games or doing other stuff and he would say "come on we're going home now"

He was very happy our marriage ended after i found out he had been having an affair, he trotted off to live with his floozie. Who promptly dumped him. He didn't like going to see her family either. I'm good friends with her now, we have a laugh about his selfish attitude.

So, in my case, your post is way off the mark. There are some people who are just so selfish they can't even spend one day a year without putting themselves first.

Pollycat

meer53 wrote: »

He was very happy our marriage ended after i found out he had been having an affair, he trotted off to live with his floozie. Who promptly dumped him. He didn't like going to see her family either. I'm good friends with her now, we have a laugh about his selfish attitude.

WOW!
Now that's what I call the ultimate revenge! :T :rotfl:

meer53

Pollycat wrote: »

WOW!
Now that's what I call the ultimate revenge! :T :rotfl:

Great innit

She's really quite a nice person. Turns out he lied to her just as much as he lied to me, can't blame her for anything when he told her we were divorced. He really is a very stupid man.

jaydeeuk1

So... How d'it go then?

Serendipitious

jaydeeuk1 wrote: »

So... How d'it go then?

I'm wondering about that too!