How holiday stress can impact your relationship

Christmas is a time of joy, togetherness, and merriment. However, in midlife this period can be fraught with family expectations, personal pressure, stress and overwhelm.You find yourself taking on the lion’s share of planning, shopping, cooking and looking after everyone’s needs without any real sense of pleasure or joy. This can lead to resentment, frayed tempers and a lack of intimacy in our romantic relationships as tiredness takes over.

Stress is the thief pleasure.

Why is this the case? Because stress keeps us in a negative thought loop, where we expect the worst-case scenario or have a negative bias towards another’s actions and as such it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. We assume bad intentions in things that were genuine miscommunications, causing situations to snowball. The other thing that stress does is it switches on the body’s survival state so that all pleasure signals are off.

Stress increases cortisol levels in the body leading to a nervous system fight or flight response, which in turn decreases feel good hormones such as serotonin and oxytocin, robbing you of any kind of desire or intimacy with your partner in the process.

Some of the habits that we have picked up over the years and are more pronounced over the holidays inadvertently cause us stress and overwhelm, habits such as:

• Creating endless To Do lists

• Saying yes when you really mean NO

• People pleasing

• Striving for Perfection

• Negative Self Talk

• Putting yourself last

• Disregarding self-care such as sleep and exercise

The brain priortizes pleasure when you are feeling safe, calm and relaxed. If you can continue to do things throughout the festive period that signal safety and pleasure to your nervous system it will expand your capacity for pleasure in all forms so you are more open to intimacy.

Some habits that cultivate pleasure are:

• Moving your body

• Walks in nature

• Self massage

• Wearing your favorite color

• Speaking to yourself kindly

• Setting Healthy Boundaries

• Journaling

• Rest

Avoiding the disconnect

If, like many you find yourself feeling a sense of disconnect from your partner over the festive season there are non-sexual things that you can do to reconnect and reignite that spark for each other. Some of the activities that I find most helpful for reconnection are:

• Taking some alone time together, even if it’s just to go for a walk

• Making a ritual of greeting each other with a smile, hug or kiss

• Praising your partner, tell them what you love about them 

• Sitting by the fire together alone and talking

• Cooking together

• Holding hands

• Gazing into eachother’s eyes

• Cuddling or offering eachother a massage in the morning or before bed

The festive season is a time for connection and togetherness. Remember it’s not all about the presents and creating the perfect day, but rather about bringing awareness to the habits that are blocking you from accessing pleasure, and creating a practice of connecting with yourself and your partner. When you are more present to pleasure and make time to connect over meaningful conversations, shared activities, or simply enjoying each other's company, these moments will create lasting memories and strengthen the bonds that hold you together.