My husband and I, year after year, have to decide where to spend Christmas. I want to visit my family because I don’t see them often because they live 5 hours away. My husband wants to stay in town to celebrate with his side of the family. We see them weekly if not more. Plus we always celebrate Thanksgiving with them as well. In addition to that, our son has varsity hockey practice the day after Christmas at 8 am in the morning and we have 2 other children to think of as well. This is always frustrating for me because I feel like my side of the family gets jipped. Instead of arguing, we decided to collaborate. We sat down together, shared why each option was important to us, and looked for a plan that worked for both families. We come up with a solution: Because, our son has practice the day after it doesn’t make sense to drive to see my family on Christmas day so we decided to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas evening with my husband’s family in town and then drive to visit my family on the day after Christmas and spend a few days at my parents house. By working together and combining both of our ideas, we solved the conflict in a fair and respectful way. That’s not to say that it wasn’t hard to come up with a plan that works for everyone.
