Oh, this one. Yeah. I hear this one so much, and I want to tell you something important right away: you are almost certainly not actually fighting about family visits.
I mean that. The calendar, the holidays, who goes where, how long you stay, whether his mother gets Christmas Eve or Christmas Day… that is the surface. That is the presenting issue. But what’s happening underneath it is a completely different conversation, and until you have that conversation, you will keep having the same fight about the logistics forever.
Here is what is really going on.
When your partner consistently prioritizes time with their family of origin, or their friends, or whoever the third party is, your nervous system picks that up. It doesn’t send you a polite memo. It sends you an alarm. Because the question your body is asking is not “are we going to Thanksgiving at her mother’s house?” The question is “am I your person? Am I your primary attachment? Are you there for me?”
That is an attachment question. That is a bonding question. And it is enormous.
Now here is where it gets painful for both of you, and I want you to hear the “both” part.
The partner who feels unprioritized, who feels like they keep coming second to the in-laws or the buddies or whoever, that person is in real pain. Valid pain. They are hurting because they genuinely don’t feel chosen. And so they protest. They get critical, they get angry, they push. That protest makes complete sense.
But here is what that protest does to the other partner. The one trying to navigate their family of origin. It lands on them like: you are a failure. You cannot do anything right. You are a disappointment to me AND to your family. They are already stressed about the outside relationship, and now they feel attacked at home too. So they shut down. They withdraw. They get defensive. Because feeling like a constant failure is unbearable.
And then you know what happens? The withdrawal makes the first partner feel even more alone, so they push harder. And the pushing makes the withdrawer shut down more. Round and round. I call this the Waltz of Pain, and once you are in it, you can dance it for years without ever touching the real issue.
The real issue is never the visit schedule.
So what do you do? You stop trying to solve the logistics problem and you start talking about the emotional one. You say, out loud, something like: “When I feel like your family comes first, I get scared that I am not your priority. And when I get scared, I come at you hard. And I know that feels awful.”
That is a completely different conversation than “we need to spend less time at your mother’s house.”
When two people can start to see each other’s fear, the fear underneath the anger, that is when real repair becomes possible. That is when you stop being opponents in a fight about scheduling and start being teammates working on something that actually matters.
You cannot get there by winning the argument about Christmas. You get there by asking, “what are we both scared of here?”
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Figs is a licensed marriage and family therapist with 16+ years of experience working with couples. He’s the co-founder of Empathi, host of the “Come Here to Me” podcast, and author of an upcoming book on relationships and the systems that shape how we love.
Read more: How to Stop Fighting and Start Communicating in Your Relationship
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