Reduce holiday stress: Become an expert on you and your partner's stress cycle

Holidays make me feel in two ways: happy and stressed.

As my partner sits across from me, we both glance around the nearly empty sushi restaurant, trying to hide our annoyance with each other. We just ordered our takeout and are waiting.

"We're grumpy, huh?" she said.

"Yeah. I was just noticing how particularly critical of each other we were today."

“Yeah. I do not like it. I have a bad headache and I don't feel well. Not to mention that we didn't eat or drink anything for six hours and we were very busy. »

"I know. It makes sense that we're grumpy with each other."

The emotional walls of annoyance crumble between us as we reconnect after a chaotic day visiting friends and family.

We often think of the holiday season as a joyful time. But vacations also come with the "gifts" of long-distance travel, the effort and expense of buying presents for loved ones, hosting and attending holiday parties, cooking MASSIVE meals, and finishing d important year-end work projects.

All that stress can make us quite grumpy.

Interestingly, conflict in romantic relationships often escalates during the holiday season because of this added stress.

The problem, as hundreds of studies of the human mind have found, is two things: 1) situations influence people's behavior, and 2) people are unaware of this reality.

So when our partner looks more grumpy than usual, our mind blames their personality for the problems, rather than taking into account what's going on around us.

It happens to me too. Right before my partner says, "We're grumpy, huh?" I had to take a quick walk around the block because I noticed I wasn't the type of lover I wanted to be. I was a little more judgmental and dismissive, as well as less engaging, than usual.

A brisk walk like this is an example of pausing during an escalation of conflict.

During this walk, I had to talk to the various...