Handling Holidays After a Divorce

Three years ago, I got my first sense of how holidays can be different for families after a divorce. My then-sister-in-law was having an affair and my parents invited our entire family over for a picnic on Memorial Day. My sister-in-law refused to attend, so my brother brought his kids and we had a great time without her.

Although my brother didn't know it at the time, it was the first holiday that would be different for him, his children, and our entire family.

One of the things that is difficult about a litigation divorce is the animosity it creates. When you're involved in an adversarial battle, things like holidays become a situation where both spouses want to "win." My sister-in-law, for example, is a Christmas junkie. She would buy thousands of dollars in Christmas presents each year (whether they could afford it or not). So that first Christmas after the divorce filing became a battleground. Even though she was broke, she spent more than a thousand dollars on gifts. My brother, financially drained from his own attorney fees and child support, couldn't afford to spend much on the kids. Combined with disagreements about how visitation would be handled for the holidays and invitations from his in-laws for him and the kids to spend New Year's with them (that was rescinded when my sister-in-law found out), it was just messy.

Collaborative divorce doesn't mean that there won't be disagreements about holidays (or how much is spent on the kids' gifts), but it means that you take a bigger picture approach. You have to be willing to give a little to get a little. And give up your idea of what a "perfect" holiday looks like.

On that Memorial Day in 2008, we got our first glimpse of what future holidays would look like. It didn't look like previous holidays, but we adapted. We survived. We thrived.

When you're considering what kind of relationship you want to have with your spouse after the divorce, remember that how the divorce unfolds will have a big impact on that outcome. If you go for the short-term win, you're going to lose in the long run. You're not just making decisions that affect today -- you're making decisions that will affect your future. Consider carefully.