Conscious Coupling - ALWAYS Be a Team During the Holidays

Okay, I'm trying to get the thumbnails to look better because if you've watched any of my live streams, my thumbnails are horrible. So today is week three, which means it's conscious coupling time. And today, the title for today's little conversation, Soliloquy, monologue, random thoughts. The title is Always Be a team during the Holidays. So I've been focusing my live streams on the holidays. And you know, when it comes to conscious coupling, I can tell you everything not to do during the holidays.

But the key is that you've got all these different energies competing. When you have a couple experiencing the holidays, you have, let's say you have partner A and partner B. Okay, let's just assume it's two people. We'll leave all the other relationship variations for another time. Partner A has their past, their present, and their relationship with partner B. Partner B has their past, their present, their relationship with partner A. Add kids and then you've got that additional component. How many opportunities are there for you to stop being a team?

For you to lose sight of being a team? And being a team sometimes means saying, hey, I need a break. Hey, I need to go do some self care. I need to take a, you know, a little quick timeout. I just need, like, for me, you know, hey, I'm just gonna go play my guitar for a little bit. I'm going to go for a walk, take the dog for a walk, I'm going to do some meditation, you know, something like that. But as long as I'm communicating. So that's part of it, right? The other part is how often does our past want to be a part of our present and then does that get in the way?

So then I'm not interacting with my partner, I'm interacting with my parents from long ago. She's not interacting with her partner, she's interacting with her parents from long ago. Although she had a pretty, you know, solid upbringing, not a lot of drama, not a lot of crisis, which is definitely not my experience and not what I can say. And so I, you know, bring that in. And like I said last week, you know, my whole ambition since my daughter has been born especially has been like for her to just have great holidays and never kind of view the holidays as something to be dreaded or something, you know, like, like I had, which I hated the holidays.

I didn't, I didn't, you know, I thought it was all bullshit. And I've had a truly new experience as a result of my daughter and my wife kind of Having that. But the key is, how do we stay a team with our partners, right? So we check in with them. Hey, how are you doing? Maybe you have little codes ahead of time when. If you have family coming, right? So if, for instance, I'm talking about my partner and me, right? So she and me. She and I. If her family's coming, you know, it's. It's pretty solid.

Stuff comes up for her. We check in with each other. It's not. It's not so challenging. If my mom is coming, then, you know, it's like, there's a lot in our history we're doing well overall and. Oh, I thought I turned off do not disturb. I have no idea if people could see the text. Okay, I'm gonna. I'm not gonna turn it off now. I just broke the fourth wall. Oh, my God. All right, so if it's my part, my parent that's coming, my other parent is deceased. We prepare. We prepare for her arrival. We prepare to be with her.

I prepare myself and get ready because I want my mom to have a good experience, I want my wife to have a good experience, I want my daughter to have a good experience, and I want to have a good experience. So without making it a lot of pressure, it's kind of like, how do we stay a team during the holidays? How do we take care of each other, look out for each other and look out for ourselves and take care of ourselves? Because there's a great line in 12 step recovery that says you cannot transmit something you do not have.

You can't take care of somebody else if you're not taking care of yourself. You got to. You have to put your oxygen mask on first. And so that's a part of it. So when I say staying a team, I think it's understanding that the stress of the holidays can pull us apart. The different relationships, family members can kind of pull us apart. And so if we're not taking care of ourselves and if we're not taking care of each other, and if we're not checking in with each other and if we're not going in with even some kind of loose game plan, it can be a setup for failure or certainly not as great of a time as it would be.

As if you just kind of had those little. Those little kind of built in security measures for each of you as you navigate all of these things. Because you know what my little live streams have been about for this December is it's all about like, hey, how do we prepare to have a really great holiday. In fact, next Saturday for a lot of us, we'll be through it. Hanukkah. Well, I don't think it will be completely over, but we will be done with Christmas and other holidays as well. And so my big question for next week is going to be, how did you do?

How did I do? Was I able to practice what I was talking about? Where did I make mistakes? Where did I do well? Just a really solid inventory of the experience, because I think we all go in with expectations. We all go in with, you know, oh, it's gonna be. It's good this year. It's gonna be really great. But I've got to do my own work, and I've got to do what's necessary in order to make that a reality. Just simply wishing for it is seriously not enough for it to actually happen. And so those are my thoughts today about being a team.

And my encouragement is to sit down with your partner, and if you haven't had a conversation about the holidays, just say, what do you need? What do you need from me? And then let them know what you need and what maybe you could. What you would ask for from them and what kind of plan you want to have. Just a loose plan for how to navigate these things and to support each other and to stay a team during the holidays. So that's. That's the goal, right? Stay a team, have.