Subscribe to Breaking News
Loading ...Ask the Expert: Should I bring my partner home for the holidays?
When the holidays arrive, my partner of 10 years goes to her family and I go to mine. Afterward, we come together and meet up with our friends to celebrate.
Lately, my partner has been complaining that this isn’t working for her anymore and that we should be going to each other’s families together – like married straight couples do. This is creating a lot of anxiety for me, as I don’t know how my family will respond. We each like each other’s families, but in mine we sort of have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. They know but we don’t talk about it.
Should I keep things the way they are or bring her home and risk a family uproar?
Homo for the Holidays
Dear Homo for the Holidays,
Each year as the holidays start to approach, I always ask the couples I’m counseling (both gay/lesbian and straight) what they plan to do. Most straight couples say they are going to one of the partner’s parents’ places, or are celebrating in their own home, where families and friends will visit and blend together.
Gay and lesbian couples, however, often have different scenarios. Many times, they decide to go separately to their own respective families, just as you and your partner do.
I wonder why you haven’t done what many couples do—take turns going to each other’s families each year, so you can spend the holidays together. Although some couples prefer to separate because they do not like the partner’s family, this doesn’t sound like the case with you and your partner.
I will tell you, I am biased and believe that it strengthens relationships to spend holidays together.
It does harm to the relationship in subtle ways by not going together as a family unit. The message you are giving to yourselves as a couple and to your families is that you are not “really” a couple and that you could operate as singles at will without being affected. Imagine heterosexually married relatives doing the same. They might want to - as they might not like or enjoy the other’s family – but they do it because they are a unit.
I wonder if you have internalized homophobia and if this is an expression of that. Even though your parents accept that you are lesbian are you out about it? Do you talk about your partner as a partner? Do you receive invitations and gifts as partners or do things come separately? What has caused you to continue a holiday tradition as a single and not allow it to evolve as a couple? Some lesbians and gays feel it is confrontational and might be reflective of their going from child to adult within their family.
No matter what, if you separate only on holidays, your refusal to declare your relationship verbally and behaviorally would inevitably affect your relationship. Not identifying overtly as a couple minimizes the attachment to one’s partner and keeps it from growing into a healthy adult relationship. This wears away at the closeness and connection you have with your partner in subtle and covert ways. Over time I have seen couples having intimacy issues by not joining together for things that our heterosexual counterparts do, such as holidays and special events like weddings and Bar Mitzvahs.
Being with our family and our partner brings with it a special familial feeling and closeness that you cannot achieve on your own as a couple. In the end, I hope you decide to sit down with your family one-on-one and tell them that you are a lesbian and that you will be celebrating the holidays with your partner present from now on, which means that you will spend one year with one family, and the next year with the other family or go to both each year—whatever works for you.
The only time I do not advise this is if someone is concerned about or knows they will suffer negative consequences for doing so, such as physical violence, cutoffs from the family or some other verbal or emotional abuse. Those are harder decisions and people have to decide for themselves if it is worth it to do or not.
In your case, your family sounds like they might be open to this conversation and your partner is pressuring you to do it anyway. I am in agreement with your partner and know it is the right thing to do.
BE HOMO for the holidays!
Joe Kort, MA, MSW, is a psychotherapist and Board Certified Sexologist who specializes in gay affirmative therapy, relationship therapy, sex therapy and sexual addiction. He is the author of 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do to Improve Their Lives, 10 Smart Things Gay Men Can Do To Find Real Love, and Gay Affirmative Therapy for the Straight Clinician. He provides workshops for gays and lesbians as well as trainings for straight clinicians around the country. His website is www.joekort.com.
This is simple. If the family doesn’t like gay couples, then don’t associate with them. I have distanced myself from bigoted family members before and recommend it for everyone. Take out the trash!
love is supposed to be unconditional (both family and romanticly), if a family member cant still love you after finding out your gay then they don’t really love you at all.
I’ve been with my BF for thirteen years and we have always spent the Holidays with his family in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Most of the rest of the year, we are in Ireland near my family. Neither family has ever thought that we should do anything else. We’re all good progessive people but we are as well received by our conservative relations (in Grand Rapids and Reno) as anyone else. I wish everyone had families like ours.
My vote is to go as a family. If the people you raised you can’t deal with it then that is their problem. If after 10 years they have not accepted her as their daughter-in-law then I say screw em.
Sometimes you have to force the issue.
My partner of 16 years was married before we got together. He has two daughters. It took them about 4 years to realize that they still loved their dad and now we are both back in their lives.
It’s not just holidays, but for any kind of family function, such as the like of birthdays, weddings and anniversaries as well.
My husband and I have been together for 30 years this coming February and this is familiar territory.
Fortunately I came out to my parents back when I was eighteen. I met my husband when I was thirty and he was twenty-two. The uncomfortable part was he hadn’t informed his parents that he was gay for the first eight years of our relationship. Even though I was invited to all of my husbands family functions, I was introduced to his family members as his roommate, but at my families get togethers he was known and accepted as my partner.
Finally my partner told his parents and family that he was gay and that we were partners. Their response was, “We already figured that out a long time ago”.
We are very fortunate in both our family’s acceptance, where many other gay and lesbian couples are not.
My advice would be to go as a couple if there’s acceptance. Going your own separate ways for the holidays is your own fear of rejection by your families and you are putting a ugly strain on your own loving relationship.
Separate is not equal!
I agree with everyone here. Being a “family” with your partner means exactly that. YOU are the unit that comes first. Straight couples eventually have to make this kind of accommodation as well, although often after children come. Regardless, you are adults now with adult lives. If you and your partner truly are a unit or family, than your needs as a couple come first, your other family second. Time to grow up. If your adult family members cannot accept you, your sexuality or your partner, than you need to explain why you won’t be coming home for the holidays.
I too spent the first few years as “the friend who had nowhere else to go” then “the relationship that wasn’t spoken about.” Eventually I told my partner I didn’t want to go anymore. I’d rather spend it by myself than be someone’s third wheel or dirty secret. So he dealt with it, and much easier than he had expected, and now we trade off years.
Your first responsibility is to your partner and their needs, then your adult family members, holidays or not. You’re no longer a child. Children grown up, leave home and start their own lives.
These comments are awesome! It is always what I hoped for gays and lesbians to feel this way. We must take a stand for our new families and are family of origin! Thanks for the responses.
Why in the world would you want to be separated on Christmas day, of all days? My other half and I both have to travel on business sometimes, but other than that we are together every night, and have been for almost 20 years.
This year, he just started a new job, and has no time to take off, so we cannot travel. My brothers, nephews, and nieces are all gathering at my parents house — but we won’t be there. I am NOT leaving him alone at Christmas time. The rest of my family understands that. I am almost surprised they didn’t all decide to come here.
My partner of 25 years is at home with Mommy & Sis. I am not welcome. I asked over Thanksgiving for him to come home early on Friday due to it being my birthday, he did not. I missed my own birthday dinner because he showed up for this and I refused at the last minute. Now it is Christmas and I asked him to spend Christmas Eve with me and freinds, have dinner @ 5:30 pm, then depart for Christmas holidays @ Mommy’s, he instead made plans to leave @ 7:00 am on Christmas Eve with a freind and return on Saturday the 26th in time to go to work. I say he has signed our divorce decree. What say you?
I don’t like to criticize, but several things about this advice irked me. I’ll start by saying that I agree with the end advice: take turns going to each others’ family holidays (or some other way of going to both, TOGETHER). I do not, however, agree with the way that some of it was given.
“I wonder if you have internalized homophobia and if this is an expression of that. Even though your parents accept that you are lesbian are you out about it?”
Really? That could be very insulting and I don’t think it needed to be asked outright. Eliminate these sentences from that paragraph, and the other questions alone would be very good at helping someone see signs of acceptance from their family that they didn’t see before.
“In your case, your family sounds like they might be open to this conversation…”
What does “Don’t ask, don’t tell” mean to you? Certainly not, “hey, let’s have a really uncomfortable conversation over Christmas dinner!” That doesn’t mean that the conversation shouldn’t happen (IT SHOULD!), but it seems like the author created a completely different image in their head of what this family is like compared to what “Homo for the Holidays” wrote.
“…and keeps it from growing into a healthy adult relationship.”
Seems like a lot of value judging on what their relationship is (without enough information to do so) rather than simply offering advice on the topic that was asked. The rest of their relationship could be completely “adult” and it doesn’t *have* to hinge on this one thing. And I won’t even bring up ageism…oops. I don’t see anywhere in that letter an age (either current or indicating that they started dating as “non-adults”).
It just seems like the way this advice was delivered is overly assertive and reflective of the author’s specific values. There’s isn’t enough information in the letter nor establishment of a relationship between the author and the writer to support that.
And there are several comments advocating a “screw em” mentality, or cutting yourself off from un-supportive family which is COMPLETELY counter-productive. If they do the cutting, then there’s not much to be done. But don’t be the one to initiate that or you’ll never be a family with your family. It may not be easy, but nobody said life was easy. Having the difficult conversations and challenging perceptions is the only way that we are going to move society forward.