Dear Therapist: No One Wants to Host My In-Laws for the Holidays
Editor’s Note: On the last Monday of each month, Lori Gottlieb answers a reader’s question about a problem, big or small. Have a question? Email her at dear.therapist@theatlantic.com.
Don’t want to miss a single column? Sign up to get “Dear Therapist” in your inbox.
Dear Therapist,
My husband and I have been together for five years. In that time, his parents have separated and are now divorcing. My husband and his two sisters are not particularly close with either parent because of their less-than-ideal childhood.
As adults, my husband and his siblings have established their own holiday traditions. My husband spends most holiday time with my family, and his siblings spend theirs with their in-laws. Before the divorce, my brother and his siblings would all get together with their parents for a simple dinner or gift exchange every year (for both Thanksgiving and Christmas), but now there’s no plan to bring the different parts of the family together.
In recent weeks, both parents, who each live by themselves, have started hinting at not wanting to be alone during the holidays and hoping to potentially join our plans. Neither parent seems willing to host—they just want the invitation. My sisters-in-law have made it clear that they won’t be inviting their parents to their plans with their own in-laws. This leaves my husband feeling like the onus is on us to “take care” of his parents by including them in our plans, which are really my family’s plans.
What’s the right move here? Ask my family to include them knowing that it shakes up our dynamic, or figure out how to navigate his parents truly being alone for the holidays?
Dear Reader,
I empathize with the fantasy that there’s an objective “right move” in this situation, but the reality is that different choices will have different consequences, none more “right” than the others. The best you can do is reflect on the options and, with the clarity that comes from reflection, choose the one that feels best for now.
I say “for now” because whatever you do this year isn’t what you have to do forever. Your extended family is going through a significant transition, and at this time next year, and in the years to come, the dynamics will shift and settle. Eventually, your husband’s parents might be fine attending a gathering together, or one or both might find a new partner and have other places to go. Holiday plans that make sense this year might look completely different in the future.
That should take some pressure off, because if whatever you do this year doesn’t work out as well as you hope, you can view the decision as nothing more than a well-intentioned and temporary experiment.
To help you design that experiment, let’s first think about the bigger dynamics at play. The reason you and your husband feel so conflicted is that your question touches on a complex intersection of family loyalty, emotional boundaries, and holiday expectations—each of which, by itself, is weighty and fraught. Add to this some painful childhood history, and it’s easy to feel confused and pulled in different directions. Even so, your family had come up with a viable solution, and now this divorce has transformed what was once a manageable annual gathering into something even more complicated.
[Read: The only two choices I’ve ever made]
I want to emphasize the impact of this divorce not just on your holiday plans, but on the family as a whole. Although your husband and his siblings aren’t particularly close with their parents, I imagine that they’re still dealing with the emotions of what’s known as “gray divorce”—a divorce that occurs later in life and that creates unique challenges for adult children. Many people assume that parental divorce affects adult children less significantly than young children, but it can be just as destabilizing, in different ways. Many adult children find themselves in exactly your husband’s position—managing their parents’ emotional needs while trying to maintain their own family structures and traditions.
On a deeper level, a late-in-life divorce signals a fundamental shift in family identity—even if your husband’s parents were less than ideal, he saw himself as being part of an intact family—and he has some adjusting to do. For one, he may be experiencing role reversal, in which adult children tend to take on a quasi-parental role and feel responsible for their parents’ well-being. He may also be feeling pulled back into certain unhealthy family dynamics that he would rather avoid. Notice how the divorce has highlighted different coping strategies among the siblings. Your sisters-in-law have chosen strict boundaries in upholding their in-laws’ traditions, whereas your husband feels pulled toward accommodation. This divergence can lead to resentment reminiscent of long-standing family roles (for example, was your husband historically the “responsible” or “peacemaking” child?). And finally, he may be feeling stuck in the middle of his parents’ newly separated lives, forced to navigate competing needs and perceived obligations.
For all of these reasons, you might want to have a conversation with your husband about his emotional response to his parents’ divorce. What does it bring up for him? How does it affect his relationship with his siblings and whether he feels alone or supported as his family goes through this change? What’s driving his sense of responsibility to “take care” of his parents? Is it a genuine desire for connection, is it simply guilt, or is there also a sense of real compassion? Once you understand more about how he feels, the two of you can have a candid conversation about the three interconnected challenges you as a couple are facing: your husband’s feeling of obligation to his parents, your commitment to your own family’s traditions, and the broader question of how much responsibility adult children bear for their parents’ emotional well-being.
[Read: Couples therapy, but for siblings]
If you can have these conversations with grace and empathy—for each other, for yourselves, and for his parents—you’ll likely find that they not only help you understand each other better, but that the options are less binary than you presented in your letter.
For instance, you can ask his parents to join your family without “shaking up” your family dynamic by not focusing so much on whether his parents are having a good time, and just letting everyone be. You can choose not to invite his parents to your family’s holiday gatherings but also not leave them “truly alone”—by calling or doing FaceTime instead, perhaps including some real-time virtual cooking or gift-opening. Alternatively, you can still do the simple dinner and gift exchange you’ve always done with both parents by telling them that if they don’t feel comfortable being in the same room together, they can always say no—but that’s what you’re able to offer given that you have two families to consider, and three celebrations are just too many. Or you can decide that doing another simple dinner and gift exchange isn’t that burdensome (because, as you say, it’s “simple”) and invite them individually for a version of the traditional plan—or schedule even shorter, separate visits with each of them.
As you become more flexible with the possibilities, remember that the goal isn’t to solve their loneliness but to help them adapt to their new reality in a healthy way. Maybe that involves connecting them with community resources or social groups for divorced seniors, encouraging them to build their own new traditions and actively engage with their existing social connections while pursuing new ones.
All of these are valid ways to experiment with creating holiday celebrations that balance compassion for his parents with respect for your own family’s needs and joy. As you do this, keep in mind that part of “taking care” of your husband’s parents is helping them build independent lives post-divorce—and that this is one of the most caring things adult children can do.
Dear Therapist is for informational purposes only, does not constitute medical advice, and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician, mental-health professional, or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. By submitting a letter, you are agreeing to let The Atlantic use it—in part or in full—and we may edit it for length and/or clarity.