Holidays after the Divorce

   Holiday celebrations conjure up images of friends and family gathered together in love and harmony. It is not necessarily the reality for those whose marriages are ending.       

Although the holidays tend to focus on family and togetherness, they don’t have to be a miserable time for someone recently separated or divorced. The holidays are an especially difficult time for the newly single because celebrations tend to be centered around gathering together family members, said Dorothy W. Cantor, Psy.D., a psychologist who has been practicing for more than 25 years. She is a past president of the American Psychological Association, and the current president of the American Psychological Foundation.       

“Holidays are built around family, so there are a set of traditions, routines and expectations. The change in those underlines the change in the family structure. It sort of rubs it in,” Cantor said. She is the author of five books, including "What Do You Want to Do When You Grow Up? Starting the Next Chapter of Your Life." At the holidays, the loss of the spouse as well as the loss of the spouse’s family members becomes magnified, Cantor said. 

Even more difficult is the prospect of having to share one’s children during the holidays, she said. “And so there’s a loss there, too, depending on what the traditional celebrations were,” Cantor said. Another reason the holidays are so difficult, Cantor said, is because people tend to set up extremely high expectations for how perfect and happy the celebrations will be. “I wonder if any holiday can live up to that,”  Cantor said.       

Those expectations are what makes newly single struggle more to have a positive holiday season, said Katrina Greene, MSW, a life coach in New York. She said that the added projection in the media that every family is intact and happy makes it even more difficult. Singletons tend to feel that they were once in that category, but are no longer. “The single people are probably more prevalent,” Greene said. “It’s just not promoted as much.”       

Feeling like the holiday celebrations is only for familys can make someone who just experienced a break-up feel even worse, said Robert Emery, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and the director of the Center for Children, Families, and the Law at the University of Virginia. “We have these ideas that the holidays will be a wonderful time,” Emery said. “They are a special time of year, but the holidays are stressful, too, particularly when they are a reminder of friends, family, a relationship, a future, and you are facing them by yourself. The holidays are supposed to be a time of coming together, and when you have just come apart, you feel like you don’t belong.”      

Even the weather seems to make the holidays a time for togetherness, said Toni Coleman, MSW, a licensed psychotherapist and relationship coach in Virginia. “I call this the digging in time of year. It’s the time when people want to stay close to home and hibernate,”  Coleman said.       

She said the holidays and all of the celebrations tend to amplify the loneliness and isolation newly single people feel. “It culminates in New Year's, which is the couple’s event of the year,” Coleman said. But the holidays don’t have to be a time of loneliness. Instead, they can be a time of new traditions and of celebrations that make one truly happy.