When you have not yet learned to manage anxiety, nerves, attacks and crises can come upon you for the most unexpected reasons. You may be happy being single, you may be delighted with your freedom and your social life, but when Christmas arrives you start to get nervous thinking about going to family gatherings without a partner. One more year.
And there are people who are very sensitive to social pressure, family jokes, veiled reproaches and warnings about that biological clock that everyone thinks is going to go off at any moment. And the rest of the year you don’t care, but at Christmas, the lack of a partner causes you an anxiety that you can’t escape.
No partner at Christmas
At this point, many women have already realized that Prince Charming does not exist and that relationships require an effort that they are often not willing to make. At this point many other women feel more than satisfied to be single and take it as a condition that they do not want to change.
But at this point, and incredible as it may seem, there are also women who settle for the wrong man because they live trapped in that social convention that says you have to work, get married and start a family. And for some reason we haven’t figured out yet, all that security that comes with the free and independent life of the single woman falls apart at Christmas.
It’s not easy to keep calm in the middle of a Christmas Eve dinner, where your sisters look at you with pity because for another year you haven’t brought a boyfriend and time for motherhood is running out. Or when your parents wonder what they did wrong with you so that you can’t maintain a stable relationship like everyone else. As everyone?
Single and quiet at Christmas
We can recognize Christmas for that capacity that it has both to make us sad and to make us tense. We know that it is a key moment to think about mistakes and worry about the future. But we also know that dramatizing is not good for our anxiety. So let’s take Christmas easy.
Not having a partner at Christmas translates into not having to discuss or negotiate where and with whom we are going to spend Christmas, not eating our heads to find that perfect gift for our love, not fearing that our disappointment at the Brilliant idea that he had this year for the Three Kings, in not having to account to anyone for enjoying the festivities to the fullest.
Not having a partner at Christmas translates into freedom, security, decision-making capacity, independence, adventure or peace of mind as needed. Not having a partner at Christmas is, in reality, the best opportunity to enjoy Christmas, without commitments, just doing what you really want to do.
