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For me, the difficulty I have with holidays is not about having to spend time with family (either of origin or of choice). Even though I am MUCH more radical on just about every single topic than almost all of them (with the exception of my immediate polycule, the Tangle, who I *don't* get to spend holidays with anyway because of distance), I still like spending holiday time with family.
The difficulty I have is when the holiday gatherings include people my family is close to. So, like, if I host something, it's all people I get along with. But if I go to their house, usually the only people I connect with are the ones I bring with me and the hosts. Because I am the more radical one, my friends are less radical. And then they have friends who are less radical, or otherwise different from them, and those friends have spouses who are similarly more conservative than the friends-of-friends, and so on and so forth.
So, for me, the difficulty of holidays is the anxiety of attending a gathering which will have a high but unknown probability of running into someone who has a perspective that I strongly, personally, disagree with, and I'll have to do mental calculus about how to respond. Even choosing to do nothing takes a mental toll on me, so just being in that space with that person is exhausting and trying.
These days, I'm becoming more and more anxious and undesiring of attending social functions simply because I don't want to deal with "friends of friends" who are, say, Trump supporters, or who casually joke about rape, or who throw in the random mildly racist statement (even if it's "benevolent" racism), or who feel the need to remark "well, to each his own, but *I* couldn't do it!" when they first figure out that I'm poly, etc.
Like, even when I choose to let it all slide so that I never once get into an argument, I still don't want to deal with it. A part of me wants to say "I like you well enough, but your friends suck and I can't pretend to be nice to them anymore, even though they're being perfectly polite to me."
But if I did that every time I got an invitation to something, I'd literally never leave my house or socialize again. Because there's ALWAYS someone around who says or thinks something awful, and even though socializing takes energy because I'm an introvert, I'm still human, which is a social species, so I still need some social contact.
But today I'm feeling it. I had absolutely no bad or awkward encounters on Thanksgiving. Nobody said anything within my earshot to make me uncomfortable. But I was on edge the whole time waiting for it.
And I'm thinking about all the other upcoming holiday parties - parties that I actively want to attend - and thinking about all the different times that I'm going to be feeling this anxiety about dealing with people I don't like when I'm there to have a good time.
And today, I just don't wanna.
The difficulty I have is when the holiday gatherings include people my family is close to. So, like, if I host something, it's all people I get along with. But if I go to their house, usually the only people I connect with are the ones I bring with me and the hosts. Because I am the more radical one, my friends are less radical. And then they have friends who are less radical, or otherwise different from them, and those friends have spouses who are similarly more conservative than the friends-of-friends, and so on and so forth.
So, for me, the difficulty of holidays is the anxiety of attending a gathering which will have a high but unknown probability of running into someone who has a perspective that I strongly, personally, disagree with, and I'll have to do mental calculus about how to respond. Even choosing to do nothing takes a mental toll on me, so just being in that space with that person is exhausting and trying.
These days, I'm becoming more and more anxious and undesiring of attending social functions simply because I don't want to deal with "friends of friends" who are, say, Trump supporters, or who casually joke about rape, or who throw in the random mildly racist statement (even if it's "benevolent" racism), or who feel the need to remark "well, to each his own, but *I* couldn't do it!" when they first figure out that I'm poly, etc.
Like, even when I choose to let it all slide so that I never once get into an argument, I still don't want to deal with it. A part of me wants to say "I like you well enough, but your friends suck and I can't pretend to be nice to them anymore, even though they're being perfectly polite to me."
But if I did that every time I got an invitation to something, I'd literally never leave my house or socialize again. Because there's ALWAYS someone around who says or thinks something awful, and even though socializing takes energy because I'm an introvert, I'm still human, which is a social species, so I still need some social contact.
But today I'm feeling it. I had absolutely no bad or awkward encounters on Thanksgiving. Nobody said anything within my earshot to make me uncomfortable. But I was on edge the whole time waiting for it.
And I'm thinking about all the other upcoming holiday parties - parties that I actively want to attend - and thinking about all the different times that I'm going to be feeling this anxiety about dealing with people I don't like when I'm there to have a good time.
And today, I just don't wanna.
