When Family Isn’t Fully Safe: Navigating the Holidays as a Same-Sex Couple

The holiday season brings the promise of connection, celebration, and warmth but for many same-sex couples, it also raises emotional weight: microaggressions, identity-questions, family expectations, and unspoken boundaries. With love and intention, you don’t have to choose between protecting yourselves and staying connected. This post explores how you can hold both: your partnership and your identity, your truth and your desire for belonging.

What are check-ins and why they’re more than “just talking”

A same-sex couple sitting together outdoors, holding hands across a café table while overlooking a cityscape - symbolising connection, support, and navigating family dynamics during the holidays.

1. The “We Against the World” Attitude & Same-Sex Couples

Dr. Gottman’s work emphasizes the importance of couples feeling like a united team rather than adversaries. While he does not always use the phrase exactly, “We Against the World,” many practitioners refer to the mindset of being on the same side during life’s challenges, a core aspect of his “Sound Relationship House” model. For same-sex couples navigating family visits or identity-related tension, adopting this “us vs. the problem, not us vs. each other” mindset becomes especially powerful. When your partner becomes your ally, rather than someone you protect from, you build solidarity, trust and shared purpose.

1.1 Why it matters during holidays

When visiting family or attending gatherings, you and your partner may encounter:

• Comments about identity or lifestyle that feel invalidating

• Silence, avoidance or misunderstanding around your relationship

• Pressure to conform or to hide parts of your selves

By consciously aligning as a couple, “we’re in this together, we have each other’s back”, you create a couple’s bubble of connection that buffers the external stress.

2. IFS & Self-Energy: Navigating Shame Triggers and Internal Worlds

In IFS therapy, each person carries multiple internal “parts” (protector parts, anxious parts, exile parts) and a core Self that is calm, compassionate, curious, connected.

For same-sex couples, holidays can awaken old parts: the part that felt invisible, the part that feared rejection, the protector part that pre-emptively hides. You can read more information on how IFS can assist when these parts show up here. If those parts dominate, your ability to connect with your partner suffers.

2.1 What is Self-energy?

Self-energy is the state in which you access qualities like calmness, clarity, courage, compassion, connection. From here you can lead your parts with care rather than be driven by them. When you and your partner meet each other from Self-energy, you’re better able to say: “That comment triggered something in me. I’m glad you’re here.” This kind of response builds intimacy, safety and authenticity.

2.2 Practical IFS-informed steps for the holidays

• Pause and notice: If a remark or look from family triggers you, pause. Ask internally: “Which part of me is responding?”

• Name and invite: Gently say to your partner: “I’m noticing the part of me that felt unseen just now. It’s okay; I’ve got you.”

• Check-in together: Use rituals (see Section 4) to help both of you stay connected to your Self and to each other.

• Repair when needed: If a part hijacks your reaction (“I’m so done”), take a shared moment: “I need a break; we’ll come back together.” This aligns with Gottman’s repair-emphasis. The Gottman Institute

A same-sex couple sitting together on a bed with their dogs, smiling and relaxed in a cozy home setting - symbolising emotional safety, connection, and creating chosen-family moments during the holidays.

3. Microaggressions, Family Dynamics, and Identity Awareness

3.1 Recognizing microaggressions

Even well-meaning relatives may utter comments like:

• “When will you settle down with a real relationship?”

• “Are you sure you want to adopt instead of having your own kids?”

• “I don’t see you as gay; you’re just… you.”

These may feel small, but they carry weight, they trigger identity wounds, they stir internal protector parts, they test your couple strength.

3.2 Staying connected as a couple

• Pre-gathering check-in: Before any visit, ask: “What do we each need to feel safe, seen and supported?”

• Shared boundary signal: Agree on a word or gesture if things feel uncomfortable.

• Post-event reflection: After family time, take a quiet moment together (even in the car) to ask: “How did it feel? What parts of me were active? What parts of you?”
  This reflective practice builds your “team mindset” and ensures you’re not walking away feeling isolated.

3.3 Maintaining your own Truth

You don’t need to explain, defend or shrink your identity for acceptance. Setting a boundary can be both firm and gentle:

“Thank you for asking. That’s a private matter for me.”
“I’d prefer not to talk about that today, but I’d love to share how we are doing.”

Healthy boundaries aren’t walls; they’re clarity. They invite respect and protect connection.

4. Rituals of Connection for Same-Sex Couples During the Holidays

Using ideas from Gottman’s “Shared Meaning” floor of the Sound Relationship House, couples can build rituals that ground their relationship amid external stress.

Here are some suggestions:

• Weekly check-in ritual:10 minutes each Sunday, one partner shares what’s on their heart, the other listens. I go into more detail about this here.

• Before-family gathering ritual: Create a short team-statement: “We show up as you and I, we support each other, we protect our space.”

• Post-event ritual: Light a candle together; say: “What did we notice? What do we need now?”

• Micro-rituals: A nightly “appreciation moment” each partner names one thing they saw the other do that day.

These ritualised moments build your identity as a couple, strengthen your team orientation, and anchor you in each other’s Self-energy. 

Check-ins create space for honest, grounded conversations - where both partners can slow down and truly listen.

5. Holding Both Joy and Pain: The Nuance of the Holidays

One of the hardest parts is that culture often wants us to choose: joy or suffering. But for LGBTQIA+ couples navigating this season, you can feel both. You can celebrate your love and recognize the wound of invisibility. You can laugh and carry sorrow. You can belong and still feel separate.

Choosing to stay together and hold your truth is powerful. When you operate from your Self-energy and hold each other as allies, you make the holiday a space of authenticity, not performance.

Navigating the holidays as a same-sex couple means balancing identity, connection, protection and celebration. With the “us versus the challenge” mindset, an IFS-informed internal compass, clear boundaries and meaningful rituals, you don’t just survive, you deepen.

If you’d like support creating these rituals, understanding your internal parts, and strengthening your partnership in a climate that doesn’t always affirm you, I’d love to work with you. Schedule a consultation to explore couples therapy that honours both who you are and who you’re becoming together.