For various reasons that I won’t go into... hubby and I have spent most holidays on our own... for more than 10 years it’s been this way. It took me years to stop feeling sad about the mother’s days, father’s days, Thanksgivings and Christmases, etc. by myself or just with hubby. I don’t mean to sound pitiful... hubby has been perfectly fine with it but I was quite broken hearted for several years. But I have gotten used to this and I really enjoy quiet holidays with hubby and our own quiet traditions with no outside pressure or expectations.


Now that one of the kids has had a baby, all of a sudden there is an expectation for family holidays. I don’t want this anymore and I feel guilty about it. I don’t want to spend the time, energy and money for something I got over not being able to do years ago. I don’t feel one bit inclined to put myself through all this work and expense and it feels like I am being really selfish.


I want to spend lots of quality of time with the grand baby and I am very supportive of their little family. I am happy to buy gifts for baby but I just don’t care about putting on the big holiday show. They live out of town so it means lots of work feeding and entertaining everyone for days.


I feel quite torn about this. It sounds terrible but my main concern at this point in life is making sure I put away money for my retirement and emergencies, etc. I sacrifice a lot for this - no vacations and watching my budget for quite a while now. My job is very demanding and wears me down... I have my own interests and hobbies and volunteer work... I have other commitments now. I am afraid to stop investing my efforts in my own self care because I worked so hard to be happy this way.


But everybody I know keeps saying how I need to put up tons of holiday decorations and spoil the baby, etc.... and the thought of it all is just exhausting and makes me feel a bit resentful.


Anybody else been in this kind of situation?