Peaceful Boycott of The Christmas Family Gathering
It was surprisingly easy.
Boycotting is perhaps too strong a word for what happened at the last Christmas I spent when I was married to James, my now ex-husband.
It wasn’t even a refusal in a strong sense.
What I noticed was that I was no longer fighting. I was no longer resisting him as if resisting in a battle.
Resisting is one kind of energy and drive.
But ending resistance and progressing to a state of pleasure and peacefulness is a completely different stage of the life cycle of conflict.
He asked me menacingly whether I was coming to the Christmas family meal which he never spoke to me about; I think he assumed I would go and that I had to go.
When he decided it was time for all of us to go to his mother’s house for Christmas, I was engrossed in a book — it felt good, I felt good. I was going to stay in that feeling and that feeling couldn’t be preserved if I was with his family since they often circulated bad feelings.
Throughout the marriage, there were a lot of assumptions.
Assumptions that really needed to be talked out for safety and clarity, but that did not happen. Arguments happened too quickly, discussions escalated…
