The Holiday Hostage: Why Staying Together for the Kids Might Be Hurting Them

Staying together for the kids

She was standing in my office doorway with her coat still on when she said it: "I just need to get through Christmas, and then I'll figure out what to do."

I'd heard this before, and not just from her. December is full of women trying to white-knuckle their way through one more holiday season, convinced that if they can just hold it together until January, everything will somehow become clearer. It rarely does, but the promise of "after the holidays" feels like a life raft, something to cling to when you can't face the enormity of what's actually happening in your marriage.

The Math Behind Staying Together for the Kids

Here's what nobody tells you about staying together "for the children" during the holidays: you're not actually doing math, you're doing magic tricks, trying to make your own suffering disappear by calling it sacrifice, as if renaming it changes what it is.

The calculation goes something like this: my unhappiness divided by their potential trauma equals... staying. We treat our own well-being as a variable we can zero out, a factor that doesn't really need to be part of the equation. We convince ourselves that children can't sense the tension crackling under the wrapping paper, that they don't notice when mom's smile doesn't quite reach her eyes, that the heavy silence between their parents is just peace and quiet rather than the absence of something vital.

But children notice, and they always have. My client—let's call her Sarah—told me her seven-year-old had started asking why Mommy and Daddy never hugged anymore, and she'd brushed it off, changed the subject, redirected to homework like she always did when the questions got too close to the truth. But that question haunted her for weeks, because her daughter wasn't just observing their marriage. She was taking notes, building a template for what love is supposed to look like.

When Guilt Keeps You in an Unhappy Marriage

There's something almost noble-sounding about martyrdom, isn't there? "I stayed for my kids" lands so differently than "I was terrified of what leaving would mean," or "I didn't know who I was outside this marriage anymore," or "I couldn't bear the thought of my children shuttling between two houses, having two Christmases, becoming statistics."

Two Christmases. We say it like it's the worst thing that could happen to a child, as if growing up watching their mother slowly disappear into resentment and exhaustion is somehow the better alternative.

I've sat with dozens of clients who stayed years longer than they wanted to, and when I ask them what boundary they sacrificed to stay, they often look at me blankly, like I'm speaking a language they used to know but have long forgotten. Boundaries? What boundaries? The whole point was erasing themselves so completely that there was nothing left to protect, nothing left that might cause friction or conflict or force them to acknowledge that something was deeply, fundamentally wrong.

The boundary that goes first is usually honesty, and it happens so gradually that you barely notice. You stop being honest with yourself about what you actually feel when he walks into the room. Then you stop being honest with your partner about what you need, because asking for things leads to disappointment or arguments. Eventually, you stop being honest with your children about what love should look like, and that's the inheritance you're actually leaving them, whether you mean to or not.

The Holiday Amplifier

Holidays don't create dysfunction in a marriage; they just add twinkle lights to it and invite an audience to watch.

Every unspoken resentment gets a seat at the dinner table, every avoided conversation wears a Santa hat, and the pressure to perform happiness becomes almost unbearable because suddenly there are traditions to uphold and family photos to stage and grandparents asking questions you can't answer honestly without unraveling the whole carefully constructed facade.

Sarah described her last Thanksgiving like a theater production where she was simultaneously the director, the lead actress, and the stage manager. "I spent more energy staging the perfect family photo than I did actually being present with my kids," she told me, "and the whole time I kept thinking: who is this even for? Who am I performing this happy family for, and why does it matter more than actually being happy?"

The holidays magnify the gap between the family you're pretending to be and the family you actually are, and somewhere in that gap, your boundaries dissolve completely because maintaining them would mean admitting the performance isn't working anymore.

What You're Really Teaching Them

So many of my clients genuinely believe they're modeling perseverance by staying together for the kids, that they're teaching them about commitment and loyalty and the importance of family and keeping your promises even when it's hard.

But when I ask them to describe what their children actually see on a daily basis, a different picture emerges. They're modeling that love means tolerating unhappiness indefinitely, that women should make themselves smaller and quieter to keep the peace, that conflict should be avoided at absolutely all costs, that a tense and joyless stability is better than the uncertainty of change.

Their children are learning that marriage looks like two people who don't touch, don't really laugh together anymore, don't fight, but also don't connect. Just two people coexisting in the same space, like roommates who happen to share a mortgage and a last name and a profound, unspoken disappointment.

Is that really the template you want them carrying into their own relationships twenty years from now?

The Question That Changes Everything

I sometimes ask my clients to imagine their daughter coming to them two decades in the future, sitting across from them at a kitchen table, describing a marriage that sounds exactly like theirs. What would you tell her?

The silence that follows is always heavy because they know the answer immediately, and it terrifies them. They would tell her to leave. They would tell her she deserved so much more than this. They would tell her that her own children needed to see her whole and alive and present, not hollowed out by years of pretending everything was fine.

So why are they holding themselves to a completely different standard? Why is their daughter's hypothetical future happiness worth protecting, but their own actual present happiness is an acceptable sacrifice?

Guilt Is Not a Compass

Guilt tells you you're a bad person for wanting something different, that your needs are selfish, and your unhappiness is a personal failing rather than important information. Guilt whispers that good mothers stay no matter what, that good wives endure without complaining, that good people don't blow up their children's lives over something as trivial as their own happiness and fulfillment.

But guilt isn't wisdom, and it certainly isn't a compass pointing toward the right choice. Guilt is fear wearing a moral costume, and it will keep you stuck in the same place forever if you let it.

The boundary you're sacrificing for guilt might be your right to be truly seen by your partner, or your right to be loved well rather than just tolerated. It might be your right to model healthy, honest relationships for your children, or your right to show them that walking away from a situation that diminishes you isn't failure or weakness. Sometimes, leaving is the most integrity you can muster.

The Other Side of the Story

I'm not going to pretend that leaving is easy or that everything magically gets better once you make the decision, because that would be a lie, and you'd see right through it anyway. The first holiday season after a separation is often brutal in ways you can't fully prepare for. You will probably cry in your car in a Target parking lot. You will second-guess everything, sometimes multiple times in the same hour. You will lie awake at 3 AM, wondering if you've made a terrible, irreversible mistake that your children will never forgive you for.

And your children might struggle, at least for a while. They might be angry, sad, or confused. They might grieve the family they thought they had, the one that existed more in holiday photos than in daily reality.

But here's what else happens, and I've seen it over and over again: children adapt, often faster and more completely than their parents expect. They're remarkably resilient when the adults around them are honest and present and not disappearing into their own private misery. They can absolutely handle two Christmases and two bedrooms and a more complicated family structure. What they struggle to handle is a parent who has sacrificed her own aliveness on the altar of "keeping the family together," who has taught them through years of quiet example that love means obligation and endurance rather than joy and genuine connection.

Sarah eventually left, though not in December when everything felt so urgent and impossible. She waited until spring, when she had a plan, a support system, and a therapist lined up for her daughter. The first Christmas apart was hard, and she called me crying from her new apartment, wondering if she'd ruined everything, if her kids would ever forgive her, if the guilt would ever stop feeling like it was going to swallow her whole.

A year later, she told me her daughter had said something that stopped her completely in her tracks: "Mom, you laugh more now."

That's what her daughter noticed and remembered. Not the two houses, not the shuffled holiday schedule, not the inconvenience of packing a bag every few days. The laughter. The presence. The mother who had finally come back to life.

A Different Kind of Gift

This holiday season, I want you to sit with one question, and I want you to answer it honestly even if the answer scares you: What boundary have I abandoned because I feel too guilty to maintain it?

Maybe it's the boundary around being spoken to with respect, or the boundary around physical affection and intimacy, or the boundary around having your own identity and interests outside of "mom" and "wife." Maybe it's something you've never even named out loud, something that feels too small to matter even though it's slowly eroding your sense of self.

Name it. Just name it, even if only to yourself.

You don't have to leave your marriage tomorrow, and you don't have to make any drastic decisions while the holiday pressure is at its peak. But you do have to stop pretending that your boundaries don't matter, that your needs are infinitely negotiable, that your happiness is the acceptable casualty in the war for family stability.

Your children are watching you more closely than you realize, learning what to tolerate in their own lives, building their own templates for what love and partnership should look like.

What do you want them to see?

If you're navigating the impossible terrain between staying and leaving, especially during the holidays when everything feels heightened and urgent, I'd love to support you. Sometimes the first step is just having someone witness the truth you've been carrying alone for so long.