What if I just don't want to go at all?
Then consider not going, and consider it seriously rather than treating attendance as a law of physics. A single skipped year is rarely the catastrophe we imagine, and it can be done with warmth — a note, a call on the day, a suggestion of a visit in February when nobody is stressed. If the relationship involves anything that leaves you genuinely unsafe or deeply distressed, that is worth talking through with someone outside the family, a counsellor included, rather than deciding alone every autumn.
How do I stop my partner and my family pulling me in two directions?
Agree the plan with your partner first, before either family is consulted, so you arrive at the negotiation as one unit rather than two people lobbying each other. Decide together what you can genuinely manage, then each take responsibility for delivering the news to your own side — it is far easier to hear a change of plan from your own daughter than from her husband.
Let the relationship be what it is
Perhaps the kindest thing you can do with a seasonal relative is stop requiring the encounter to be meaningful. Not every family bond needs to deepen. Some are simply a hand on an arm, a question about the drive, a shared memory of someone who is gone, and then another year.
When you release the expectation that two hours in December should produce closeness, the two hours get considerably easier. And occasionally, with no pressure on it at all, something real happens anyway — which is more or less the only way it ever does.
