My MLC-W has/had a similar view. My personal opinion is that it is a mix of hope, goodwill, fantasy and cake-eating. It all springs from a positive view of who you are as a partner and a Dad. But there is a strong fantasy and cake eating component. She gets to avoid feeling guilty for blowing up the family if she can believe that the impact on the family is minimized.
Sure, it can happen that way, where all the holidays happen as before. But who knows? If your W is deeply in love with some OM, can you guarantee that you will be OK with being w/ her on all the holidays? What if you fall in love with someone new? Can your W guarantee that she'll be OK w/ that? What if you and your new partner create a blended family, with its own holiday traditions? Do you want to be handcuffed, at that point, to your *previous* family's traditions, even though your W is long gone as a wife and a lover?
That's just how I thought of it, Gordie. As much as I'd like to keep my family's holidays intact ... when my W divorces me, that breaks up our mutual commitment to be there for each other. It just seems contradictory to say "I hereby break my commitment to be there with you and for you 100% all of the time," but at the same time say, "but I expect you to guarantee that our holidays will be exactly the same."
My approach has been to say we will try to do the holidays together as long as we can agree, but to lay out a plan to alternate parenting 50-50 for all the holidays as something we fall back onto, in case we can no longer agree. That way, we can hope for the best, but each of us can be assured that in the worst case the holidays are split equitably.
My state has a nicely designed worksheet you can fill out that addresses all of the major holidays and school breaks. I found it to be very useful.
HTH.
Me: 50, MLC/WW 45 Young kids Nov 2015: BD1 Apr 2016: BD2 Jan 2017: W filed Feb 2017: D final
