By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist
Christmas is supposed to be the time of year when everything softens. So it can come as a shock when it brings a low mood into your home. Perhaps your partner has gone quiet since the lights went up, and you cannot tell whether it is you, the season or something deeper. Or perhaps you are the one who feels flat while everyone around you wraps presents and plans meals, and you are counting the days until it is over.
There is a particular loneliness in being out of step with a season that expects you to be happy. When it happens inside a relationship, it tends to be felt twice, once by the person who is struggling and once by the person standing next to them. This article is for both of you. It looks at what low mood at Christmas can do to a couple, why it so often looks like distance and not sadness, and what helps whichever side of it you are on. It does not diagnose anything. If the low mood is heavy or lasting, your GP is the first stop, and I say more about that below.
Article Summary
Low mood at Christmas often shows up as withdrawal, irritability or tiredness, so a partner can mistake it for rejection.
In my experience it frequently feels like loneliness between you. One of you is low, and the other feels abandoned at what is meant to be a happy time, or feels powerless to help.
Christmas can bring depression to the surface through pressure to be happy, family history, grief, money worries and shorter days.
Seasonal affective disorder is common enough to take seriously, and persistent low mood without reason should also be discussed with your GP.
Research on couples shows that depression and relationship satisfaction are closely linked, and that withdrawal in one partner affects both.
Couple therapy and individual therapy have both been studied for depression, and a review found no difference between them for depressive symptoms.
You do not have to wait for January to get support.
What It Can Look Like When One of You Is Low at Christmas
We tend to picture depression as sadness, and sometimes it is. At Christmas it more often looks like something else. It can look like exhaustion, a short temper, a sudden loss of interest in things you used to enjoy, or an automatic no to every invitation. The person who is struggling may feel guilty for not matching the mood around them, and that guilt can make them pull back even further.
For the person who is low, the season can feel like a performance they have not got the energy for. The cards, the parties, the questions about plans and the pressure to feel grateful all ask for a version of you that feels out of reach. Many people go through the motions and feel a fraction of what they show.
For the partner, it is confusing and often painful. You may not know whether to give space or reach out, and either choice can feel wrong. You may feel shut out, or start to wonder whether the problem is you. These are some of the signs that tend to show up.
Withdrawing from family events, friends or each other, or turning up and then going quiet.
Snapping over small things, especially around plans, money or tidying.
Sleeping much more or much less, and seeming tired all the time.
Going flat when something nice happens, or saying that nothing feels like it matters.
Drinking more than usual to get through the season.
A partner starting to walk on eggshells, avoid the subject, or carry the whole of Christmas alone.
Any of these can have other explanations, and a bad week is not a diagnosis. What matters is the pattern over time and what it is doing to the two of you.
Why Christmas Can Bring It to the Surface
If you have found December harder than other months, you are not being dramatic and you are not alone. A few things come together at this time of year, and they tend to land on people who are already carrying something.
The expectation of joy. When everyone else seems cheerful, a low mood can feel like a private failure and not an ordinary human state.
Family. Christmas often means time with the people who know our oldest wounds. For some people that is comforting. For others it reopens old criticism, rivalry or hurt. Some LGBTQ+ people go back to families who have not been accepting, or choose not to go at all and feel the absence.
Grief and absence. A first Christmas after a death, a separation, a miscarriage or an estrangement can make the empty chair loud. Older losses can resurface too.
Money and logistics. The costs, the travelling, the hosting and who does what can build up for weeks before they come out as an argument.
Less daylight. For some people, winter itself brings a low mood that has little to do with Christmas.
That last point deserves a clear explanation, because many people dismiss it. Seasonal affective disorder, often shortened to SAD, is a pattern of depression that comes and goes with the seasons. A 2025 systematic review pooled 24 studies with 32,866 participants. It found a pooled prevalence of SAD of about 5 percent, with a further 9.4 percent showing a milder, subsyndromal form, and it found that both rose with latitude, meaning the further from the equator, the higher the figures (Kim et al., 2025). The studies used a standard seasonal questionnaire and came from around the world, so the figures are a general guide and not a number for the UK.
None of this means every low December is SAD, and it does not mean Christmas is the cause. It means that light, family, loss and pressure can stack up, and that a partner who seems to dread the season may be responding to something real.
Why It Can Look Like Loneliness Between You
This is the pattern I see most often. When one partner is depressed at Christmas, the couple does not usually describe it as depression. They describe it as loneliness. One of you has gone inward. The other is standing at the edge of that, trying to share a season that is supposed to be warm and finding no one home.
The partner who is low is often not trying to leave. They are low on energy, ashamed of how they feel and sure that they will spoil the mood if they join in. Withdrawing feels safer than being seen. But from the other side it looks like a decision, and the partner can feel abandoned, particularly at a time that is meant to be spent together.
The other pattern is the partner who feels fine and feels powerless. They try cheering the person up. They suggest solutions, plan nice things and offer reassurance, and it does not land. After a while they stop trying, not because they do not care but because every attempt seems to make things worse. They are lonely too, and often unable to say so because it feels selfish when their partner is the one who is struggling.
Each of you can end up reading the other's response as the problem. One of you thinks, "They don't care that I am struggling." The other thinks, "Nothing I do is ever enough." Neither is true, and both feel completely real.
Research on couples helps explain why this matters. In a study of 168 heterosexual Black couples followed over a year, depressive symptoms predicted relative declines in marital satisfaction reported by both the person with the symptoms and their partner, for both husbands and wives (Jenkins et al., 2020). The authors describe this as interdependence between spouses' mental health and relationship satisfaction. It describes one group of couples, so it should not be stretched, but it fits what many couples feel. One person's mood does not stay with one person.
How the two of you respond to each other matters just as much. In a 2021 study of 175 heterosexual couples, a pattern in which one partner withdrew while the other demanded or became aggressive was associated with lower relationship satisfaction for both people (Bretaña et al., 2021). The pursue and withdraw pattern can form around low mood very easily. The more one of you retreats, the harder the other may push for connection, and the harder they push, the more the first person retreats.
It also helps to know that someone who looks calm is not always calm. A 2023 systematic review of 37 studies found that playing feelings down was linked to emotional stress that was still present at a physiological level (Eilert and Buchheim, 2023). A partner who says "I'm fine" and busies themselves with Christmas jobs may be carrying more than they show.
If this sounds familiar, my articles on when one partner withdraws and why you can feel lonely in a relationship go into the two sides of this in more depth.
Christmas can bring depression to the surface through pressure to be happy, family history, grief, money worries and shorter days.
When It Is More Than a Seasonal Dip
Feeling flat, tired or tearful for a few days around a difficult Christmas is common. Low mood that is heavy, lasts most of the day, carries on for more than a couple of weeks or stops you functioning at work or at home is a reason to see your GP. The same applies if you lose interest in almost everything, if your sleep and appetite have changed a lot, or if you feel hopeless. Depression and SAD are both treatable, and a GP can talk through the options, which may include talking therapy, light exposure or medication.
For some people, low mood arrives after a specific change, such as a baby. My article on postpartum depression and relationships looks at that, and men's mental health covers why some people, men especially, show depression as irritability or silence and not sadness. If you are not sure what you are dealing with, say so to your GP. You do not need to have the right label.
What Helps If You Are the One Who Is Struggling
If this is you, the most useful thing is often the hardest, which is to say something. You do not need the full explanation. A single plain sentence can change how your partner reads your silence.
Name what is happening. "I am not pulling away from you. I am finding this time of year hard, and I do not have much energy." That tells your partner the withdrawal is not about them.
Make one small ask. "Can you do the call with your mum, and I will do the cooking?" is easier to answer than a vague request for support.
Cut the plans down. You do not have to do everything. Choose the one or two things that matter most to you both and let the rest go.
Agree an exit. If you go to a gathering, decide in advance that you can leave early or take a break outside, without anyone having to explain.
Look after the basics. Sleep, food, a short walk in daylight and a limit on alcohol will not fix depression, but they make a hard month a little less hard.
Tell someone else. A partner cannot be your only support. Talk to a friend, your GP or a therapist as well.
Be gentle with the guilt. Low mood is not a failure of gratitude, and you are not ruining Christmas by being honest about how you feel.
What Helps If You Are the Partner
If you are the one on the other side, you may feel powerless, and you probably want to fix it. You cannot, and that is not your job. What you can do is stay close without pushing, and that is harder than it sounds.
Ask before you act. "Do you want me nearby, or do you want some space?" gives your partner a choice and keeps you from guessing.
Do not take the withdrawal personally. It is rarely about you, even when it feels that way.
Hold back on solutions. Advice and cheerfulness can land as pressure. Listening, and saying "that sounds heavy," often does more.
Keep invitations low pressure. Ask once, say you understand if the answer is no, and leave the door open.
Do not carry everything silently. If you take over every Christmas job, resentment can build. My article on resentment in relationships explains how that happens.
Keep your own support. Your feelings matter too. Friends, family or your own therapist can be a place to say the things you cannot say at home.
It can be tempting to blame your partner, or yourself. My article on blame in relationships looks at why that rarely helps.
What Helps When You Do It Together
The pattern changes when you stop treating it as one person's problem and start treating it as a shared one. You are two people facing a hard season, not one patient and one rescuer.
Plan a smaller Christmas. Decide together what is essential, what is optional and what you will let go of this year. It is easier to say no as a team.
Say who is doing what. Dividing the jobs out loud stops the unspoken load from falling on one person.
Have a short daily check in. Five minutes with no phones and no problem solving, just "how are you today?" and a real answer.
Agree a signal. A word or a squeeze of the hand that means "I need a break" lets either of you step out without a scene.
Protect one small ritual. Choose something quiet that belongs to the two of you, such as a walk, a film or a meal, and keep it whatever else changes.
Tell each other what you need. Not what the other has done wrong, but what would help. If you want somewhere to start, my free needs and boundaries reflection takes you through it gently.
If Christmas is also a source of conflict between you and not only low mood, my article on surviving Christmas without falling out covers that side.
What the Research Says About Therapy for Depression in a Relationship
If low mood is part of the picture, it helps to know that talking therapy can work and that there is more than one way to do it. A Cochrane review looked at couple therapy for depression and included fourteen studies with 651 participants. At the end of treatment there was no evidence of a difference between couple therapy and individual psychotherapy for depressive symptoms, and the same held for follow ups of six months or longer. The authors rated the evidence as low quality. Most participants had moderate depression, 80 percent were Caucasian, and the studies came from Europe, North America and Israel, so the authors cautioned that the findings do not necessarily apply to more severe depression or to other groups (Barbato et al., 2018).
The useful reading of that is not that one route is better. It is that you have options. Some people do best working on their own mood in individual sessions. Others find that bringing the relationship into the room changes the pattern around the low mood. Many use both at different points. Which one fits depends on what is hurting most, and that is a conversation worth having rather than a choice to make alone.
If Things Feel Very Dark
If you or your partner are having thoughts of ending your life, please do not wait. Samaritans are free to call on 116 123, at any hour, and you can talk to them whatever the reason. If someone is in immediate danger, call 999. You can also contact your GP, or NHS 111 for urgent advice on where to get mental health help. Reaching out is not an overreaction.
How Therapy Can Help
You do not have to wait for the new year, or for things to fall apart, before you ask for support. Many people start thinking about therapy at Christmas and then put it off until January, by which time diaries have usually filled up. Starting a conversation now can mean you go into the new year with some steadiness already in place.
I offer both individual and couples sessions. For someone who is struggling, individual therapy gives you space to understand what is happening, where it comes from and what you need, with someone who is not caught up in it. For a couple, sessions can help you stop the cycle where one retreats and the other feels shut out, so that you can face a hard season on the same side. I work with people of every background, and with people who are not sure where the difficulty lies. If you are thinking about individual therapy, you can read more about how I work. If the relationship is the main worry and you are not sure when to bring a partner in, when to go to couples therapy may help, and how to suggest couples therapy to your partner without a fight covers how to raise it.
If you would like to talk it through, you are welcome to book a free 30 minute consultation, in person in London or online. It is a chance to describe what is happening and to see whether working together feels right. There is no obligation, and you do not need to have it worked out.
About the author
Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist, and the founder of Rise and Grow Therapy, a private practice offering couples and relationship therapy across Kensington, Pimlico, and Angel, Islington in London, as well as online consultations. His approach draws first on Imago Relationship Therapy, alongside integrative relational, attachment based, Gottman, and systemic approaches. Mark works with couples of every background and relationship structure, as well as with individuals working through relational issues.
References
Barbato, A., D'Avanzo, B., & Parabiaghi, A. (2018). Couple therapy for depression. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2018(6), CD004188. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6513419/
Bretaña, I., Alonso-Arbiol, I., Recio, P., & Molero, F. (2021). Avoidant attachment, withdrawal aggression conflict pattern, and relationship satisfaction: A mediational dyadic model. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 794942. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8841843/
Eilert, D. W., & Buchheim, A. (2023). Attachment related differences in emotion regulation in adults: A systematic review on attachment representations. Brain Sciences, 13(6), 884. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10296607/
Jenkins, A. I. C., Fredman, S. J., Le, Y., Sun, X., Brick, T. R., & Skinner, O. D. (2020). Prospective associations between depressive symptoms and marital satisfaction in Black couples. Journal of Family Psychology, 34(1), 12 to 23. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/pmid/31368724/
Kim, K., Kim, J., Jung, S., et al. (2025). Global prevalence of seasonal affective disorder by latitude: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Affective Disorders, 390, 119807. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2025.119807
