As Kate and Brad proudly tell the other couples at a dance class at the beginning of the movie, although they have been together for many years they have no intention of getting married. They just want to be together because they enjoy it, not because they have to. But as their visits to their various families' households increasingly reveal, not only have they each been avoiding family in general, they have essentially spent their own relationship avoiding each other. Yes, they live together, take vacations together, and enjoy doing things together, but circling their togetherness like a seven foot fence are limitations that have allowed their relationship to go nowhere. And while their clearly-defined relationship may have given them enjoyment, the sad truth is that they hardly know each other, they do not understand each other, and aside from holding each other's tickets to their next tropical escape, neither of them seems to really know how to be there for the other at all.

The trouble for Brad and Kate is that their pasts have taught them that truly getting close to another will only set both parties up for a letdown. While Kate may be beautiful and successful now, her childhood was one characterized by rejection and embarrassment. Reinforcing that is what we can only interpret as a distant or absent relationship with her father. And as a result, she now seems to fear letting anyone know the real her or even pursuing her own true desires herself. For Brad, an adult who has also come a long way from his childhood, the relationships of his past have also turned him into a person of limited dreams and comfortably distant connections. Having fought hard to rise above what he sees as the subpar existence of the rest of his family, it is if all he can see family as is a lifetime sentence to unhappiness, mediocrity, and conflict. And unfortunately, because both Kate and Brad struggle with similar unspoken fears, instead of helping each other overcome the effects of their past, they merely reinforce them.

That is until they finally get a wakeup call. Although most of Kate and Brad's time spent with family is quite disastrous, Kate actually begins to see pieces of her family's life and relationships for which she longs. She may have never thought she could be a mother, but part of her would like to. She may have always assumed the only course a family could take was one of destruction and disappointment, but as her once-distant father wraps her in his embrace and her parents celebrate the Christmas holiday as friends, she also sees in family the unconditional love and belonging she has always wanted. Across town, Brad is shocked to realize that his efforts to keep his relationships at a distance have actually made him more like his bitter and unhappy father than less. And while the day that brings their realization is a painful one, at its end, Brad and Kate recognize that while family relationships will have their ups and downs, in the love and understanding of family is a sense of purpose, value, and belonging which can be found nowhere else

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