I refuse to travel with my husband at all - there’s way too much drama involved - so we don’t go anywhere. It sucks. Believe me, I’d like nothing more that to get out of this house for a few days away from everything and relax - I could be in Kentucky in a matter of a few hours. The biggest problem would be getting me to come back.
My mom and I were talking the other day and since my son is going to be transferred back to upstate New York in mid-summer, we decided we’d love to take a long weekend trip to go visit him together - heck, my mom and I would go just about anywhere for a long weekend to visit my son where he’s stationed. Assuming I had a way to pay for it, of course. No drama, we like the same things, we like the same food, we like the same attractions - and we don’t see each other that often so we never run out of things to talk about. My mom is VERY low maintenance!
My husband and I were both highly independent people who were used to doing things on our own. When the boys were growing up, we took all vacations as a family, but before kids and after the departure of kids we often took trips independently. The year before he died he went hunting in Alaska with friends (I have no interest in hunting) while I went to Sweden with a friend to tour some glass factories (he would have been stultified with boredom). We both enjoyed our trips and each of us really enjoyed hearing about what the other one had done.
It’s kind of academic for us right now as we are saving money, but our generally policy is that “must go” trips like visiting family, going to a weekend wedding or staying an extra weekend on a work trip can be solo or together depending on interest and finances (basically, if you want the other person to go, you’ll probably have to pay for it).
It would be hard with a young child and limited finances to justify a solo vacation at this point in our lives. But once we’ve had a honeymoon and taken the kid to Disneyworld (or whatever) and fulfilled all our family obligations, it wouldn’t be a problem. It be a while before any of us do much discretionary travel though.
Old Joke:
60 year old man comes home tells wife they should take separate vacations.
She says fine.
Next day he comes home and says he is going on vacation with his 20 year old intern
She says fine
Next day he comes home and she says she is going on vacation with the 20 year old pool boy, and she will have a better time than he will.
He asks, why do you think that?
Simple math she replies, 20 goes into 60 more times than 60 goes into 20
Thank you, I’ll be here all week, tip your waitress.
Most of my vacations are outdoors which she doesn’t care for so I go alone, seldom more than 1 week. Her vacations are often family visits out of state so she will often go alone.
I recently encouraged my wife to take a vacation without me. We can’t really afford for both of us to go the way she wanted to, and it was a very busy time in my job where she wasn’t going to see much of me either. Plus, she got to do all her genealogical stuff that bores me to death.
Overall, we’d both prefer to do things together, but that doesn’t mean we have to.
Generally, I would try to correct the usage of “yay” instead of “yea”, but I suppose that it actually works in this one instance (if you don’t like your partner).
We’ve both done this. We don’t seek it out, but sometimes circumstances make it the best option, and it isn’t a problem at all.
Examples include her going to Spain with her grandmother and me doing a solo road trip of the Arizona and Utah national parks when our paid vacation didn’t match up.
Perhaps the oddest case was when I went on a Panama Canal cruise for 10 days with her family and she wasn’t invited. Basically (a) it wasn’t her turn (due to the recent Spain trip) and (b) the rooms worked out better with the couples split.
You and your wife are us. I need the beach, just pure vegging. He love the battlefields, etc. We compromise. I do one battlefield or museum or such with him. And then I go to the beach with family. I can’t think he loves that I leave for a week, but since he’s not interested in the beach, there’s nothing he can really say.
We’ve been married 50 years, and we take both together and apart vacations.
When he was retired and I was still working, with only 2 weeks of PTO, he would often travel alone or with friends. He also has gone places I have zero interest in: climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, for example. Even now, I like to go to a favorite quiet beach locale and just exist. He would be bored out of his mind.
We haven’t had many real vacations due to schedules and finances - I don’t count going to either set of parents for Christmas to be a vacation. But we have done things separately. He likes to ride his motorcycle, and I hate hate hate bikes, so he often goes with his HOG chapter on rides, and once he rode from MD to IN to visit his aunt, just because. I’m good with that.
Last year, I went on a 4-week cruise with my mother. My husband hates to cruise and my mom wanted to do a long trip, so it worked out. I don’t see anything happening this year, and possibly not next, but he plans to retire at the end of 2016, so we may actually start vacationing together about that time.
All other issues aside, if you have plenty of savings and retirement, fine not to worry about the cost of the vaca. If you do not – and you mentioned something that indicates lack of jobs (and, it follows, income continuity), I would make it a staycation IF the paid time off is use or lose.
“What would you think if your spouse asked this of you?”
Ultimately, doesn’t matter what we’d think. What matters is what your spouse thinks, among other things.
My wife has, on a number of instances, flown away to family functions without me (both for pleasure and for wedding/funerals), and I’ve been happy to see her go (after the initial convincing). If situation was reversed, of course I would encourage her to use her vacation days as she saw fit. I’ve just been at my job for a while and I’ve not been able to take more than 2 days off at a time. I really would love a substantial break from work. Unfortunately, I don’t have hobbies like conventions or role playing and even if I did, those events would be on the weekend, which would take me away from my wife even more.
Going Sun-Fri takes me away from home during the week, which are just telly fests anyway. And after I get back from this vacation, I still will have 5 days left in case we want to go away to the city for a long weekend. The next time that we can go on a long vacation is probably 2016. I would like to get away sooner than that. I also don’t want to explore uncharted territories without my wife by my side, so therefore a few days at a resort that we’ve already gone to seems to be the way to go.
Most of my vacations have always been alone; it’s the way I prefer to travel. My partner travels extensively for work, so his idea of a vacation is to relax at home with the dogs. The best thing is when I’m on vacation in a romantic location, and he’s able to join me for a day or two.
We’ve not taken any vacations separately. We have done weekends apart, whether me doing a “guy’s weekend” or her off to a “girl’s weekend”. We are both winter people, she skis and I snowboard so as we usually plan trips out west in the winter and of course go together because we both enjoy those types of trips. However, we are fairly different when it comes to our skill levels on the snow and ambitions for the type of terrain we like to ride. So many days we may only spend an hour or two together on the slopes then separate off for awhile so I can go hit the glade or go off and hit the black/double-blacks and she can keep cruising her groomer blues. I also have on my bucket list to take a heli-boarding trip in Canada. That is a level of skiing that my wife has zero interest in and if I ever do go it would be without her and she is fine with that. She says she’ll go to Paris or something while I’m gone. Haha
She loves doing beach vacations which I have little to no interest in but I go along and enjoy myself but if I had my choice I’d stay home as I don’t enjoy the heat/sun/sand/water thing.
