Vacation Styles

Some of you may know that Hubby and I met online back in 1995 before it was a "thing", we met in an AOL chat room. He lived in PA and I lived in Miami, so our entire "courtship" occurred by telephone back when there were way fewer cell phones and no free long distance plans - so you can imagine the cost!

Despite the soaring phone bills really all we had was talking, so for over 2 years we talked at least once, often twice a day. So, we had a lot of time to talk about all the stuff you *should* talk about before getting married - such as politics, views on child rearing, views on family, how we'd handle finances, etc. So much so that when we took our pre-wedding retreat (a Catholic thing) we had already talked about literally *every issue* they told us we should discuss before we got married.

You know one that the retreat people didn't mention and we didn't discuss? Vacation Styles. Do you view out of town vacations as an opportunity to relax, if visiting family just hanging out with them at home watching TV, sleeping in late every day, etc.? Or, do you view them as opportunities to go out with or without an agenda) and explore places you don't know or return to favorite places, do some sightseeing, just walk around and soak in the place?

Someone should have suggested that we discuss it. So I am hereby advising any and all people who are planning to get married to discuss it. It doesn't have to be a deal breaker if you have differing styles, but at least everyone will know how to set expectations. We've been married 14 years and I'm still struggling with it.

In case you haven't guessed, I'm the second style described above. David...not so much. So what usually happens is as follows:

I want to go somewhere - anywhere really - and I tell him. He tells me he doesn't want to go. I try to convince him to go. He still doesn't want to go. I get all passive-aggressive. He gets pissed and says something like "FINE! We'll go, let's just go!", clearly not wanting to go. I get pissed and tell him to forget it, I don't want to go if he doesn't want to go because then it wouldn't be any fun.

WOO HOO Vacation fun!

Everything had been fine until now because with the holiday hoo-ha and his brother and family in from Texas it was reasonable to want to stay in. They flew back home today. So, we went through this exercise earlier tonight. We wound up going to dinner nearby *but* to a restaurant to which we'd never been...a compromise of sorts.

Tomorrow we're mostly staying in so he can watch football with hometown friends and I'm perfectly fine with that. It'll be fun.

Then there's Monday...(sigh)

What's your vacation style? Is it compatible with your SO's?