Friends You Shouldn’t Travel With
If you want to maintain your friendships take precautions to increase the likelihood that your vacation won’t be the end of your friendship before taking a vacation together. Use the considerations below to avoid conflicts or to decide that maybe vacationing with a certain friend or group of friends is not a good idea.
Look at the relationships among the individuals if two families are traveling together. Your friendship with someone does not mean that your spouse or children will get along with the other person’s spouse and children. Forcing people who don’t get along together to spend time together is usually not a good idea.
Consider the type of vacation you’re taking with other people in terms of where you’ll be staying and how much freedom you’ll all have to go off and do your own things. By carving out independence within a group vacation ahead of time you can avoid unnecessary conflicts about who gets to decide what you’re doing and when.
Don’t assume that all people traveling together will have the same budget. You should talk about how much money you are looking to spend for lodging, meals and so forth before you take a vacation in order to avoid problems with someone feeling like they’re spending more or less than they wanted to on specific activities during a vacation.
Consider the time of day each of you has the most energy. If your energetic times don’t match decide whether your vacation activities can include opportunities for you to do things during your energetic times and for the other person to do things during their energetic times.
Consider that if there is only one other person with whom you’re traveling that if that person sleeps in and you like to get up early you’ll likely be doing many activities alone.
Try to determine if there is a dominant personality in the friendship and decide whether the one person is likely to feel as if they’re giving in on vacation decisions such as activities and mealtimes.
If you don’t know your friends’ habits such as whether they like drinking a lot on vacation or whether they tend to flirt with other people when away from home but you suspect this might be the case from listening to the person talk about other vacations consider skipping taking a vacation with the person if such habits annoy or offend you.
If the people you’re vacationing with have friends or family in your destination spot consider vacationing with them another time when you won’t have to be concerned about them fitting in other social obligations.
Consider your motivation for taking a vacation with a friend whether it’s companionship or sharing a bill and determine whether having the person along is the only way you can achieve these goals or whether you can better meet your goals in other ways.
Vacationing with friends is frequently a situation that causes conflict and even the demise of friendships. Use the criteria above when deciding whether you should vacation with friends.
