MadameNoire Featured Video

travel without him

Getty

Do you get a little jealous if your partner goes on trips with friends to places you haven’t been but want to go to?

I ask this because during a conversation with a married friend, she told me about a trip to the Caribbean that fell through for her because of her husband.

One of her single friends turned 30 last month, and to celebrate, the birthday girl wanted all of her friends to travel with her to Barbados. My friend had never been to Barbados but was excited about the idea of a girls trip. Still, she wanted to consult with her partner first because of the money that would be required and the amount of days she would be gone.

When she went to her husband with the trip idea, she assumed he would be ok with it. She’d gone to exotic places with her girlfriends before, including Hawaii. But to her surprise, he wasn’t feeling the idea this time around. It wasn’t because he didn’t trust her or because it would be financially crippling in some way, but because he had never been to Barbados.

“Basically, he said that he didn’t want me to go with them because he hadn’t had the chance to go to Barbados,” she told me.

“But what about when you went to Hawaii?” I asked.

“He went before I did with his friends,” she answered. “But I mean, we weren’t married then so it was fine if we wanted to travel wherever. I think he wants us to have more experiences together outside of the country as opposed to me going and having them with my friends.”

I didn’t really get it, but with it not being my place to question their marital decisions, I just said, “Interesting.” I initially thought his concern was a tad over the top, but after sleeping on it for a few days, I tried to look at things from both sides.

Based on what I know about her and her husband, I know that he is a person who likes to travel just as much as she does. They’ve gone to some really nice places together (including Brazil, the Bahamas and more), and from time to time, he travels with his own friends. Whether it’s for a bachelor party weekend or a chance to see something new (he did more of the latter before marriage), he’s not the type of person to fail to see the benefit of having wanderlust.

She travels often for work around the U.S. and occasionally hits the road with friends (which she also did more of before saying “I do”). But now that they are a husband and wife, they believe it’s important to have these travel experiences together. I get it.

But at the same time, who’s to say he would have wanted to go to Barbados that bad if her friends hadn’t wanted her to go first? It didn’t sound like it was on the top of his list of places to travel. Instead, it seems that when the opportunity came for her to go there, it sounded like something he didn’t want to miss out on. Therefore, he wanted her to miss out on it instead. That’s indeed petty.

All in all, she may be married, but she’s a grown woman. If she wanted to truly go to Barbados, she could have finagled her way into the trip. He didn’t order her not to go, he just let her know he wasn’t crazy about the idea. She chose to take his opinion into account and opted out of the trip to keep the peace.

You might hear that and think, “Girl, please. I would have gone!” But we’re all different when it comes to the things we feel are worth putting up a fight about in relationships. And knowing my friend, there’s a good chance she didn’t want to 100 percent go on the trip anyway. Truth be told, she didn’t seem too sad about missing out. Her main priority, it seems, was working with her husband as a team and hearing him out, even if he was being a little ridiculous. And while we might not always understand what kind of decision making goes with that, you have to respect it…

But as always, that’s just my opinion. What say you? Is it petty if your partner doesn’t want you to travel to a certain place without them? 

Comment Disclaimer: Comments that contain profane or derogatory language, video links or exceed 200 words will require approval by a moderator before appearing in the comment section. XOXO-MN