Have you ever experienced other people hijacking your solo travel experience?
Not sure if this is where to post this, but I’m not sure where else to go with it. I started traveling last fall, on a typical “euro trip” vacation with my mother. Since then, I’ve changed my tune, visiting less touristy places and doing things 100% solo (which has brought me much more fulfillment). That’s how I prefer to travel. I visited Poland, Germany, Czechia, Ireland, and most recently France by myself. I have plans to visit Turkey in the fall, and my mother will be with me because I’m having some dental work done, which will require anesthesia. I’m honestly not loving the idea of being stuck for 3 weeks in a foreign country with my mother. We got along for the most part on our trip we took together, but the entire time I was thinking about how much happier I’d be if I was alone.
My grandma calls me one day before I leave for my trip (alone) to Paris. Tells me how much my mom wishes she were going, and that I should take her on the next one. I politely say “well you both know how much I love my solitude, and one plane ticket is half the price of two”. She goes “how about i pay her way on your next trip.” I change the subject and nothing more is said about it. Well apparently, while I’m gone off to France, my grandma tells my mother she’s paying her way on OUR next trip. So I come home and my mom is suggesting all these things for “our winter trip”. First of all I’ve already started planning MY winter trip and she doesn’t have any interest in the places I want to go. Not my fault and shouldn’t be my problem. She thinks we should go to Kraków and Prague, places I have already been and loved, but don’t want to spend money to return to until I’ve seen some more NEW places.
I’m angry, because solo travel is the last thing in my life that brings me joy. I’m so miserable much of the time, and being out in the world, completely on my own, is my one source of happiness. I work a good job but my boss is not in good health. If something happened to him tomorrow, I wouldn’t be able to travel anymore because I wouldn’t make enough. It may sound selfish, and it is, but I don’t care... I spend ALL of my time taking care of other people, doing what they want, and traveling is the only thing I do for me. If I try to express this to my family they will make me out to be an asshole. My only option is to get to the end of our trip to Turkey and just straight up tell my mom I’m not traveling with her anymore.
I don’t enjoy traveling with my mother because she can’t understand that in some countries, it’s not safe to smile at men. That you don’t buy things from the souvenir sellers on the street. There’s so many cultural things she just doesn’t get, and she’s so oblivious, she almost got pickpocketed in Rome, I had to chase the man away! I don’t want to spend my time off in the winter traveling back to places I’ve already been and babysitting her, when I could go new places and do what I really want to do.
How would you handle this? Am I being unreasonable?
Submitted May 30, 2019 at 05:28PM by mcin1994 http://bit.ly/2YYC7vs
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