My husband could see going on a long weekend trip with the guys for golfing or camping. But longer than that or alone would be weird to him. Similar would be a women’s conference or retreat with me and my friends.
In a few months I’ll be going on a trip by myself for my sister’s wedding. It would be too expensive to bring everyone. I don’t count that as a vacation, though getting to go to the bathroom for several days totally alone may feel like a vacation.
I think for a defined purpose it
can be OK. But it shouldn’t substitute for time as a couple or family, and the other spouse shouldn’t have qualms about the trip.
Yeah, at some point there are a lot of financial and logistical issues involved in going long distance as a whole family.
We are planning our first long long distance trip as a family of five for this summer, and our youngest is almost 4.5–it’s been nearly four years since she’s been on a plane. We’ve done one or two night road trips for the five of us for a number of years now, but this is a 7-day trip with plane tickets for all of us. Because we’re going to be staying in hotels and renting a van, it’s going to cost in excess of $4k without anything especially amazing happening. (As I whined to my sister, “It’s going to cost as much as Disneyland and we aren’t going to Disneyland!” But, duty calls–our grandparents aren’t getting any younger.)
Here’s some of the non-business travel that we’ve done separately over the years:
–I visit my family on the West Coast with 1-2 kids nearly every year (about a week)
–My husband visits his family on the West Coast with 1-2 kids nearly every year (about a week)
–I’ve visited an old Peace Corps buddy a couple of times (2-3 nights)
–I’ve done maybe a 2 night trip with my grandparents and great-aunt visiting my second cousin
We haven’t gotten the green light for visiting in-laws as a family of five–I think my FIL’s health and nerves would not be up to it. They may never be up to it…
For years, I was planning to go and visit old friends in the Russian Far East with my Peace Corps buddy (that would probably have been a week), but first she couldn’t go and then I couldn’t go (Baby Girl) and then the Russian-US political situation got weird, so I’m shelving that idea for now and have a different plan.
ukulelemag.com/stories/uke-in-n-cruisin-part-vacation-part-immersive-workshop-ukulele-themed-cruises-are-taking-off
The plan is that my teenager (who is quite the ukulele player) and I will do a ukulele cruise to Alaska together. If I can scrape up the extra money, I’ll take Middle Kid and Baby Girl, too. This will probably be in 2-3 years. What about my husband, you ask? First of all, unlike myself, husband hates travel (he has to travel a lot for work). Secondly, he dislikes the sound of the ocean. I haven’t completely given up the idea of getting him to come with the rest of us, but it would be him doing me a BIG favor, not the other way around.
My husband has been to Paris, Prague and Santiago, Chile for work. I would love it. He suffers SO MUCH. As time goes by, I expect we will probably start combining his work travel and our family travel as we occasionally did pre-kids/when we had a smaller family.
Edited to add: One nuance to our situation is that since my husband is a professor and lives on an academic calendar, he has a lot of flexibility. Hence, if I go away for a week and he goes away for a different week, we haven’t burned through all of our vacation for the year.
