Background: So they have been together for half a year, and her boyfriend has a child, who she never met because she doesn’t like to take care of child. So whenever they need to go for a short trip, he needs to ask his ex-wife to take care of the child. She finds this arrangement annoying.
Apparently she isn’t comfortable with travelling alone either, and she decides to ask friends (like us) to travel with her instead. I don’t want to be part of this because I would be so upset if I were her boyfiend. What should I do? How should I tell her?
tl;dr: friend wants to travel with us not her boyfriend because he has a child whom his ex-wife needs to take care of whenever they are out of town.
6 comments
‘No’ is a complete sentence. If you can’t or don’t want to go then that’s all you need to say. Her fear of travelling alone is unfortunate but not your problem to deal with. Every time she finds someone else to accompany her she’s just avoiding having to deal with that directly.
If a 30 year old can’t deal with her own issues she shouldn’t be hiding behind you as a friend and you guys even listening to this is an encouragement to her. Just say NO
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Since when do you have to exclusively travel with the person you’re dating? I travel with my friends, my spouse travels with their friends. Most people I know do too. If you don’t want to go, you can simply say no.
Most of this is not your concern. Right now the part to focus on is that your friend wants to travel with you and you don’t want to (I’m not clear why as many people travel with friends and not every partner is going to have a problem with that, especially a partner of just a few months, so your concern for her partner seems misplaced). But you say you don’t want to. So say no. Leave your thoughts on her relationship dynamic out of it. If you need to elaborate say whatever is actually true about why you don’t want to go such as that you prefer to travel alone, with your own partner, with another friend or family member you’re a compatible traveler with, or to not travel at all. In that sense the issue is resolved.
If she keeps making your unwillingness to go the barrier to her not traveling encourage her to take a solo trip, find other friends to travel with, or travel with her partner at a time that works for them. It’s completely reasonable that she’s not in the kid’s life yet, but it also makes sense to ask if she’s happy in the relationship and to express appropriate concern about whether she’s cut out to be in this relationship dynamic with a kid involved if and only if she keeps making the kid one of the barriers to her living the life she wants and/ or if she’s refusing to meet the kid. There are some long-term implications there that aren’t great and it doesn’t speak well of her partner if he’s okay dating someone who doesn’t want anything to do with his child.
Again, I’m not clear why you’d be upset with this if you were her boyfriend or why you’re even thinking that way. Plenty of people travel without their partners at times. In the last ten years of my relationship I’ve travelled solo, with friends, with family, with my partner, with my partner’s family, etc. My partner has similarly travelled alone, with me, with friends, family, etc. That part, the part where she wants to go with friends since her partner can’t easily go, seems like a non-issue. It’s a perfectly reasonable thing for her to want to do. If you don’t want to travel with her though, for any reason, it’s also perfectly reasonable for you to just say no.
Can you tell us why you’d be “super upset” if you were the boyfriend? There is nothing weird about her traveling with a friend unless you’re leaving something significant out. It’s entirely possible her boyfriend doesn’t care or is even encouraging her to go with others if he is a decent partner. Your responses to this, that you’d go if she didn’t have a boyfriend, seem odd. If her boyfriend is cool with it, if she’s just a friend, and you want to go, why are you saying no? The whole you’d be upset if you were her boyfriend makes it sound like you’re assuming he’d be jealous of you when you haven’t given us a reason he would be.
Well, outside of the question posted, the summary of the first paragraph is “My friend is annoyed by the entirety of her relationship with her boyfriend”, to which the reply is, “She has no long term future with this boyfriend.”
But to answer the greater question — if you *want* to travel with her, travel with her. If you don’t, then don’t.