So I grew up in a town where my mother, father, and sister still live, as well as my two bestfriends. I’m traveling back to the state for a week, but spending half of it at my father’s family reunion (parents are divorced). I have three other days actually in my hometown, and I’m overwhelmed with how little time I have.
My boyfriend[29M] is coming with me. And this “vacation” is not a vacation for either of us. He has to put up with my extended family during the reunion and then my mother when we get to my hometown. (Mom has borderline and my dad’s family are all fox news conservatives.) So we decided to dedicate one day to go to the beach by ourselves and have some “us time”. But this means we only have two days in my hometown.
My mom’s upset because she’s only gonna be able to see me twice. And I’m sacrificing extra time I’m going to spend with my friends to spend with her. I’m only gonna be able to spend one night with them, but they are the best thing about visiting my hometown.
I’m so frustrated. Trying not to overwhelm my boyfriend, appease my mother, spend as much time with my friends as possible, and have a little bit of a vacation to relax. It’s way too much. We can’t extend the vacation due to PTO and other obligations… Does anyone have advice on how to manage your time when visiting home?
TLDR; don’t have enough time in the day to spend with everyone I need to when visiting home.
3 comments
“hey mom I hear you are disappointed about how much time we will get to spend together on this trip. How about we plan a trip for you to come visit us in the near future and we can spend more time focused on each other.”
It helps if you set clear expectations with everyone up front. Treat it very logistically and not emotionally – the time you have is the time you have, and how you allocate it is how you allocate it. But if you are clear with everyone then you can at least remove the anxiety of any ‘maybe’ or ‘we’ll see how it goes’ or ‘if we have time.’ It also helps to write out a schedule as well and go over it with your bf so he knows what to expect – mine appreciates that when he gets pulled into a family situation like this. The other thing we do when it’s family/hometown travel like this is play interference for each other – so for example when you are with your mom you might consider giving your bf a pre-planned out for some time to himself and let her know ahead of time he won’t be joining you.
Why do you have to spend 3 days at your dad’s reunion? Why not tell him you need to cut your time short and leave after a full day? That gives you more time to see your mom, friends and relax.