You are showing your considerate side and some concerns by posing the question, and bravery asking for other’s views on this forum. Not everyone is as self-reflecting, but perhaps you are looking for affirmation so you no longer feel an obligation to pay for him, as you’ve been so generous in the past. Perhaps something has changed.
Ask yourself whether you harbour a level of resentment because you’re doing the financial heavy lifting, maybe you wish the financial aspects of your relationship were on a more equal footing. But they’re not right now, and you could choose to accept that as the short to mid term nature of your relationship. Being the bread winner puts you in a position of power, and as they say in all the Spiderman movies, that comes with responsibility.
However, as others have suggested, if you are in a partnership which is not transactional, then perhaps you should or could find a way of going on holiday together in a way that suits you both. Healthy relationships contain shared moments and experiences, and moments where you do your own thing - which one is this?
I find myself in the kind of situation your partner could be in. My partner has gone away for a 5 1/2 week ‘holiday of a lifetime’, with her 15yr role son and her friends, people we usually spend time with, usually as a couple. She went away to Europe earlier in the year with her 4 older kids, for 10 days, which was fine of course. And she offered to pay for them all to go away this time too, which implies she could afford it. But I couldn’t, it was always out of my reach, which she knew, and I felt far too ashamed about not having the money to say I really wanted to come, or to ask her to pay for me. So she made that choice.
Unlike your partner, I guess I’m fortunate because I do have somewhere else of my own, where I can stay. I rent a small charitable cottage in a quiet village, about 160 miles away from my partner’s house. I rent it solely for the purposes of seeing and housing my kids every other weekend, so they don’t have to travel, and so we can maximise our time together.
In the past, my partner and I spent occasional weekends there together, she has said she enjoyed it as peaceful getaway for her. Back then, the costs and time spent travelleing were split pretty evenly, but over the last few months, as she has started working longer weeks, she’s had less time to travel so I do all the travelling between the two houses, so we can spend time together in her house, and with my kids in mine. I work for myself, and can do that from anywhere, she works local to where she lives so the arrangement makes sense, although it costs me in fuel to do it, a cost I gladly bear to sustain our relationship. Over time, her house has become my base, and I have developed friendships with her friends, and made some friends of my own.
Aside from the disappointment she was heading off on holiday without me, and that she was going to be gone for quite some time, a couple of months before she was due to go away, she told me she was planning to Airbnb her house, which meant I’d have to go and stay in my place in the sleepy village alone, without my kids, and a long way from any friends. So I made plans to do some alternative cheap/free things while she was gone. I planned a couple of weeks dog-sitting in a different city, awkwardly for the friends who are on now holiday with my partner. Later on, as it became clear the Airbnb thing wasn’t going to work out, she said I could stay there, but it came too late, I’d already committed to dog-sitting. I regret the decision, but I felt unable to let our friends down. I’m now in their house, looking after their dog, while they are all away together. It’s an awful and isolating feeling.
I know that if circumstances were reversed, I would not have chosen to go on holiday for so long, without paying for my partner to come along with me. Or, I would’ve chosen to do something else we could both afford. I value our time together too much, I value shared experiences and the importance of getting away from our busy and sometimes rather mundane life.
Going away on holiday independently is one thing, but going away with our friends for such a long time is another. I feel hurt and resentful, hurt she’d make a decision like this with no apparent thought for the implications it would have on me, or how it would make me feel not just while she’s away, but for all the months leading up to the holiday, overhearing her and her friends excitedly making plans. No doubt, I will listening to them re-living their shared experiences, next time we’re all back together again.
I feel impotent, unable to buy my way into participating in our relationship. I am also left with the overwhelming impression she doesn’t genuinely care about the impact of her decision, and how it has left me feeling - like I am not valued.
My advice therefore would be, if you can afford it and you value your time together, pay for him to go because you want him there with you to share the experience away from your everyday lives. Do everything you can to maintain a relationship that is experiential and do everything to stop it becoming transactional.
I am eating myself up trying to understand what all this means for me. Perhaps it means nothing and I’m over reacting, but at the moment it’s hard to believe that when it’s so raw and hurts so deeply.