To tell DP I don't like Glastonbury even though it will destroy him?

[Bonnywilde]

My parter (43) is obssessed with Glastonbury festival. He's told me many times how he's been for the past 6 times and how amazing it is and how in love he is with it, he sees himself as an expert on it and goes on and on and on about it. Someone was on radio the other day talking about it and DP shouted at the radio to shut up as they know nothing about it .

He took me for my first time last year. Not being a lover of camping I remember being freezing cold every night (I'm extremely anaemic which doesn't help), tired, claustrophobic and fed up. yeah we saw some good bands and met some cool people but I just didn't "get it" even though it seemed I really should? I couldn't bare to tell him so I told him I'd enjoyed it even though I wasn't as into it as him.

Well he was super excited when he got tickets for this year. I thought I'll give it another go, be better prepared, bought a good arctic sleeping bag, plastic penis, coffee sachets, good shoes and lots of stuff for hygiene and although it worked out better than the first time, I still don't "get it". It's too crowded, wet and mucky, everyone is hammered by 4pm and half of them unconscious by 8pm, you can't get anywhere near the big acts anyway, the bogs are disgusting, the food ridiculously expensive and every day is spent trudging from one field to the next to watch some crappy band that DP promises me will be "awesome" and ends up sounding like a school music classroom.

I just don't like it all that much. I've tried it twice and I just don't get it. I also don't like the way DP acts when he's there. This year he bought some weed (which I didn't mind so much as a one off) and an ecstasy tablet ffs - then he's stood there stoned, high and drunk saying he can't face watching the end of Kasabian as he feels funny. Then he starts going on about how he's a "stoner" so used to it its embarrassing. at 43 years old you aint a stoner, you're a middle aged engineer trying to relive your youth.

Anyway, I'm going to have to tell him I don't want to go next year. It will destroy him and I suspect he may even question our compatibility over it (no joke).

Should I just suck it up and go and try and enjoy it or is it too much to pretend? Don't want to be selfish but I can see me getting bitter about it, especially the amount of money it costs. We must have spent around £800 on it this year.

He's not the wedding guy is he? The one who wants Glasto to be your honeymoon?

Cross-post Naoko!

So you just say you enjoyed bits of it, but tbh you'd much rather have spent your £400 of the expense on .

Next year, you are suggesting that you save up £800 mad money together, & he does Glasto with his mates, & you do your thing with yours.

If he doesn't like that idea, how about you both do something you fancy in 2015, & in 2016 it's his turn to pick again & if he picks Glasto, OK, you'll go with him?

If you suggest both of those & he isn't prepared to entertain either, he is clearly being a selfish twat.

I wouldn't be that bothered about the drugs or the money, tbh, but the unfairness of him dragging you to his thing, which means you have a crap time, would rankle rather.

Naoko, that was my first thought!

Where's his mates in all of this?

It's the fact that "it will destroy him" that I can't get my head round once I'd got past the plastic penis sentence.

dh and I both do things that don't interest the other one - so we...er... go without the other one. It's not difficult. It's what grown ups ins strong relationship do.

However, what they don't do is spend money that the family needs for other, more pressing things, on what is essentially a treat for themselves.

Next time take a caravan, it makes it much better.

Maybe next year you could find a compromise - a festival that you do actually want to go to? What about Benicassim? No muddy fields, food is cheap, and you can lounge on the beach all day. If you do it properly you can even rent a nice villa to sleep in. No camping required!

I have lead a sheltered life because I didn't even know such a contraption existed..(plastic penis)!!!

Glastonbury would be my idea of hell too!!.. Tell him to go with a mate & you go for a lovely spa weekend!!

He sounds like a bit of a twat, sorry.

FWIW, by husband has been 16 times (take THAT Mr Bonnywilde) and still doesn't make out like he knows it all. In fact, when packing last week, he listened too and even took some of my advice!! I've been four times, had fun, but really it's not my bag so haven't been to the last two.

I agree with the previous poster that said maybe he's hanging out with the wrong people if drugs are such a big part of it. It's DH's experience that the drug scene is fairly minimal these days at Glasto. Only once have I seen people really plastered, and that was that hot year about 4 years ago.

I love you OP. I've never been but always thought I'm missing out whilst suspecting it would be as awful as you described.

You would have to pay me a LOT of money to go to Glastonbury. I can think of nothing worse.
Why on earth can't you tell him?

Like clam you would have to pay me £800 before I'd even visit a toilet at Glastonbury.

Would he come with you to whatever niche hobby you might like to do at ruinous expense and tedium? And with grim toilet facilities.

I may have issues around toilets.

The only time I would ever go to a festival is with guest area passes, the food is better, there is seating, the alcohol isn't watered down and the toilets are clean! I have been to festivals for the day only, and when we went to one for more than a day we drove home inbetween.

A weekend at Glastonbury is my idea of hell on earth. A bunch of middle class wannabes trying to pretend to be hipsters. With rain. And bad toilets. Grim.

My DH absolutely loves car racing and when younger went to santa pod a few times a year. We have been together 30 yrs and I have been once!! Hated it. Told him in no uncertain terms that I would never be going back. Just tell him. Just because you are together doesn't mean you should like everything he does and vice versa!

My OH likes sport - all of it! He is currently at tennis now, goes to cricket and holds a season ticket to his team; so goes every other Saturday and to most evening home games and some away matches of note.

I'd dread to think if I had to pretend to like it to save face; plus I get loads of time on my own to do what I want to do.

I've never been to Glastonbury, and I think Your 'D'P IBU.
However, comments like FunkyBold about 'middle class wannabes trying to pretend to be hipsters' make me cross. It's that 'I'm cooler than all of you' attitude which won't accept that people can do what they want without really caring what others think of them.

I personally love it, been every year it's been on since 1998.

But each to their own. Maybe he won't get tickets this year. Could the computer/Internet have a malfunction on ticket day?

I have always thought that anyone over the age of 25 who goes to Glastonbury and isn't a stallholder or Metallica is a really sad fucker.

I've never been. I prefer smaller festivals with nearby affordable hotels.

What really puts me off is all that bollocks about it being 'magical' which apparently translates as circus skills . And that alone brings me out in a cold sweat - and women wearing those stupid fake native american headdresses. Plus all the photographs I've seen make it look like a refugee camp for white people.

I agree with a pp, I'd hack the wi-fi the day the tickets go on sale

I'm not convinced about glastonbury, I've been twice - my first in the great flood of 2005 (still speechless to be honest! It was like fucking Armageddon), followed by a distinctly soggy 2007.

However, it does have a weird pull on you and against my better instincts, I am considering going next year. But only if I can stay in one of those stupidly over priced sheds.

I can't fathom any 'music' festival where you have to commit to tickets before they have announced who will be playing there!

I know there's other stuff and you can eat falafel till your arse falls off, but I can see topless hipsters doing poi at the park if I'm that desperate and would rather burst than use a portaloo overflowing with other people's bodily effluence.

Good job I'm not with your partner OP - he would probably hyperventilate at my lack of Glasto-thusiasm! Have you told him yet?

I love Glastonbury, but if you don't like it, you don't like it, and I can see why! It IS busy and exhausting and mucky and tiring.. can't he go with his mates instead? Just say you're not going!