To get so irritated with DH and his irritating holiday planning?

[BossyPaws]

Going to USA in September. We plan to drive from San Francisco to Monument Valley stopping off at Bridgeport, Death Valley, Las Vegas etc along the way.

So far we have the return flights to SF booked and that's it. DH insists on being in charge of the planning yet getting him to actually plan anything is a fucking nightmare. I've been searching hotels, airb&b etc and showing him and get the usual "yeah sounds nice". I have tried telling him that these places are booking up fast and get "yeah we need to start booking".

I've been getting so frustrated with nothing getting sorted!! Last night I sat him down and narrowed it down to a handful of airb&b properties - he was dead keen, kept saying how gorgeous they were etc ... got me to message the hosts ... said we'd book today.

So this afternoon had perfect opportunity as no kids here and both sat doing nothing - he wanted to go to sleep and said we'd do it tonight.

8.30pm I say "so, we going to book then as they're selling out fast" - he replies "we can't commit yet as we don't know how long we're spending in each place". I say "well we need to work that out then!" He replies "yeah we should do really". So again getting frustrated I say "so!! Shall we?" And he says "yeah, we do need to but I don't know yet what we're going to do". So I say "well what we going to do then??" He replies "well, there is nothing we can do"

Oh for fucks sake man wake up!! AIBU to sack him off and just plan and book the fucker without his input? Baring in mind he'll take great delight in pointing out anything that goes wrong as entirely my fault?

Plan and book and leave him at home

I would go ahead and do the bookings myself if no sign of him making an effort by this weekend does he not realise all the places you want to go to will be fully booked.
We go to LV every other year and always book excursions/ days out/shows a minimum of 9mths before to make sure we get sorted.

I would at least book the accomodation n SF for the begining and end of the holiday.

This must be a man thing because I don't know of any women who prevaricate like this?

Every year I have the same stress with DH over actually booking a holiday. He wants to go on holiday very much but he just can't bring himself to commit to one. We tend to holiday with friends which makes it even more stressful because, understandably, they want to get it booked and sorted well in advance. The root of the problem is that DH is self employed so he frets about not earning while he's away, and frets that if a couple of big invoices aren't paid in time we won't be able to pay the balance on the holiday. But in 12 years we have always had the money, it's never turned out to be an issue and we have always, eventually, commited and had a good holiday. But it's like DH has to go through this ridiculous pantomime each time, and it drives me up the wall because I'm caught up in the middle trying to placate our friends while simultaneously trying to tie DH down. I hate it. I sometimes wonder if this is just a learned reaction for DH because his poor Mum always had to pussyfoot around his Dad when it came to arranging holidays, parties etc and my FIL wouldn't commit until the last minute. It's so bloody selfish.

Dp asked if I wanted a holiday in June on Saturday. Quick getaway with out the dc. Within 10 minutes of me saying 'that sounds like a good idea' he had booked the flights. He was stressing yesterday morning because we hadn't booked our accommodation. I hadn't had time to research the area to even begin looking at accommodation. 8 hours later, and every hotel, air bnb and apartment all blurring into one- we have booked.

I like to sort things asap, but this was beyond this weekend! Makes it worse that we are leaving tonight for a holiday (with the dc)- so I should have spent yesterday packing instead of googling.

Never mind, half way sorted so far, I'm just focusing on the sun and cocktails.....

My XH booked all our holidays. He loved researching the shit out of anything. We's agree the date and location, he'd whittle it down to five options, we'd agree on the best three then the booking went to which hotel replied to his email first. Total time from 'are we going away in summer?' to booking all done in about three hours total, including transport. I stuck to that formula after we split.

So I'm a bit when friends have problems like the OP, because it's just seems to be complicating a fairly simple task really difficult.

You need at least your first couple of nights booked because you have to put the details on your immigration forms.

I HATE winging it on holiday. I'd rather stay somewhere that's just ok (or frankly even a bit shit) than spend any actual holiday time fannying about looking stuff up, realising there's no space here, looking somewhere else NO NO NO NO FUCK THAT.

I really have no suggestions but I can empathise as that's my life in a nutshell. My DH insists on planning all holidays but drives me crazy with his organisation (or lack there of). One year I actually just went ahead and booked everything but when we got there he didn't like one hotel and we ended up changing hotels everywhere we went! I never did that again.

My method now is to just ignore his laziness and let him pay the difference for booking late. Saves the arguments.

Yes DH annoyed me slightly at the weekend when he suggested we wing it in NZ when we go next year - based on the fact that on a three week trip round Canada one of the accommodations was less than perfect which resulted in us taking a detour and finding an amazing resort that we had never planned to stay in. NB there was nothing wrong with the originally booked place - it was very cheap - which should have sounded alarm bells, and was just a bit quainter and more rustic than we were used to - oh and the walking distance to the beach was rather underestimated.

What he forgot - and what I carefully reminded him off - was that the pre-booking meant that for all the other locations we got to stay in trip-advisor high rated properties ( all booked out months in advance) that were fairly reasonable value for money and offered the best beach access or views to places where - had we turned up on spec - we'd either not have got a room or paid a fortune to stay somewhere mediocre.

Also I get a lot of enjoyment about reading reviews of places we're going to stay in and doing the planning by figuring out what restaurants and sights we are close to. Not pre-booking would take away all that pleasure.

I would give him a week for this holiday before you booked it and he had zero right to object about anything. Next holiday puta deadline in place which he has to book before.

This drives me crazy. It's one thing to decide to go on a completely unplanned holiday (although I think it works a lot better when you're younger and just don't give a shit, because you're not spending much-needed annual leave, every crappy hostel is an anecdote and there's no household budget), but the unplanned-planned holiday is the worst.

You waste money.
You waste holiday time.
You miss out on experiences you wanted.

In the lead-up to an unplanned-planned holiday, you're either a) the nag, b) the silent stresser, or c) the person who ends up doing it all anyway. And if you go for c), it goes down in family mythology as 'well, I always want to plan the holidays, but she usually ends up taking over'.

All credit to people who manage to keep their hands off and let the unplanning run riot; I always want to do that in theory, but in practice I've never had a family holiday where I've wanted it to be crap, overpriced and chaotic, so I've always caved in.

I wouldn't mind if unplanning came from a genuine belief in being spontaneous, but it's usually just prevaricating about the most unremarkable, unavoidable things, like sorting car hire in advance instead of at the airport. Just fecking DO it! Aargh.

Oh god yes obachan re the car hire.

DH lives in this weird belief that if you don't book your car hire in advance, the hire people will have lots of great discounts for all their great cars that they will have available, plus it will mean going to the smallest queue (we always seem to end up in the longest queue).

Whereas it's my firmly held belief that if a place has no queue, its because what they are offering is uncompetitive.

At least if you book it in advance you can see what insurance is and isn't included, rather than being befuddled on the spot.

I am a big planner, especially for holidays because they're so precious I want to make sure that I make the most of them and don't waste time when I am there.

DP always criticises me and says I am not spontaneous enough and it winds me up!

DP used to be a complete pain about holidays, treating me like his secretary. When he threw his credit card at me with a huge list of unreasonable demands for our Amalfi Coast holiday - all hotels absolutely must have room service, a decent bar, sea views, rooms with balconies etc - I thought fuck it and booked one of the nicest hotels on Capri for three nights at the end of the fortnight. I won’t say how much it was but we were the only couple there who weren’t famous or on honeymoon. I loved it. To be fair he took it quite well and engaged a lot more when we planned the next trip.

I have done the ultimatum. After yet another holiday where dhs contributions were absolutely shit I said he was doing holidays last year or they were cancelled. And if organised them he wasn’t coming. I did carefully time this with the next trips being his mates wedding then Italy with his parents, and he knew I was serious about cancelling. I set standards as well for the holidays- the accomodation location needs to be affordable, sensibly consider our accommodation requirements and proximity to activities etc, you need to have checked transport options for airport , towns you want to visit and so on. He really stepped up and has done most of the planning for our (reasonably frequent) holidays since.

I've had the Amalfi coast whinging as well. No mean feat to find accommodation where DS slept in a separate room, with good wifi and access to a swimming pool in Sorrento at a reasonable price.

We ate in one of the posh hotels with seafront views and a heated pool - why aren't we staying here DH wanted to know. So I pointed out that a room at this hotel would have cost twice as much and we'd all have been squeezed into one hotel room.

I put my foot down after we'd agreed Venice but he refused to commit to an amazing deal I had on hold. Three months later we paid twice the price for a crappy caravan with no air con in a run down holiday park a mile further down the Lido di Jessolo. From then out I was prepared to row about it and when he got stroppy about the row I had to explain in minute detail why it turned into a row and how he could avoid a row by saying yes to a holiday he wanted to go on in the first place. It's got better since then.

Are you married to my ex, OP?

We only book key nights, ones where there is a risk of no accommodation. It's nice to have some flexibility.

My dp has just done this and we've ended up paying a shed more for flights this year.

As an aside we're hoping to do your trip next year in reverse. Interested to know how long you've set aside for everything.

I'm the other end of the spectrum to your dh,have already started my research and planning. Driving dh nuts.

But BOO32 how do you know what the key nights are ? I like to have it all booked but cancellable and then that way if our plans do change we have flexibility.

I've done several US road trips and have always booked flights, a hotel for the first couple of nights and a last night near the airport for return, booked a hire car and then nothing else. We've always just played it by ear - had a rough idea which direction we want to go but then stopped where we like the look of, stay longer if we like it, move on if we don't. I've only ever had one town where we didn't find accommodation easily, and that was because it turned out there was a motorbike convention in town - we ended up moving on to the next town and had no trouble.

DH does a spreadsheet. I mean, it makes him happy, but I object to being told we've spent 7 minutes too long at the Vatican and that it's thrown his whole schedule off.

Book SF asap. We (before kids!) did a road trip holiday and didn’t book anything in advance as we were flexible on an intinerary - went to SF and the hotels we could afford were mainly booked up, and the hotels that weren’t booked up were insanely expensive! I’d leave the rest to him if he’s not wanting to commit and let him sort it out so you can complain and he can have the stress 😂