To tell my friend I can't go on holiday with her?

[Lily2811]

More of a WWYD but posting for traffic. In a nutshell, its my friend of ten years. I love her to bits but she's very full on, very opinionated and at times she is hard work to be around truth be told. She joined us for a girls holiday a few years ago for the last few days and basically ruined the end of the holiday by falling out with one of the other girls over really stupid things. She wants to go away with me again this year but I feel really apprehensive about it and tbh I just don't really want to. How do I tell her??

It’s really hard, you know she’s going to be hurt. Don’t be tempted to tell a lie, but you can say that going on holiday together is not going to work for you.
If she persists say you value her friendship (if you do!) but that you prefer to go with x.
Why should you compromise your happiness for hers?
You could lose her as a friend, but she sounds quite hard work.

Re-Reading your OP, you could say that you know she appreciates plain speaking, so you thought she’d appreciate directness.

Nobody is obliged to go on holiday with anyone, particularly a friend. If she is expecting to go on holiday with you, rather than just making a suggestion, that's weird. If she's just making a suggestion, it's not that difficult to turn that suggestion down.

Do you already have plans to go on holiday with someone else? If so, just tell her that sorry, you've already made arrangements. If you don't, then just tell her you aren't making holiday plans at the moment and will probably do something last minute so would rather not fit that around someone else.

Who’s the holiday with? There’s no way I’d risk it being ruined when I’ve been looking forward to it and spent a load of money on it.