Holiday tomorrow and already feeling pretty anxious

[SkylarkDay]

As the title says, I struggle with holidays. Not so bad with a couple of nights in the UK but off to Italy tomorrow. I know I should realise how lucky I am but I’m not feeling it and just feel apprehensive and stressed. DH & DD (18) like travelling. I use to travel abroad an awful lot for work years ago, and now I’m in my 50s would prefer to stay home or do occasional nights away in the UK.

I find the pre-holiday packing, getting the house ready to leave and leaving the animals at cattery etc is unbelievably stressful. Managed to avoid them the last few years due to the pandemic and then our two very elderly dogs were too creaky to leave. Sadly lost both my dogs this last 6 months and not got any more yet.

Generally on holiday I miss all my home comforts, my proper comfortable bed and routine. Don’t like leaving my pets, husband has ADHD so each morning he wants a list of where/what we are doing, and I get no time alone to recharge. I’m pretty sensitive to crowded busy places too these days. From home I do love doing day trips and getting out to see/explore things, especially when we had the dogs as I love walking, but I generally like to come home at night, although odd nights at UK hotels/Airbnb is fine. The only time my husband and I ever argue is on holiday because although he’s great, he totally exhausts me!!

Just wondering if anyone else feels this. Everybody else I know seems to love going away so I feel a bit of a freak! 😕

@BigHoops how you describe is usually how I feel about it all. I’ve got to get up at stupid o clock tomorrow for our flight, and I’ll probably be exhausted by the time we get there. I’m rubbish in the heat, not really feeling back up to 100% after my medical stuff, and crowds can make me physically panic these days. I find lots of people so overwhelming. Even at concerts I’ve started booking an end row seat, probably my age but so far it feels like an endurance test rather than a joyful holiday!

We spend a lot to go on holiday. High end hotels with all the extras, so not skimping. However. .. the rooms are smaller than my bedroom, I have to share with DH, which I don't at home. The beds are never as nice. I don't sleep as well. I get food overload after a week, I don't want breakfast, lunch, dinner at set times. I get bored of the suncream routine. I miss my garden, I garden every day. I miss my cat, he hates the cattery. I miss my environment of green fields and peace.

I do like being on holiday once I get there, and we do have a lovely family time, but I do love coming home.

@KnittedCardi I agree with your reply. We’ve just spent a small fortune last month staying for a few nights at what was meant to be one of the best hotels in Cambridge, in their best grade room for my Husband’s significant birthday. Reality was the room was tired, quite small and things not fixed or maintained. Had to change rooms once because the bedroom carpet was very damp due to a leaking shower pipe somewhere and it was noisy. Patio furniture cushions on our balcony were damp and very green! So I definitely miss the comforts of my own lovely home, garden and my animals. Holiday homes/hotels are rarely as comfortable even when they’re supposedly good ones.

Anyway glad to see I’m not totally alone in finding holidays super stressful. I can now let my DH know 😂

For me it's not about missing home, I still love being somewhere new and experiencing new things. It's the compromise version of the family holiday that I hate. Going during school holidays so it's incredibly hot when i hate the heat, sitting on the beach watching kids swim when I don't like beaches, the dreaded kiddies bloody discos, the organising of suitcases, day bags, snacks etc just to get there. Then the complaints about food / heat / crowds from the very people I'm doing it for. I used to love holidays and travel before kids. Now I wonder will I ever enjoy them again. I don't have the same enthusiasm to hang out with DH.

I feel stressed as well at the thought of going on holiday, which isn't helped as I'm a massive over thinker. We now always have a villa as I can make it my own space. Once I've moved a few things round/ removed for example ornaments plus unpacked and put my things where I would at home, the next day after the first night I tend to relax.
What about taking a nice candle/pillow spray or even your own pillow case.

@Alalalalalongalalalalalonglonglilong i think when you have little ones it is super stressful and hard work and makes my whinging look pretty pathetic. Younger kids take more time to get into a routine plus you don’t have all their stuff, and you have no time or energy to do anything you want to do. I remember the days of driving past the lovely civilised pubs when my daughter was little and driving into the family friendly mad zoo of a pub instead with a large playground filled with screaming kids! Don’t despair, there does come a day when you can go back to the grown up places again and have a nice time and conversation with DH.

Also bit late for this time but have a look into EFT

www.healthline.com/health/eft-tapping#What-is-EFT-tapping?

I have a new colleague who is a practitioner and it sounds really interesting

You sound like myself and my husband OP. We're meant to be going to Asia in 2025 (visiting family) and I've been dreading the trip for a year already. My DH is ADHD and I find it exhausting (I'm recently diagnosed autistic). We try to give each other more space to be ourselves now we understand a little more of how we're each made. Clear phrases like: I need some timeout / I want to be on my own / I want some quiet time, all help. I like being with my DH but without the constant stream of chatter, stress and feeling discombobulated, bombarded and overwhelmed! Good luck with the holiday.

It sounds like you would benefit from better boundaries with DH? Remind him you also have needs, and that includes having “downtime” on holidays.

I am ND and find holidays quite full on, but my friends and family are well aware that I will need to spend some time alone and they don’t try to guilt trip or bully me into behaving otherwise.

Make room for you to enjoy the holiday your way and have a good time.

I hate celery so I never eat it

I hate holidays so don’t bother with them. Happy to hear about other people’s hols but I’d rather go on a day trip somewhere or spend time in my garden. I tell DH to have as many as he wants with his mates just leave me be! I’m not sad about it at all. If you don’t want do it, don’t do it. Plus I’d rather spend the money on something for the house/garden. I’ve grown up chn who travel the world so I’ve definitely not influenced them!

This is really interesting to me because I have recently come back from a very disappointing few days in a place I love with a man I love. He has ADHD and I am a massive introvert, love calm, love flow.
I didn't sleep well and was not recovered from a time of intense work stress, which didn't help, but what really made me absolutely despairingly, tearfully uncomfortable was the fact that I couldn't access any sort of peace or flow. I needed to be either much, much bossier (which I didn't have the energy to do, he was just not listening to me although it was a place I know well and he doesn't know it at all) or just disconnect entirely and cut him loose (which eventually I begged to do and we both found that very upsetting).

I like walking, swimming, reading - things like that - because I like being involved in something with a rhythm and a direction that you can settle into for a while and soothe your brain from all the glitchiness of thinking and deciding and negotiating. He was absolutely trapped in faff, discussion constantly changing direction and throwing options back in that I thought we had rejected and moved on from, he always had the wrong shoes, he couldn't get out of the house for the day without the hugest fuss and then it turned out it wasn't for the day after all as he hadn't got something or other. He kept trying to sort of mooch and experience some kind of cafe society that doesn't exist in that part of the world, and then getting critical and grumpy about grim tired little cafes, and so on. I don't even love mooching that much with a man, even in a very interesting town I have to feel energised and rested to enjoy it, because it is always at the man's pace and every time you see something you think is interesting he is always saying "oh look at this" and you have to go over to where he is and look at the thing he is looking at.

It was devastating actually and i was just a shredded wreck, I felt absolutely pecked to death by this pick, pick, pick and no settling to anything.

In some ways I can't think how we ended up together because we are such opposites in terms of our attitudes to faff: I am viciously anti faff and he seems to almost seek out faff as a hobby. I want to minimise faff to get to the "real" activity - the walk or the lunch or whatever - whereas he seems to love to extend the delicious faff to take up as much of the day as possible. This thought makes me sad as I really do love him and I hate to think we might be incompatible.

Reading this thread about other couples with similar differences is interesting and it makes our relationship seem less like some weird anomaly and more like something that actually just happens sometimes. I think maybe even in normal life - not on holiday, which maybe we haven't worked out how to do yet - our differences are actually delivering something to the other that we both need or want. Maybe relationships like this happen for a reason.

@Alalalalalongalalalalalonglonglilong I love your idea of your private 24 hour break before hand. That was definitely the mistake I made - I had a desperate need to come from stress after a crazy work deadline and tried to use this holiday for that, when I needed to do something else to recover to be ready for the holiday a deux.
I am in a period of my life where I am very, very short of time and this precious break needed to have been better planned. I certainly at least needed to have been a lot more assertive about what we were actually going to do there.

@achipandachair dont despair, you sound like a carbon copy of my husband and I. Everything you said I recognise. Like you, I couldn’t understand why we were like this on holiday when everyone else seemed normal. Saying that when we’re not on holiday we are very happy together.

I am now halfway through this holiday and after 25 years together he’s finally getting it and I’ve finally put my foot down. I think we’ve finally recognised each other’s limitations. I’m probably very introverted and like peace, quiet and going with the flow, plus plenty of ‘me’ time, and he’s totally exhausting and overthinks everything!! It took a good few years of me totally refusing to go on holidays before the penny dropped if he wants me here, we need to adapt how we do it. He now tries to accommodates me as best he can (with his ADHD), and if anything he drives me nuts by asking if I’m ok the whole time now, like I’m a delicate flower! 😂 I am enjoying this holiday as much as I enjoy any holiday, it is very hot and busy where we are and if I’m being honest, I am looking forward to returning to my peaceful home, garden & life at the end of the week! He’s said ooh now you’ve done this holiday we can go to A,BC &D. And I’ve replied truthfully I’m never going to be Michael Palin treking the World!! It’s just not my thing.