Boyfriend using bulk of his holiday allowance for ‘secret’ holiday with his mate

[Alicew5]

I’ve been with my boyfriend since early 2025, we had discussed plans for this year in terms of going abroad on holiday etc as we didn’t go away last year. He has 25 days holiday and 6/7 days are being used up for weddings which is fine so in theory he has ample left.

He has revealed to me, after I’ve been on about getting something booked, that ‘before we were serious’ he committed to his friend that he’d go to Asia (Thailand specifically) with him in November this year. This has never been mentioned to me before. The issue? It will use up nearly 3 weeks of his holiday allowance, meaning he won’t have enough to go abroad for at least a week with me.

He said he promised his mate and won’t let him down. His mate is going anyway - he goes there every year, usually solo! My BF said there isn’t a compromise with him going for a lesser duration, as it wouldn’t be cost effective that way and he’d not seen everything there is to see.

AIBU to feel this is selfish? We have been in a relationship for over a year so I feel like he isn’t making me a priority.

I have also spent weeks in Thailand by myself (for real, rather than trying to make myself sound cool). If you did and were not aware of the men using paid 'girlfriends' ALL THE TIME EVERYWHERE, you must have worn very dark sunglasses the whole time to stop you seeing anything 🤨

This would be an instant bin for me, @Alicew5. Sorry. Unless both he and the friend are experts in Thai religious architecture or South-East Asian wildlife, they're going for sun, sand, sea and sex.

An old friend of mine manages a project helping debt-bonded (slave) girls to escape the sex trade. She said it's like trying to hold back the tide. They do have some support from the Thai government now, but it's mainly focused on child sex abuse and large-scale traffickers.

Regular Asia traveller here. I've often been for a month at a time.

As I travelled round I met all sorts of people in all sorts of places.

Some were regular sex tourists. (Only men)
Some were regular travellers enjoying the beauty of the place. (Both sexes)
Some were regular spiritual travellers (both sexes)
Some were historical buffs (both sexes)
Some, like me, had caught the Asia bug and couldn't get enough (both sexes)

Don't put everyone in the same box.

Fwiw, my sister travelled to the same hotel for 6 years in a row. 2 weeks holiday each time. Some people just like what they like.

I'm off to India for all of my summer. Alone. I'm prioritising me, not boyfriend. He's cheering me on that I'm going to have the time of my life, not sulking that I'm not saving some of my summer holiday for him.

Here's Wikipedia's fairly restrained overview:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Thailand

I spent three weeks on Kho Samui which, as the article reports, is not especially known for prostitution. I met stacks of young British and Australian men, all fit, healthy characters with good jobs and wives/girlfriends back home, all with the Thai escorts they'd hired for the fortnight. The pressure to buy sex in any bar was so intense that I ended up paying for women to sit at my table and drink at my expense.

It’s still a fairly new relationship but I’d feel kind of sad he didn’t want to go away with me and didn’t prioritise me in any way, especially if you had discussed going away together.
Can you do a long weekend maybe over a bank holiday so it’s only 1 or 2 hol days?
Can you go away with friends or by yourself so you get a break?
I guess the concern is, is this going to be an ongoing pattern and in years to come will he still be doing his own thing and not seeing you as a partnership.

I wouldn't be with a man who went to Thailand.

It's rarely for the Full Moon parties..

I would be extremely wary @Alicew5 I would say it is more common than not for single male travelers to engage in sex tourism in the Asian countries which are best known for it.

Lots of people can be willfully blind to these types of male behaviour, it’s a defence mechanism, don’t be that woman there lies extreme pain in life. A decent healthy skepticism gives your a much easier and happier life.

The only blokes I know who go to Thailand annually are sex tourists (a cousin being one of them) so I wouldn’t be comfortable with my dp going with his mate. How old are you both?

As a once-in-a-lifetime event, or every.single.year? I’ve been to Thailand, it was amazing, but there is 100% something suss about a single male going to the exact same place (when that place has a reputation for certain activities) alone every year…there are only so many times you can do the tourist stuff. Unless you’re there for the “other” tourist stuff…

Which is only available in Thailand and not in any other country.

This.

And a boyfriend of over a year “forgetting” to tell me, every time we discussed going on holiday together, that he already had plans in the works to go with a single male to a well-known sex tourist location with all sorts of freaky and predatory items on the menu—would not align with my values/priorities. I’d dump a man who keeps the company of men who partake in an annual sex trafficking tourist jaunt, and who plans on joining in this year.

Throw this one back.

Thailand's sex trade is globally famous. It's so prolific that the country depends on the income from sex tourism. It contributes an estimated 10% to GDP, upwards of US 6 billion annually.

I've never been anywhere that it's so ubiquitous, nonstop and in your face. I haven't been everywhere but have spent a lot of time in Brazil and West Africa, both well known to sex tourists but nothing like as focused on it - or as organised - as Thailand.

I wouldn't trust men choosing boys-only trips to Prague, either. The trade breeds the reputation, the reputation breeds the trade.

There are lots of reasons to go to Thailand. Some go for the food, some to do a thai boxing fitness retreat, some to stay in an amazing luxury beach bungalow next to a warm blue sea for relatively little money, and some go for sex. I wouldn't assume that is what he is going for, although it is certainly true (and this is the difference between Thailand and a lot of other places) that he will be approached repeatedly and will basically have to decline sex or a "special massage" multiple times a day, whilst in most other places it is something that men would have to actively seek out

I lived in Thailand briefly many years ago. The thing is, even if men visited the country without intending to use prostitutes, it is one of those unusual environments where everything is so out in the open and accepted, that guys who would never consider it at home get drawn into a routine of bars, clubs, paying a girl’s bar fine, a short-time hotel, then moving on to another club to see a different sex show, sometimes several times in the same night. Some even fall in love and return annually to visit the same woman or women.

Honestly, have a read of Private Dancer by Steven Leather. A friend recommended it before I went out there. I thought it was fiction, but then I saw the reality.

I mean, sure, they could just be going for the food and temples I'll bet my left ovary they're not ... Offer to join them mid-trip and the reaction will tell you everything.

Haha exactly and the fact OP has had to not so subtley come back and say “but why is he going on his own?!” has really given away the intention of the thread, which hasn’t worked, so they’ve scampered. Fail.

As multiple PP have said, single men travelling to Thailand is a massive red flag for sex tourism and the fact that the OP's boyfriend has been cagey about this trip is another massive red flag.

Why would he go back on his own every year except for cheap prostitutes?! Throw this one back OP.

@Alicew5 you aren't his priority, end of

First response nails it.

YABU.

He booked before you two were “serious” - whatever that means. You’ve only been going out together for a year, so I’m assuming getting serious took several months after that. He has his own life, before you (and after you).

It’s great that he’s not dropping his old friends for his new girlfriend - the number of women who drop their commitments to their female friends because of a man is legion.

If this is a deal breaker for you, then you’re not fundamentally or long term compatible.

Although the fact that it’s Thailand is a whole other story …

If I went on holiday every year to a beautiful country, and my best friend agreed to go with me next year, I'd be pretty pissed off, if - when next November rolled round - some bloke she met this November said she had to save her holiday and not go!

I think the point is that in the last year he has not mentioned it once, even when she previously brought up the subject of going away together. Either he hadn't previously promised to go away with his friend and this was a new arrangement, or he was stringing OP along by letting her think they could go away together.

this is of course a fair argument that you don't drop plans made with friends just like that.

If he claims he is going for 3 weeks to see all their is to see, ask him what the itinerary is. If he confidently lists all the sights, that's one thing. If he gives some vague 'oh dunno we will see' bs reply, they're not going there for sightseeing.

I can see why it’s upset you and I think I’d be gutted myself in the same scenario. However, I would know I was being completely unreasonable if I asked him to change any of it round for me.

for what it’s worth some of these places really do work out more cost effective to go for longer

i’d also be pissed if my friend made a commitment to come with me on holiday and then bailed because a girlfriend/boyfriend got upset about it. It borders on controlling

Make it clear you were looking forward to a holiday together but as it won’t work this year then get one booked in now for next year

I think it's strange that the holiday didn't just come up in general conversation at any point. People discuss their planned holidays all the time ( in my experience). So I'd find it odd that it had just never been mentioned.
I wouldn't be impressed if someone I was dating cancelled a 3 week holiday with their friend just because I had come into the picture though. Flaky.
I'd also be a bit wary of someone I'd only been seeing for a year thinking they should decide how I spend my limited leave time.

Oh come on, his mate doesn't spend three weeks a year in Thailand wandering around temples and riding elephants.

Sex tourism is absolutely everywhere in Thailand. It's pretty shocking tbh, white men with young Thai women they are paying to be their girlfriends wherever you look.