Holiday Friends

[freetospeakup]

Do you enjoy talking to people and making friends on holiday? I absolutely hate it but DH goes out of his way to talk to people round the pool. I feel you then can get stuck with them. I like to switch off on holiday and not have to make small talk with strangers. He thinks I'm unsociable.

No way. I don’t want to talk to people on holiday. I like to switch off. I’m polite if I need to talk to people about an inflatable that’s blown away or something 😂

I’m fairly happy to talk to people but we find small groups tricky. The last one had a few pleasant people but the majority didn’t talk to us. We were not like them. DH and me now agree about who we speak to! This is because dh made a terrible mistake getting friendly with a gun toting Trump voting American once. He thought they were having a joke but it continued for 2 weeks. I could not stand the man or his wife. The Americans on the ship avoided him! Small ship cruising is usually much more relaxed and often DH and me are left alone. Clearly too boring!

I think I'll show DH this thread and make some ground rules before we go. I am also an introvert and just want to unwind on holiday. We are going with adult DD this year so I'll tell him if he makes friends he can stay with them while me and DD go elsewhere.😁

Whenever we go on holiday the only people we talk to are staff at the hotel / restaurant etc and even then it's the bare minimum. We are always polite, but I find making small talk with strangers really difficult.

On our honeymoon an American couple started chatting to us at the bar and joined us for drinks. She was nice enough, but he was very brash. Asked about my schooling - 'Any jews there?' which I thought was a really weird thing to ask. Then went on to tell me about his school - 'You'd have loved it! No blacks.' I almost choked. My DH still reminds me about it. Since then we go out of our way to avoid people.

That’s also been my experience - it’s often descended rapidly to racism and bigotry. You can only speculate that these cnutz are swerved in their own real lives so are desperate to target and download on unsuspecting strangers on holiday.

Only really just passing. If I kept seeing the same people then maybe brief polite chats.
But I wouldn't want to get lumped with them for the whole holiday. Even backpacking in Asia I was with friends so didn't really feel the need to make new ones.

I'd also be concerned about doing something silly while drunk and having to face people who knew me by name and god knows what else I might have told them about me the next morning. I'd rather remain a bit more anonymous!

The thing is you're very unlikely to have much in common with someone character wise just because you both happen to have chosen to go to a popular holiday resort at the same time.

No way. I am there to relax and switch off and focus on my family. I’m not interested in talking to people I will never see again. I’m not rude but I would cut it short. I think it’s intrusive. Last year in Spain there was a British bloke who kept talking to everyone , especially the women. He was with his partner who mainly got ignored whilst he took centre stage and enjoyed the attention of others. He wasn’t in the least bit interesting just another poolside bore. His DP did not look happy. I thought he was arrogant and disrespectful to her. I hope she dumped him when they got home.

Yes this exactly sums it up.

Mostly total bores, with very poor and intrusive social skills who talk at you. Their poor partners having to watch everyone cringing and swerving. Excruciating.

I’m happy to exchange pleasantries but any more is too much. ExH used to drive me mad, would talk to everyone ALL the time. He would tell people where to go / what to do. For me holiday is about exploring that for myself.

I’ve started to get into holiday friends since my DH and I have been holidaying without our adult DC. I made an amazing friend from America four years ago and I’ve gone on holiday with her once a year since se met, once with my DH and three times just us ladies. We WhatsApp about every four to six weeks.

Last year we got friendly with a lovely couple in the hotel room next to us. We all met up for after dinner drinks every other day and that was perfect.