Husband spends holiday with people we don’t know

[Rosie1978]

Just looking some advice as to what I should do in this situation. Heading away tomorrow for a hotel break with my 3 kids aged 6, 9 & 13. Really looking forward to it as iv had a stressful couple of months.

However, when we go away, in the evenings we normally have an evening meal & just hang around the hotel lobby/bar etc. Il maybe consume a couple of alcoholic drinks, im
not a big drinker. My husband however will have quite a few & end up merry at the least! Thing is he always finds some random people to spend the evening with, always calling me over, expecting me to spend my evening with these random people whom we will never see again/mean nothing to us. I would rather just chill than make small talk with people I don’t know!

How should I handle this? Am right to not want to hang out with random people?

@SamW98 "Being different to you doesn’t have to have an anterior motive"

Of course not. We all enjoy different things. Personally, I like a holiday that allows me alone time, family time and social time. But using a negative words about people who are different to you is not a good look. And using negative language about sociable people is such a Mumsnet trope.

No the op is stuck in the corner with the kids whilst he flits around the room like a social butterfly spending time with everyone else but his family.

You've completely made that up susiedaisy

OP hasn't said that at all.

My idea of hell. I'm admittedly incredibly antisocial on holiday. I'd be leaving him to it

My dad was like this. When we took him to Greece for a holiday, he liked to sit at the table for a bit after breakfast to read the paper while we took the kids to the pool.

One afternoon we caught up with him on his way to the shops. Turns out he’d been chatting with the owners daughter who was teaching him a few Greek words. He had a whole shopping list all written phonetically in Greek so he could try out his new skill. Who would have guessed, he was 81.

miss him dearly

Absolutely! And so much pearl clutching at the children in a bar!!! I’m presuming it’s an appropriate holiday family environment and they’re not shoved in the corner with a coke and a packet of Smokey bacon between them passively smoking like it’s 1979!

But they are randoms. A bunch of them.

It’s not, omg, children in a bar. Whatever shall we do?!?

its omg, bars are boring!!’

Bars are so fracking boring even if you are an adult who gets to drink. Why on earth would make children spend their holiday in a bar? Why would you subject yourself to spending significant time in a bar?

My DH was like this, everywhere he went he would make friends, often with people like himself who were very over familiar. He would consider someone he'd spoken to for 2 minutes as a 'good friend' and he didn't feel it was strange for these people to invite themselves to stay in our house with very little notice. He met someone in A&E about 10 years ago, they both had suspected heart attacks but bonded through the screens and they still meet up for coffee. The final straw for me was being on holiday in Morocco and he became the informal tour guide for a group of backpackers from Austria. He thought I was very antisocial!

I consider myself quite introverted and I frequently need my own space. But even I enjoy meeting new people when I'm on holiday. Some of my closest friends are people we met on repeat holidays to a particular campsite, decades ago, where our kids made friends, and so, in the end, did we!

I'm surprised at the direction this thread has taken, to be honest.

Re. Children in a bar. Have people never been "abroad"? Try it-it's nice.

Can you do some and some? So he and you get a few nights with just you when he doesn't go over, and on a few nights you are more sociable with others? Have you spoken about this and how it makes you feel? You can put it that you want to spend more time with him, rather than saying you don't like how he goes off with others.

My BF’s parents are like this, they take a lot of holidays and make friends wherever they go. One holiday they even made really good friends with Bonnie Tyler 😄

Some people clearly do.

DH and I went on a package holiday to a small hotel in Sorrento pre DC. It was half board but we wanted to try restaurants so only ate in on the first night (shared tables).

Towards the end of the week we had a drink in the bar before going out and were approached by numerous couples wanting to know where we'd been. They had clearly made friends and were off to a party round the pool together. We'd been labelled as snooty.

Just suggest a holiday where this isn’t possible. Hotels and resorts are great for hanging out with other people, but you could get a cottage somewhere next time?

Introvert Vs extrovert - he's not wrong to want to do this, your not wrong to want not do it. It's just different ways people can be wired.
I think it would be reasonable to ask your DH if you can book a couple of evenings to just be the two of you, effectively a date night. Then let him do his thing the other evenings, maybe you join him a couple of evenings if that's important to him but the rest you get to retire for a movie/book/relaxation of choice

I remember us losing my 85 year old great uncle on a very hot day on a Greek beach somewhere on an extended family holiday once. As 3 minutes turned into 30, most us began to panic and ask around searching for him. I say most... my great aunt only cared about it at all because we were all getting wound up about it and annoying her. "Just leave it, he'll be sitting on some other poor bugger's beach towel chatting them up I expect"... He was! 😆

Some people are just like that. I'm not, but I think I admire the skill..!