When One Partner Wants to Travel and the Other Doesn't

By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist

It often starts as something small. One of you mentions a trip, a long weekend somewhere new, a friend's wedding abroad, the kind of holiday you used to take without a second thought, and the other goes quiet, or finds a reason it isn't quite the right time. Said once, it barely registers. Said for the third or fourth summer in a row, it starts to feel like something else entirely: a referendum on how much you want the same things, or even how much you want each other. If you've found yourselves stuck in this particular tug of war, holiday brochures or flight searches becoming a quiet flashpoint rather than something to look forward to together, you're dealing with something more common than it probably feels. What's underneath it is rarely the trip itself.

Why This Disagreement Cuts Deeper Than It Looks

On the surface, a mismatch over travel looks like a simple difference in preference, the kind any two people might have about food, or how to spend a Saturday. But travel carries more weight than most leisure choices, because it tends to be expensive, time-bound, and visible to friends and family in a way that a quiet weekend at home isn't. There's also an emotional story attached to it for a lot of people: travel as proof of adventure, of a relationship that's still alive and curious, of two people choosing each other over the pull of routine. When one partner wants that and the other doesn't, it's easy for the wanting partner to hear the reluctance as a verdict on the relationship itself, and just as easy for the reluctant partner to feel quietly judged for not measuring up to some idea of what a good partner should want.

Neither read is necessarily accurate, but both feelings are real, and they tend to compound each other. The more one partner pushes, the more pressured the other can feel to perform an enthusiasm they don't have, and the more the reluctant partner withdraws, the more rejected the other can feel. By the time this has repeated over two or three summers, the actual question, do we want to go away together, has often been buried under a much heavier one: does this relationship still work.

It's Rarely Really About the Travel

In therapy, when a couple brings a recurring disagreement like this one, the most useful question usually isn't ‘who's right about holidays’. It's ‘what does each of you think travel actually represents, and what does it cost you to do it or to avoid it’. Reluctance to travel can come from a long list of places that have nothing to do with disliking holidays: financial anxiety that's hard to admit to, especially if one partner earns more or feels responsible for managing money; the genuine exhaustion of someone who has very little capacity left after work and caregiving; sensory or social overwhelm that makes airports, unfamiliar food, or constant togetherness feel like hard work rather than rest; or, sometimes, a quieter signal that something in the relationship itself doesn't feel solid enough right now to invest a week of uninterrupted closeness into.

Equally, the partner who keeps pushing for travel isn't always chasing escapism or running from the relationship, as it can sometimes get framed. Often they're trying to protect something they're afraid is slipping, a sense of being a team that does things together, of novelty and shared memory-making, of the relationship having a life outside chores and routine. Until both of these underlying stories are actually spoken aloud, the conversation tends to circle the same ground every time: one person proposing, the other declining, both feeling slightly more alone in the relationship than they did before.

What the Research Actually Suggests Matters

There's a reasonably consistent finding in the leisure and relationships research that's worth knowing here, because it cuts against the instinct to treat this as a frequency problem, a matter of agreeing on how many trips a year is fair. Couples researchers have repeatedly found that it isn't the amount of shared leisure time that predicts how satisfied couples feel in their relationship, it's how satisfied they are with the quality of that time (Johnson, Zabriskie, & Hill, 2006). A couple who travel rarely but feel genuinely connected during the trips they do take tend to fare better than a couple who travel often but spend the time disengaged, distracted, or quietly resentful.

A more recent study looking specifically at couples and vacations found something similar and arguably more useful for this exact disagreement: the number of vacations a couple took over the course of a year didn't predict how satisfied they felt with their relationship afterwards. What did predict it was the degree to which partners were genuinely engaged with each other during the trips they took, having fun together, talking openly, trying new things side by side, rather than simply being in the same location (Shahvali et al., 2023). In other words, the goal probably isn't to win the argument about whether to go away three times a year or zero times a year. It's to work out what would make the time you do spend together, wherever it happens, actually feel shared.

That reframing tends to take some of the heat out of the disagreement, because it stops being a contest over a number and starts being a conversation about what each of you needs in order to feel genuinely present with the other, on a beach or at home on a Tuesday evening.

If this is a conversation you've tried to have a few times and keep ending up back at the same impasse, having it with some structure and a bit of distance can make a real difference. I offer a free 30-minute introductory consultation for couples, held by video call, as a starting point. Book a free consultation.

When the Travel Question Sits Alongside Other Differences

Sometimes a travel mismatch isn't really a separate issue at all, it's one visible expression of a wider difference in how the two of you handle leisure, risk, money, or rest, that just happens to surface most clearly when a holiday comes up. If one of you is naturally more spontaneous and the other more cautious or routine-bound, travel will tend to be the place that tension shows up most sharply, because it asks both qualities to be in the room at once: planning and spontaneity, spending and saving, structure and surrender.

This is worth naming honestly, because it changes what kind of conversation is actually needed. If the deeper difference is temperamental, the aim usually isn't to convert one partner into the other's way of approaching things, it's to find a version of travel, or a version of staying home, that both of you can genuinely opt into, rather than one person constantly conceding and the other constantly compromising on what they'd actually enjoy.

This pattern can show up just as easily once you're already away, two people in the same destination experiencing quite different holidays. If that's been your experience too, Sex on Holiday: Why It Doesn't Live Up to Expectations looks at a related version of this, the gap between what people expect from a holiday and what they actually get from it.

Couples that travel together a lot are not always more content

LGBTQ+ and Non-Monogamous Relationships: Some Additional Layers

For some couples, the question of whether and how to travel together carries extra weight that's worth naming directly rather than assuming it's the same conversation everyone else is having. For LGBTQ+ couples, particularly where one or both partners aren't fully out, or where a destination's legal protections and general safety for same-sex couples are genuinely uncertain, reluctance to travel can be about safety and comfort rather than disinterest in the relationship or in travel itself. That's a different conversation to have, and a different kind of compromise to look for, than one about preference alone.

For couples in consensually non-monogamous relationships, travel can raise its own particular questions: whether a trip is for the two of you specifically or includes other partners, how time away affects agreements and routines with people outside this relationship, and how much a holiday is expected to function as protected, exclusive time. None of this makes the underlying dynamic, what travel represents, what it costs each person, fundamentally different. It does mean the practical conversation often needs a bit more explicit groundwork before it gets to logistics.

How Couples Therapy Can Help With This

1. It slows the conversation down enough to find what's actually being said. Most couples have had a version of this argument many times, fast, defensive, and circular. Therapy creates room to say the quieter thing underneath, ‘I'm afraid we're drifting’ or ‘I'm exhausted and ashamed to admit it’, without it immediately triggering the other person's defences.

2. It separates the practical question from the emotional one. Where to go, how much to spend, and how often are genuinely practical questions with workable answers. Whether we still want the same things from each other is an emotional one. Conflating the two tends to make the practical question impossible to settle, because it's being asked to resolve something it was never actually about.

3. It helps build a version of shared time that works for both of you. Sometimes that's travel. Sometimes it's something closer to home that still delivers the connection travel was meant to provide. The point isn't to declare a winner in the original disagreement, it's to find what actually meets the need on both sides.

A Disagreement Worth Taking Seriously, Not Personally

If this has become a recurring sore point between you, it's worth treating it as exactly that, a pattern worth understanding, rather than a character flaw in either of you. Wanting to travel isn't more virtuous than wanting to stay home, and needing rest isn't a rejection of your partner. The disagreement is doing some communicating of its own, and it usually has more to say than either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the next holiday.

I do joint consultations rather than individual intake calls, because this is relationship therapy, and the first steps are shared steps for both of you. The free 30-minute introductory consultation is held by video call, with no obligation beyond that single conversation.

About the Author

Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist, author, and the founder of Rise and Grow Therapy, a private practice offering couples and relationship therapy across Kensington, Pimlico, and Angel, Islington in London, as well as online consultations. His approach draws first on Imago Relationship Therapy, alongside integrative relational, attachment-based, Gottman, and systemic approaches. Mark works with couples of all kinds, including LGBTQ+ couples and those in non-traditional relationship structures such as consensual non-monogamy, as well as with individuals working through relational issues.

References

Johnson, H. A., Zabriskie, R. B., & Hill, B. (2006). The contribution of couple leisure involvement, leisure time, and leisure satisfaction to marital satisfaction. Marriage & Family Review, 40(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1300/J002v40n01_05

Shahvali, M., Kerstetter, D. L., Tews, M. J., Mitas, O., & Behrad Far, R. (2023). Couple vacations: Linking joint vacation experiences of romantic couples to satisfaction with relationship life. Leisure Sciences, 47(5), 1002–1021. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2023.2174216