Do You and Your Mate Have Different Vacation Styles?

I’m a fairly lazy person. The only way you can tell I’m on vacation is that I’m being lazy in a place other than my house. The kids and I travel well together: we sleep late, order a lot of room service, lay around by the pool, and eventually – much later in the day – get moving and go do things. We go to sleep late too, but it doesn’t matter because then we’re right back to sleeping late again the next morning.

Because my husband can’t usually take as much time away from home as I can – and because he usually craves a few days without us – the kids and I often start vacations without him, and he joins us. This sometimes causes a problem, because the kids and I have spent several days on our own, doing our thing, making deals and compromises and getting along well, and basically enabling each other.

Then another person gets added, and a few different wrenches are thrown into the works. For one thing, my husband hates hanging around hotels rooms, whereas I love it. No ringing phones, nothing to clean, nothing to do. For the first couple of hours after we wake up I usually spend some time on my laptop while the kids play on the iPad or watch TV. But my husband can’t stand this. He’s not an early riser on vacation, but once everyone’s awake he wants us all ready and out of the room as quickly as possible. He doesn’t understand that to me, lying around the hotel is half the vacation.

Room service is another thing we differ on. For him, it’s got two strikes against it: the food quality is poor compared to eating in a restaurant while still being more expensive, and it requires more time in the room. But I love “the breakfast man” as my kids call room service waiters. I can’t eat in my robe in the restaurant. I can’t watch TV while I eat in the restaurant. And I can’t bring my own can of Diet Dr. Pepper in to the restaurant. I love room service.

I don’t have a need to do a lot of things on vacation either. I mean, of course it depends on where we are. If we’re at Disney World, I want to go out and see Disney World. But if we’re at the beach, or visiting family, less is more. Later is better. Stop rushing me. Stop trying to get me to “do” things.

We drive each other crazy on vacation, and sometimes I wonder if we shouldn’t just take separate vacations with the kids – he can take them on more active trips, I can take them on lazy, relaxing ones.

How do you and your partner navigate different vacation tendencies?