AITAH for wanting my fiancé to prioritize my family’s vacation over her best friends trip?

A Reddit user reflects on a conflict with his fiancé, Sally, regarding family priorities amidst personal challenges. With his sister recently diagnosed with MS, the user’s family has adopted a “make every moment count” mentality and is planning a vacation during spring break.

However, Sally’s best friend is also organizing a girls’ trip that may overlap with the family vacation. The user feels frustrated that Sally might prioritize her friends over family, particularly given the serious health situation.

Sally accuses him of being manipulative for pressuring her to choose their family’s trip over her friend’s plans. The user is now questioning whether his reaction was justified. Read the original story below for further details.

‘ AITAH For wanting my fiancé to prioritize my family’s vacation over her best friends trip?’

My fiancé (let’s call her Sally) and I are getting married next month. Since we’ve been together, we’ve had fights about how to prioritize family time. We live on the same coast as her family and my family lives on the opposite coast, so through no fault of hers, we see her family significantly more.

My sister recently was diagnosed with MS. Sucks. So far, she has light symptoms but it’s a disease that can progress quickly (or can not). My family has adopted a very “let’s make every moment count” mentality, because we don’t know how many years we have with my sister in good health.

My brother reached out to me to say they are planning a trip on the week that both his kids and my sisters kids have spring break. This would be a week long trip. It has a fixed date because of the kids schedule. When I told Sally, she mentioned that her best friend had reached out to start planning a girls trip. Sally lives a several hour drive from that group of girls and almost always misses this girls trip.

Her friend let her know that she’s reaching out early to make sure that Sally can go. She told me she “just wants to get ahead of this” and doesn’t want to let her friend down. They don’t know when it would be, but it may be the same date as my family’s trip. No one in that group (including us) have kids, so we have much more flexibility.

I’ll be honest that I got frustrated very quickly and was not very comforting or understanding. I tried to resist bringing up my sister having MS, but eventually I did and said that’s why we’re pushing so hard to take advantage of these years. Sally responded that we “don’t know that things will be bad and we need to stay positive.” That rubbed me the wrong way because I feel like she’s missing how awful we would feel if the MS did progress quickly.

Sally told me that I’m being m**ipulative and controlling for pressuring her to plan her friends trip around my family’s trip. I believe it’s fair to expect your spouse to show up for things like that and to prioritize family (especially family you don’t see) over friends. Particularly with the illness situation.

Here’s where I could be the a**hole: I definitely reacted poorly when she treated the trips as two equally important things. I absolutely pressured her to agree to go on the family trip. I also brought up previous fights (like about beginning to split Christmases) to point out that she’s been resistant to sacrificing time with her people to get an equal amount of time with my people.

Also: I’m sure some folks are wondering why I don’t go alone. My family adores Sally and want her to be part of the family. I want her to be part of my family just like I want to be part of her family. It’s not realistic that we do every single thing together, but I think we should both make a significant effort to..

**Additional Context:**
1. Sally adores my family as well. She has always told me how much they mean to her, and has even floated the idea of potentially moving to my home state and how we would be able to see my parents and my sister more.

We haven’t made any decisions and leaving her home state would be very difficult for her. It’s impossible to summarize everything she’s done to show she cares about my family over the last 7 years, but I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that she does.

2. She’s never gone on this trip she’s invited to because she is not close with the majority of the people on the trip. Her best friend reached out to her early because she really wants Sally to become closer friends with this group.

3. The scenario that lead to us knowing about my sister’s diagnosis was crappy. We found out by my mom accidentally telling me that my sister was getting tests done. We were sworn to secrecy because my sister was adamant that she didn’t want to distract us from the wedding until she had the final diagnosis. It was an honest mistake from my mom, but it’s been an emotionally charged situation for both Sally and me.We’re both grieving.

4. For a variety of reasons, we have been completely o**rwhelmed by this wedding. There’s been a lot of drama coming from outside sources and it’s been exhausting to the point where we wish we had just eloped. No, it’s not my family.

5. Sally has unlimited PTO and we have enough funds to do both trips.

6. I don’t know everything about MS. My understanding is that it’s absolutely possible it has a minimal impact on my sister for the next few decades, but it could also be a debilitating situation.

7. My family were all together (without me) in Italy two weekends ago. We will all be together over the wedding in a few weeks. This trip will not be a loaded, heavy, “saying goodbye” trip at all. It’s just something we want to prioritize because the future is uncertain..

**Resolution:**
We had a great conversation about it this morning. We acknowledged that we’re both o**rwhelmed with this diagnosis and we’re both o**rwhelmed with wedding planning, to the point where it’s really difficult to wrap our heads around what comes next. We came into that conversation in an unhealthy headspace and both said things that weren’t ideal.

She wants to go on the trip. She has been feeling protective about committing to things in the next year because of how underwater she is with the wedding, but on reflection, realized how important this is to her.

Sally also let me know that she’s still adjusting to having family that has kids and how inflexible their schedules are. Her siblings don’t have kids, so their vacations are a lot more flexible.

We’re going to sit down when we’re less o**rwhelmed and talk about what our goals for how often we see each side of the family are, how we can make that happen, and how we’ll handle situations like that in the future..

Lets dive into the reactions from Reddit:

AgonistPhD −  Hard to say. It doesn’t seem like she wants to go on this family trip. Is a week-long trip with her parents-in-law, your siblings and spouses, and their kids, maybe a bit much for her? Because I have to level with you, that kind of trip sounds like something I’d dread.

I think yinz need to have a fully open talk, where it’s okay for her to be honest about what size a dose of your family is too large for her. Because, there might be more to it than who she prioritizes, no matter how nice your family is and how much they like her.

Sue_in_Victoria −  NAH but you need to work on understanding that your fiancée is still a separate human being with her own relationships with people. Even if she is close with your family, there are still others in her life who are equally important, and friends can be like that. Sometimes she will have different priorities in her life and that’s okay. If you try to hold on too tightly to someone, you’ll make them want to get away.

MustangTheLionheart −  INFO: Did you ask her to text her friend group and let them know about the schedule conflict to see if they were all ok crossing that week off the possible dates? She should at least be willing to let her friends know those dates could mean dealbreaker for her due to your families vacation.

Bookworm84OG −  You’re not married yet. And sounds like her friend reached out before you mentioned it. You also mention that your gf misses these trips with her friends most of the time so you are being a bit of a AH. Maybe your priority should be spending time with your sis. Also living close to relatives and doing the occasional get together or dinner is not the same as being trapped with your in-laws on a holiday.

[Reddit User] −  NAH. You think it’s important to do as many trips and holidays with your spouse as possible. You think it’s important that your spouse spend an *equal* amount of time with your people as her people. These are totally fine *preferences.* But she doesn’t share those feelings and goals! And you can’t make her!. You need to respect who she is.

If you NEED to be with someone who plans to see her in-laws as much as her own friends or flesh and blood, this woman is not it! Let her be so you can find someone who has the values you need your partner to have. STOP trying to make her be a different person.

tawny-she-wolf −  YTA you can go see your family and she can go on a friend trip that she often missed out on. You don’t have to do everything together and frankly I’d pick a relaxing friend trip over a weeklong torture-fest with a bunch of kids around.

Scary-Initial-5175 −  My two best friends both have MS and they have had it for over 20 years, both are well taken care of and besides getting tired or having some painful days, both lead very normal lives. And you don’t know when the girls weekend is so I don’t understand why you are having a meltdown! The girl trip might not even happen so… Besides are you like 18 or something?

Adults don’t spend all their holidays with their parents like kids do unless they live fairly close. Plus did you ask her to participate in planning the trip? Or did you just spring it on her? My in-laws used to spring family trips on us, which meant I had to schedule my work around them at times.

I was a first assistant director on film sets and they never understood how involved my work was. The marriage did not last long because of my mate’s inability to say no to my mother in law and their inability to recognize I had a life of my own before them.

CissiE_33 −  INFO: Can Sally do both trips based on vacation time, cost and that you also use both time and money for your own wedding? Or are you requesting that she can’t travel with her friends who you said she already very rarely can meet?

Just_River_7502 −  Feels like the issue is more like you feel Sally should want to spend time with your family and she doesn’t want to. Because honestly you sound unreasonable.

I understand all the whys of you wanting it this time but she doesn’t really want to go and you want her to sacrifice something meaningful for her and think that’s reasonable.

I’m not sure that it is even if it would be nice if she planned the girls trip around this family one. Idk, I feel like this is mostly NAH but stop pressuring her. Talk about the actual issue of how time is split with each others friends and family.

Adept_Tension_7326 −  YTA. You aren’t even married yet but you are already showing Sally how it’s going to be: your way or the Highway. It is tough when families live on opposite coasts but you live where you live and that shouldn’t mean you get to b**ly your fiancé into giving up her vacation time to suit your preferences.

Your sister has been dealt a blow with her diagnosis but even if it is rapid onset she won’t be succumbing anytime soon. You have already signalled regular flights to your family as your future plan by saying your family doesn’t know how many years she has and wants to prioritise time together.

Sally might reasonably interpret this as meaning this could be her last chance to vaycay with her friends as your family demands will take over. I don’t think you are giving her enough credit. It’s not all about you. It’s not all about your family.