I have a bit of a friendship travel dilemma. My friend, L, and I have been good friends since we were teens. We are both in our early 30s. We’ve been on a number of trips together over the last few years. However, all of them have been really stressful, because we’re not compatible to travel together. She’s a high maintenance person, who is incapable of understanding the word no or any level of nuance. She also isn’t great with boundaries, even if set well in advance of the vacation. We also have very different interests, which leads to conflict. For example: I’ve suggested that we do separate activities on a single morning of our week-long trip (i.e. L goes on a group hike while I go to a museum - both activities that only one of us wants to do). This is so that we can both make sure that we do everything that we want to do without putting the other person out. She gets really upset and angry when I do this and it usually ruins the trip a bit.
There’s a lot of detail I could go into here, but to sum it up: I just don’t think we’re compatible to travel together, especially if it’s just the two of us on the trip.
Here’s the issue: I don’t think she thinks that it’s bad enough that we shouldn’t travel together. I think part of the reason why is because most of her friends are married, so there aren’t many people besides me that she can travel with. She also won’t go by herself or join a tour group. That said, I think I might go nuts if I have to go on another trip with her. It could honestly be friendship ending, because of what’s happened over the last few trips.
I want to take a vacation without her (potentially solo), but I’m not sure how to do it without her inviting herself. She definitely will try to - I mentioned in passing to her that I didn’t have any big vacation plans this year, except for maybe taking a weekend trip to a nearby city. Ever since then, she has been suggesting travel plans there for us about once a month. I know it’s my bad for even saying that it was on my radar to go there, but it definitely confirms that we are not on the same page with this. I think that keeping the plans from her until it’s too late for her to go may backfire, since it’s likely that she will be upset. How should I handle this?