TL;DR: Traveling long distance with girlfriend is terrible. Every time we go somewhere it is like pulling teeth for me.

About 6 months ago we flew to Hawaii with the free travel benefits my work provides. 10 days in Oahu. My brother lives there and we had a place to stay the entire time for free as opposed to spending thousands of dollars on a hotel. He would be at work and we wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him for most of the trip. What more could anyone ask for??

With tons of things the island has to offer, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

I researched up prices of grocery store fruits and vegetables and dates/times of pop-up food markets. I researched hiking trails with waterfalls and amazing views at the top of volcanos/mountains which included average hiking times and I studied maps to a general idea of what I was getting into. I looked up spots for surfing and paddle boarding (I am an avid surfer at home). I looked up laws about camping and bonfires so that we could do some cool stuff like many people dream of doing.

All of this preparation felt normal to me and I wanted to really make this a magical and adventurous time for the both of us. Months leading up to the first day of travel I repeatedly asked her what she wanted to do in Hawaii and every time she just said she didn’t know. She only vaguely looked up Hawaii while watching Sharktank and Supernatural on Hulu/Netflix. Yet, she was still very excited to go on vacation and expressed this multiple times. I encouraged her to google Hawaii and she put forth zero effort.

When we get to Hawaii we go to the grocery store to get food and I get zero feedback as to what she wants to eat. As we pass by the fruit and vegetables at food markets early in the morning, I point out how cheap they are and that they all look so delicious and amazing... She doesn’t want any of that. We ended up spending hours walking around looking for gluten-free restaurants that cater to people with celiacs (gluten makes her violently ill for like 6+ straight hours and body aches for 24 hours). Walking around, looking for gluten-free food ends up taking up about 60% of every single day. This all could have been avoided if she had at least participated a little in pointing out what foods she wanted so that we could prepare healthy meals together for a fraction of the price.

We went to go hiking, but she didn’t bring any hiking shoes. My brother told us to bring good hiking shoes prior to our trip because there are sharp jagged rocks everywhere and everything is muddy and slippery. It’s literally a jungle out there. She has these shitty Payless looking shoes with zero grip on the bottom, which I was willing to accept as a poor choice of hiking shoes and then says, “they give me blisters, so I’ll just go hiking in these flip flops.”

Hell no! I turn the car around at the parking lot of the trail start and we drive to the city to look for shoes. Finish Line and Footlocker has shoes and she saw they were like $80 she refused to even let ME buy them because they were too expensive. She ended up getting some cheap foam looking running shoes in Walmart for $20. We went hiking, saw a waterfall, and she finally agreed that it was a good thing she didn’t go in just flip flops.

We drove around looking at views around the island like Diamond Head and the North Shore, but always ended back up at Waikiki in the shopping district because that was where she believed there would be gluten-free food she could eat. One night a restaurant claiming to be gluten-free had put gluten in her food mistakenly and she spent the rest of the night vomiting/pooping into the toilet at my brother’s home.

5 hours before the end of our 10 days in paradise, she said she wished we had done more and that she didn’t get to do anything she wanted to do. Not once during the trip did she express even an inkling of knowledge about things to do in Hawaii. She wished we had gone swimming with turtles, seen dolphins, seen more sunsets, camped on the beach... WTF?!?

I was livid at this point. I had led this entire vacation from start to finish. She didn’t try to take the lead or speak up about what she wanted to do or see until we were packing to leave. I withheld all signs of frustration because an argument before getting on planes for 10.5 hours is obviously not a good idea.

She wants to go to New Zealand, Iceland, and Greece... I can’t see myself every traveling outside of the US with her because finding gluten free food wont be easy and her refusal to assist in cooking in Hawaii (I cook well) makes for preparing our own meals a pipe dream.

She wants to go on a cruise and says, “Everything is taken care of and you don’t have to worry about anything.”

Being stuck on a cruise ship sounds like a nightmare to me. I can’t do that. I want to talk to the locals and experience new cultures. I don’t want to be stuck on a boat with pre-planned attractions. She also gets easily motion sick which boggles my mind as to why a cruise is something she actually wants to do.

Okay so... Fast forward 6 months later. That experience 6 months ago is still burned into my brain. I’ve slowly started to resent our relationship more and more as the months go by. We are totally different people and I understand that I need to accept her for who she is, but traveling is a huge part of my life. My career has reached a point where i can travel somewhere exotic every month for a week at a time and on one hand i want to bring her with me to see the world, but at the same time I don’t want her anywhere near me. Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Korea, and a large portion of China... I want to go to these places, but if I bring her I know 100% that I’m going to have a bad time.

I’ve tried to make the best of the relationship and enjoy life with her for the past 6 months, but I’m just sad 24/7 and I see myself becoming bitter around her. Obviously I love her and I’ve spent over 5 years of wonderful moments with her, but I’m just not enjoying life anymore. I thought maybe if I just try my hardest to commit to the relationship and set our differences aside that my feelings were just temporary and a common issue that can be worked out, but I feel like I am at the end of my rope.

2 of my coworkers and I have made plans to spend 3 weeks traveling through Asia next month. They are of the same mindset as myself and have the same exact interests as me. I think in a week I’m going to have to end our relationship. When I picture in my head the idea of sharing new experiences with someone I love and traveling the world, I don’t see it being with her. It pains me to think like this, but I don’t know what else I can do.