'AITA for telling a friend my solo trip wasn’t meant to be a group trip — after he booked flights to join me?'
"AITA for telling a friend my solo trip wasn’t meant to be a group trip — after he booked flights to join me?"
I (20F) have been planning a solo trip through Asia for the past six months. It’s a two-month-long trip. I booked my flights and accommodations months ago and built out a detailed itinerary. I always saw this as my trip — something I was doing alone, but open to overlapping with friends here or there.
A friend of mine (30M), who I met in university, mentioned months ago that he was also thinking of traveling. In person, I said that if he was free, maybe we could overlap. Later on, he asked for my itinerary and I shared it — but I didn’t ask for his input or plan it with him. I’d already made most of the arrangements on my own.
He recently told me (less than a week before the trip starts) that he booked flights. He’d been sick for a while, so I wasn’t even sure he was still going. When I clarified that I still saw this as a solo trip — not something we’d be doing together the whole way — he got upset.
He brought up an old message where I said “this is as much your trip as mine” as proof I misled him. But I only said that when he was apologizing for being sick and slow to confirm, and I was trying to be nice. We never actually planned anything together or had a conversation about traveling as a pair. He just adopted my itinerary.
He now says he wouldn’t have booked the same route if he’d known we weren’t doing it “together.” I feel bad he’s disappointed, and I apologized for not being more explicit earlier — but I don’t think I should be blamed for assumptions he never communicated.
He didn’t ask questions, didn’t help plan, and could’ve just picked one country to overlap in instead of mimicking my full two-month trip. So, AITA for not telling him sooner that this wasn’t a shared trip?
Here is what readers had to say in response to the OP’s post:
NTA and since you're 20 and he's 30, as a fellow woman, let me warn you, that man wants you, he hoped to join your trip *and* your hotel room. be careful. my creep sensors are tingling.
NTA. Honey, this guy wants to sleep with you, now has your entire itinerary, and is unhappy with you. Consider switching things around with your trip so he doesn't know exactly where you will be and when you'll be there.
You are going to encounter this again. Do not default to polite. Be 100% direct with what you mean and do not try to spare a man's feelings. I guarantee they aren't going to spare yours.
NTA. The audacity of him to try and join your trip without ever actually asking you and then to blame you when you clarify that this was your trip and you were doing it solo is...I can't even. OP, you might want to rethink your friendship with this guy. I guarantee his intentions were not pure.
NTA this is creepy as heck. If you can, change your itinerary and block him. No 30 year old man in their right mind books a trip with a 20 year old girl. Heck I’m a 30 year old girl and I would feel really weird about booking a trip with a 20 year old girl unless she had very specifically invited me to join her.
Even being friends with someone your age would feel weird to me unless it was a family member or like the little sister of my best friend. A 30 year old man being good enough friends with a 20 year old girl to “overlap” trips is a huge red flag. Please use this as a lesson in safety, do not share your itinerary with anyone except government officials, immediate family, and very close friends.
NTA. And I highly doubt this guy ten years older than you and willing to do such a long trip exactly how you planned with no feedback at all is only considering you as a friend, or only wants to be a friend. He seems to be interpreting this as something much more than you are- which can be dangerous, especially isolated and vulnerable in a foreign place.
That difference in expectations is also be why he's so upset to be told your expectations were different than his- he's not just upset about trip plans. He's upset that you aren't attempting to get closer with him and wanting him there the whole time, because his feelings don't match yours.
Whether or not you want him to join you now, he will know exactly where you'll be for that whole time and will be able to follow you if he chooses. Or if he's mad, could use that info in other nefarious ways.
NTA. He’s 30 and you’re 20? Friend, trust me as someone who trusted all the wrong older guys when I was your age: run and show no remorse or weakness. It’s okay to feel bad, but don’t let him think your boundaries are wavering.
My bet is he did this on purpose: he didn’t communicate more because he knew what you wanted, and he thought he could manipulate you into what he wanted if he pretended to misunderstand. You suggested you could overlap, not go together; he thought that was ambiguous enough that he could feign misunderstanding.
He knew that in a foreign country you’d be far away from any support network who could point out he was being toxic, and planned to lovebomb/manipulate you into a level of intimacy he knows you don’t want.
And if it wasn’t deliberate, then he’s a 30-year-old man who somehow never bothered to learn basic boundaries and communication, which can have the same effects on you as if he were a deliberate predator.