Man cancels vacation to home country with wife after she keeps saying she's 'scared.'

Showing your partner where you grew up can be a deeply bonding and wonderful experience.

There are elements of who you are you can't simply explain in words, the other person has to see and feel it firsthand, and your place of origin is one of those.

However, class and cultural differences can make this experience more complicated. One person's normal might be deeply disorienting to a partner, and vice versa.

In a popular post on the AITA subreddit, a man asked if he's wrong for canceling a trip home with his wife after she complained about being scared.

He wrote:

AITA for canceling my wife's vacation?

I am from a developing country that was pretty dangerous when I was a kid but has come a long way in the last 20 years. My wife has watched too many movies and TV shows that show my home country in the worst possible light.

My family that still lives there all tend to be in professional fields and work in medical, legal, educational, or agricultural industries. For example, one of my cousins owns several companies that make products from sugarcane waste.

He makes more money than I do. My grandmother and mom regularly travel back to visit family. It is safe enough for a middle-aged and an elderly woman to to travel around in. I go back all the time too.

I like seeing family but also everything there is so cheap it is very cost effective for me to take long vacations there. After more than five years of dating and ten years of marriage, my wife has finally agreed to visit with me.

The plan was to go for a couple of weeks this summer. One week in my home town visiting my family. And one week in a resort city that dozens of cruise ships stop at every day. Basically it would be safer than San Francisco.

But all she has been doing since she agreed is telling everyone how scared she is to go and how she is only going because I wore her down. I have been putting up with it for over a month.

Last weekend we had her uncle and his family from out of town over for dinner and her folks joined us. She started going on about how scared she is. Her aunt mentioned that they had visited the resort city on one of their cruises.

She had some pictures on her phone and was showing them off. My wife still wouldn't drop how dangerous it is there and how scared she is. Yesterday I called my family and apologized for not being able to see them this year.

I also cancelled our reservation at the five-star hotel we were going to stay at. Instead, I got us a very nice hotel in New York and I got some tickets for two shows on Broadway.

Because of the price difference between the two vacations, we're only going for a week. I told her about it and now she is pissed at me for canceling the hotel and just taking her to New York.

She has been telling all the people at the school where she works how she is so brave for going to a third world country. How she was basically going to be staying in a hut. We were going to be staying with my uncle.

He has servants. The hotel was nicer than any place we have stayed since our honeymoon. I honestly thought I was doing the right thing. All she has done is complain and tell everyone how scared she is. I am scared of heights.

If she had gotten me skydiving lessons as a gift after I agreed to try it I would not be surprised if she canceled them if all I did was complain to anyone who would listen.

She told me every day for the last two months she didn't want to go. Should I have called her a liar? I just decided that she meant what she was telling me and everyone else. That she really did not want to go.

People weighed in with their thoughts on the scenario.

SecretJealous4342 wrote:

NTA. From the way you describe it, it sounds like one of the cities you were going to was Cartagena, Colombia. I'm from Colombia and visit there all the time. That city is beautiful and has an amazing tourist reputation.

Most of the big cities are safe as long as you avoid certain areas. The exact same as most cities in America. There are places in Baltimore, New Orleans, and Oakland that I won't go near.

It's too bad she busted your balls so much you canceled your trip. Some of the hotels in the old city in Cartagena are amazing. Try again though. It is a beautiful country and deserves to shed its reputation. She will love it.

manicdessert wrote:

NTA.

Your wife is racist plain and simple.

eleanor-rigby- wrote:

NTA but your wife genuinely sounds racist and xenophobic. Not sure why you married someone like that, but that’s your business.

Left-Car6520 wrote:

Sorry to say ESH, mostly her but also you a bit. Not for being mad at her ridiculous carry-on, which is insulting and ignorant and all that. But for not speaking to her first and canceling the trip before telling her.

I get why you did it. But it hasn't achieved anything except venting your (understandable) anger. Although why you've spent 15 years with someone who is so disrespectful about where you're from, and your family, I do not know.

Moon-spirited wrote:

NTA, but your wife is.You know why your wife is upset you cancelled? Because she wasn’t actually scared to go to your home country (or if she was, she wasn’t nearly as scared as she claimed she was).

She dramatized the situation in your country and straight up lied to people about your family’s living conditions (which I think is pretty disrespectful to your family) to make herself seem “brave” to go on this trip and more interesting.

GreatHuntersFoot wrote:

NTA instead of being excited to meet family and experience your culture, she made it about her. When we took our baby to Tunisia for the same reasons, I heard the same things and a lot of guff about Muslim countries and safety etc.

Not true at all. Let the martyr of the first world enjoy New York.

Clearly, OP is far from TA, and the big question here is why his wife is so close-minded and xenophobic.